What the hell happened on Election Day?

You got me. This isn't so much an analysis as a moment of rumination.

When I got up on Election Day, I hadn’t slept very well. In fact, I hadn’t slept well for weeks, because, while I was putting on my usual game face —she’s going to win! Look at the Marist Poll! Wow! Iowa!—I was worried.

I think during the past three elections, there was always an element of worry.

2016: My thinking: Gee, Hillary is kinda yesterday’s news, she’s not all that popular with people I know, she lost to Obama in 2008 in a generational hand-off, Bernie really seems to resonate with younger voters, I’m tired of Bill, blah blah blah…but I keep thinking no one would be crazy enough to vote for such a lying moron like Trump. I was certain she would win…almost.

ELECTION NIGHT RESULT: I had this weird, metallic adrenaline taste in my mouth when I was looking at The New York Times election needle. I remember watching one website obsessively that said there was literally no chance she could win. When Trump claimed victory, he looked shellshocked. Out of it. Stunned. He didn’t think he was going to win.

It would have been a far better business decision for him to have lost.

2020: I like Joe Biden, he’s familiar, yeah he’s a little old, but he seems fine, but all the kids like Bernie and Pete, none of my friends seem to be for him, or Harris, for that matter, but he’ll be fine. I was absolutely certain he would win, no asterisks.

ELECTION NIGHT RESULT: He won after five days, but I was very confident he would win. One hundred percent.

2024: I could see Biden was slowing down, but generally he seemed to have more good days than bad days. He was exactly the same age as my dad was when he died.

As the primaries wore on, I heard a lot of young people in my life express extreme anger about him, his age, Gaza, and so on. I was pretty confident he was going to win because I was also sure that the American people were done with the Trump show. When Biden walked on to the stage at the first debate, I thought he looked terrible. He sounded even worse. I called for him to drop out when I turned in my Chronicle column 75 minutes after the conclusion of the debate.

When Kamala Harris was tapped, I had quite a bit of anxiety about it, because there wasn’t really a process, and that she hadn't enjoyed good numbers during her service as vice president. Once I saw her step into the role, I thought she performed magnificently throughout the campaign. I was confident—not certain—confident she would win.

ELECTION NIGHT RESULT: A few days ago, I went to the doctor and asked for some anti-anxiety meds, because I didn’t want to be sleepless and cramping on Election Night 2020, where this loon claimed victory when he had no right to do so. My doctor gave me fifteen pills. I have been waking up at 3:30 to 4:00 AM for weeks prior to the election. Some hours during the day, I was sure she’d win, because she was confident, and (real) polling looked solid. An hour later I’d swing back to the feeling that I was waiting for CAT scan results. Someone would say something negative, and I would stress. Positive? Elation. Then back to blah.

I got home from a midtown traffic jam on a trip that should have taken 35 minutes. It took two hours. I walked in the door at six, watched Steve Kornacki, and went right to the Lorazepam. I was utterly silent for 45 minutes as he moved his Georgia suburban counties around. Checked the NYT Needle, and it was 66 toward a Trump victory. I never looked again. Friends texted and I mostly ignored them. They knew. What could I say?

Yeah, we are about to test American democracy in a way that hasn’t happened since 1860, but don’t bug me. I took a pill.

I went to bed around ten. I heard Fox call Pennsylvania and turned it off. I turned on my Art Bell video (it’s great to fall asleep to, even if it’s all BS) and went to sleep, knowing it was over.

I did not get sick in the night. But I did wake up at 3:30, again.

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On my drive into midtown to pick up my son, in that traffic jam, before I knew anything other than Harris winning Vermont, and Trump Kentucky and Indiana. I thought, well, if it were up to Indiana and Kentucky, we’d be living in an autocracy.

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The light was iridescent lavender at 5:30 or so. I saw regular people walking baby strollers, a guy with a dog, a woman smoking a cigarette in a car, a jaywalker, and I thought, how normal they all are, going about their lives, and that their lives had a fifty/fifty chance of being completely upended. Their lives, along with mine, were in the hands of a couple of Silicon Valley billionaires who want crypto currency and satellite contracts.

I used to view Election Nights fairly academically; now I saw it as a moment where my life could be altered forever. I felt sick. Powerless. The thing is, I had a little power to persuade. I had some resources. My life, on paper, was good again after it was completely blown up last year, and I mean detonated on every level.

I thought, if Trump wins, maybe one of his flying monkeys in a pickup truck in South Placer County might blow my head off over a column or a cartoon, because this man has given tacit permission to these people.

Kill Liz Cheney.

Shoot the journalists in front of me.

People, I am not a paranoid person. In fact, I am rather easily bamboozled by people, sometimes. I have a kind heart, for a jerk political cartoonist.

I am fearful. Not so much for myself, because I’d be remarkably easy to shoot. I worry more about journalists in Washington and New York with names far bigger than mine. Do they have guards? Do they live in security buildings? I am fearful because this man has lit a fuse that could lead to thousands if not millions of deaths.

Ukrainians could die. NATO could be weakened, emboldening Putin. That’s way bigger than me.

What if there was another pandemic, and, you know, the completely insane Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was the czar? Or there was an international crisis requiring a steady mind and hand?

Does the 44 percent of Latino men really think that Trump is that man? Or the seventy percent of the white people think he’s the person in a crisis when he doesn’t even understand the history of the Second War War? Don’t they understand that post-pandemic supply chain issues combined with corporate price gouging caused the inflation they just rejected Harris for?

Does anyone who voted for Trump think past when they next will be in the McDonald’s drive-thru?

I wonder.

Some do, and they don’t care. Because Pelosi is a “bitch”. Because Harris is “low IQ”. Because because because.

And here we are.

We have elected Washington. Jefferson. Madison. Lincoln. The Roosevelts. Kennedy. Reagan. Obama. And many more great and good people. Some flawed, some not that great, but none like Donald J. Trump, a felon and a rapist. A man who will betray his family and his country.

This is a place that no sentient American should want to be in, and, in fact, we may not be able to extricate ourselves from in 2026 or 2028. Trump cares no more for the social niceties of the U.S. Constitution than where he’s getting his next overdone steak and ketchup at his slimy social club.

Yeah, I am worried. Yeah, I am going to keep doing this (I think), but there are moments in a 64 year man-on-BP-meds life where he thinks this:

Do I want to think about these wannabe Ceaucescus?

I do not.

I cannot spend another four years and two months looking at Don Jr.’s stubble. or Eric’s gummy moronic grin (his X page trumpets that he’s a “large donor” to a hospital. Oh, like the cancer charity. OK. Are Ivanka and Jared back? Is Barron going to be on the covers of MAGAzines? Melania Morticia?

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I remember the morning after Reagan won in 1980.

I thought it was the end of the world.

Little did I realize it was a comparatively halcyon moment in American history.

Most of us can’t defect. Most of us can’t move to Portugal. Most of us just have to sit here and take this sideways for years.

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Look, I am an optimistic person, mostly. I really am. Ask my kids. I buck them each up every day, and they’re in their thirties. But this time, I cannot buck them up. One asked me today, “Now what"?”

I texted back, “Resist”.

I don’t know how or where or what.

But I will resist these bastards.

Period.

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Folks, I hated writing this, but it’s where I’m at, and where most of you are. I just can;t pretend this isn’t bad. The only upside is that they’re morons, and they’ll screw it up, like usual.

But this time, we handed them the pistol to hold us hostage.

Again.

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