The Morning After Election Day
And every day that will follow.
Couldn’t go to bed the night of November 5 until two in the morning. My partner and I told ourselves we would stay off social media until the results were final to spare us the stress. We put on a TV show to distract us but ended up refreshing the election page on our phones every minute.
Before the results were final, sleep finally came. Perhaps the only place we can get our minds away from reality. Even a nightmare would be better than what would follow.
Whatever hopes we had at two in the morning were gone by nine.
When I first woke up, in that half-asleep state of grogginess, feeling too hot under my comforter, my first thought was breakfast, like any other morning. I felt normal. I felt good.
And then my heart dropped when I remembered. I checked my phone and the notifications from my friends, the messages in group chats of sorrow and grief told me everything. Hanging on by a futile thread of hopeless possibilities, I went on the CNN election page, only to find a map covered in fiery red and a bar of red and blue overtaken beyond the “270 needed to win”.
This analog country, with its paper ballots, surely must still be counting them, right? What about the mail-in ballots? Can we run the numbers again? Can we swing the states around?
I remember when I moved to the United States almost ten years ago. A portrait of President Barack Obama greeted me as I entered immigration. I felt welcomed.
Seeing the results of the 2024 election, I feel quite the contrary.
I thought we would have a mixed-race female president with a former teacher vice president, but this nation chose two wealthy White men who loudly hate women, marginalized groups, and education. Trump got his Get Out of Jail Free card with a platform fueled by pure hatred, voted in by less educated voters who will stay less educated in the hands of the party of misinformation.
The night of the election, my partner asked if this was just part of getting older — perhaps politics haven’t changed so much as our cynicism towards them. I wish he was right, but the truth is the Republican party has devolved into a monstrous version of itself, incapable of reason and debate— if it was a person, imagine Ronald Reagan in the third act of The Substance.
I grew up hearing that women shouldn’t become presidents, because their hormones would make them too emotional for the job, and yet, every time Trump is behind a podium, he flails about, screaming, interrupting, looking angered, and blubbering like a schoolyard bully. Not even in my high school years of Model United Nations in rooms full of hormonal teens did I ever see such a lack of respect and intellect. We were graded on our decorum and our research and presentation of pertinent facts, but the man who will take the most important job in the country has consistently shown none of the above. He would fail Model UN.
It is the morning after election day, and the thoughts are too many. The wealthy will pay less taxes. Regulatory bodies such as the EPA and FDA will lose power. The war in Palestine will never end. More women will die of pregnancy complications. Fewer schools will be allowed to teach inclusive curricula. The list goes on and on. As I write this, it has only been two hours since the results were announced, and it’s already too much.
The answer, as always, is community. Mutual aid. Protesting, donating, getting involved in local politics, educating oneself and others. Just like we had to do in 2016, 2020, or every year in recent memory.
It’s hard to deal with the fact that the results will cost human lives. It’s impossible to calculate the toll this will take. And in the morning after, I wish I could go back to thinking about breakfast again.
