Election night, 2016, 2020: Anxious then, anxious now
Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. Election Day. Where were you that night? Odds are, you remember. It’s one of those moments seared into our individual and collective memories as vividly as the 9/11 terrorist attacks or, for older Americans, the assassination of JFK.
I’m speaking today on behalf of Hillary Clinton voters, though the smaller number of Americans— nearly 3 million fewer— who voted for Donald Trump no doubt remember the night too, if not with the same dismay.
We, the Clinton voters, remember howthe day started with polls that said Hillary would win, becoming the first woman elected to the highest office in the land. We remember the slow accretion of confusion as the night ticked on and the Electoral College numbers trickled in: What. Is. Happening?
We remember feeling sick, not primarily because our candidate was losing, or that a Republican was defeating a Democrat. Voting sometimes means losing. What made that night sickening was that this exceptionally qualified woman was on the brink of being beaten by a crude, racist, misogynistic, pathologically lying bully. And that she could lose because the popular vote alone doesn’t count.
I still have the texts I traded with a friend in California that night. I imagine millions of similar conversations happening all over the country. Here it is, slightly abridged: 7:28 p.m.
Me: I’m getting nervous. Her: Pretending to work, but I give up. Going home. Nervous too. 8 p.m.
Me: I’m going to take a bath. She has to win. She must.
Her: California: 55 electoral votes.
Me: A nation turns its hopeful eyes to you.
11 p.m.
Me: Feeling very sad.
Her: Just sick. Just heard that the Canadian immigration site has crashed.
Me: They say Portugal is nice. OKI really am going to sleep now if I can.
Her: May you wake up to a happy surprise.
Like the nearly 66 million Americans who voted for Clinton, I did not wake up to a happy surprise. That stunned morning is memorable too.
Many of us also remember the day that led into election night, the anticipation that bordered on jubilation. We remember howwe dressed to go vote. One ofmy friends recalls the white pantsuit she wore, in honor of women’s suffrage. Another remembers wearing her late mother’s watch, so hermom could vote in spirit. I wore my mother’s yellowcoat. Wewere voting not just for ourselves and the future, but for the women who came before us, whowere denied opportunities we take for granted, who helped make our opportunities possible.
The men who favored Hillary also felt the loss that night, but it was for the women, I think, that the defeat was most personal.
I also recall being in the Chicago Tribune newsroom on the afternoon of Election Day. An editor waved me into his office. On a big table were laid out three mock front pages for the following day, one for each of the possible outcomes.
Trump Wins. Clinton Wins. It’s a Draw.
I picked up the page that showed Hillary the winner and felt a jolt of pride. Pride inmy country. Pride— but not without a fearful premonition— that I was alive to witness this breakthrough.
Iwanted to snap a photo but my editor said no, so that page lives only inmy head now. But it does live on there. In that moment, I glimpsed the future, even though itwas a future that would never be.
Four years have passed since the future took a different path. The other day I sent our text exchange tomy friend in California. She wrote back: “Wow, andwe really had no idea how bad itwould be … Feels like an eon of outrage and exhaustion.”
She added that shewas about to go watch “What the Constitution Means to Me,” Amazon’s production of Heidi Schreck’s award-winning play about what the Constitution has meant to generations ofwomen.
Now election night 2020 is near. We carry the memory of four years ago into the present, a memory that leaves us anxious, cautious, wise enough not to predict or assume.
And we wait, afraid to hope, but hoping anyway that whenever a winner is declared— probably not that night— the polls this time will be proved right. We hope that the forecasts of civilwar and civic unrest are wrong. Despite the shock of that night four years ago, we hang on to the slippery belief that the United States of America is a special place where democratic principles and decent leaders may not always win but still can.