11/11/2024 - The Election

Great fucking heavens.

Four years ago, America soundly rejected Donald Trump and elected Joe Biden to the White House. When Trump announced his candidacy a couple years ago, I laughed. I thought that all but guaranteed a Biden re-election victory. A washed-up Trump, four years older, now with 34 felony convictions? No way that anybody would vote for that.

Well I was fuckin wrong! 6 days ago, America embraced Trumpism again. One of the most well-qualified candidates to ever run for the office has lost. Why? Sexism most definitely plays a part. It would be naive to neglect to mention how so many people believe women are inherently inferior, less smart, and unfit to hold public office. Over the years we've seen more and more Congresswomen win their races. In local and statewide races, at least in urban and suburban areas, gender is no longer that much of a defining factor in who wins the race. Apparently, the Presidency is one step too far for many people. I also think, truthfully, that Biden's failure to accomplish what he set out to do, which, most of which was no fault of his own, helped contribute to Kamala's defeat. SCOTUS fucked over Biden's agenda, and the absolute lack of civic understanding of checks and balances and the judicial system has most definitely contributed to his low approval rating.

But why did that cause Kamala to lose?

So so many people turned out to vote for Biden in 2020. Many of which were not consistent voters, and many of which only vote every few decades. An otherwise disengaged electorate finally engaged for Biden, in response to Trump's horrid presidency and his neglect in the handling of the COVID crisis. People were totally over that shit, and they showed up to vote. When Biden's campaign promises were not delivered, those voters who never voted otherwise decided that they weren't going to show up for Kamala. The Democrats didn't deliver during the last four years, so why should they make the effort to turn up and vote for them again?

Not to mention inflation, which people immediately attribute to whoever is in the White House rather than the corporate greed that actually causes it. All of this combined with the fact that 2024 has been an extremely anti-incumbent year for every country across the globe, and all things considered, Kamala didn't get hammered anywhere near has hard as the incumbent parties across the globe did this year. We got close. Really fucking close. But in the end, Trump unfortunately won. Now we have to roll up our sleeves and get to work for the midterms.

My roommates and I had a wall covered in Harris/Walz signs that we collected over the month of October. I was the only one who stayed up past maybe midnight on electiion night. I started getting worried when North Carolina was called for Trump. Then it was Georgia. When I saw Trump's subtle, but compounding gains in the suburbs, I knew it was over. Once the folks who I follow on Twitter started freaking out, I started to accept the reality of the situation. I promised myself I'd stay awake until Pennsylvania was called. I saw the tweet from Decision Desk HQ calling Pennsylvania for Trump, which put him over the edge to 270, giving him the Presidency. I got up from the chair and turned off the TV, my heart pounding like never before. It didn't feel real. I ripped all of the campaign signs down from the wall. I threw out all the Kamala mailers we had gotten. I hid the signs deep in the cabinet so I didn't have to look at them. I went into my room and broke the news to my roommate. We talked for almost an hour about what this spelled for us. I took my shower, texted my friends, and went to bed.

I cried my eyes out in the ballot box that morning when I went to vote. It meant so much that my first ever Presidential vote was for a black woman, in the crucial state of Pennsylvania no less. I had just seen Kamala speak at her final rally the night before. Me and my friend were in the front row at the barricade. We got special tickets because I was a campaign volunteer. A couple weeks earlier had finished handwriting 300 postcards to voters in PA reminding them to vote on Tuesday the 5th. Maybe that's why this loss was so painful. I had spent 8 years wishing I could be directly involved in a Presidential election, and then I finally got my chance, with a candidate who I was passionate about and in a swing state too. I feel like all of this just made the loss so much worse. I had waited so so long, and I truly thought she would win.

Nonetheless, we continue. We can't just give up and take the loss. That'd be doing a disservice to everyone before us who fought for their rights and didn't give in. I'm gonna keep working, keep volunteering, keep making sure all my friends are registered. Yeah, this fucking hurts. It hurts so fucking bad. But I can't just give up. So today the work begins! I gave myself until the Monday after the election to grieve. And I have. But now it's time to get to work. It's time to organize, it's time to restructure, and it's time to get ready for the 2026 midterms. These next four years are going to be painful. But now's not the time to get complacent.