What Just Happened?

Jumbled thoughts from an emotional election week

• I’m sad. I’m frightened too. But I’m mostly just sad, right now.
• I know she wasn’t perfect. I know that she was a flawed candidate. I know there were problems with her campagin. But she was incredibly qualified and I wanted her to win.
• I was sure she was going to win. I was sure that Donald Trump was going to lose. I was sure that Donald Trump could never secure the nomination.
• On election night, as my anxiety level was rising, my sweet 7-year-old daughter just said, “Take a belly breath, dad. That will calm you down.” And then she showed me how to take a belly breath. Those were my first tears that night.
• Early the next morning, she came into our room at 4:30 a.m. and wanted to know who won. When I told her, she burst into tears. All I could do is hold her and tell her it was going to be ok. Later that morning, she said, “When I’m sad, I like to think about happy things.” Me too, sweetie. Me too.
• She asked me, “Kids at school said he’s going to start World War III. Or war with Mexico. Is he going to do that?” All I could say was, “I sure hope not, honey.”
• Hillary’s concession speech. The part where she spoke directly to little girls? That’s the hardest I’ve cried this week.
• Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States. Boggles the mind.
• I think just about any reaction to the election results is an appropriate reaction. Be happy. Be sad. Cheer. Protest. Do your thing. EXCEPT RACISM. The reports from schools where kids are chanting “build that wall” to the Latino kids or the subway where a woman had her hijab yanked off or using Trump’s victory as an excuse to shout racial epithets at the DMV…that shit makes me sick to my stomach.
• I’m afraid for our country and my kids…and that fear pales in comparison to what many others are feeling. There are communities that are facing life-altering threats under a Trump administration: the LGBTQ community, undocumented immigrants and their families, Muslim Americans, women…
• I get that it makes a nice chant, but yelling “Not My President” doesn’t totally fly with me. It seems unfathomable…but he IS going to be our president, whether we like it or not. Fight him at every turn and protest his actions, but denying reality is part of what got us into this mess.
• The bubble thing is real, isn’t it? Social media? Your group of friends?
• I grew up in Bakersfield, the most conservative part of the state. Now I live in San Francisco, the most liberal part of the sate. Both bubbles.
• I know I need to get out of the bubble. But there are people that live in my hometown that I’m not ready to un-block on Facebook. I can’t take the gloating right now.
• And that’s exactly how THEY would have felt if Hillary had won.
• Why the hell haven’t we done more to help the people in the Rust Belt? (Michael Moore wrote this in July. I thought he was just being provocative. But it all came true, exactly like he said.)
• We can’t fall into the trap of saying that everybody who voted for Trump is evil. He spoke to people who felt like the country forgot about them. The solution isn’t to demonize them, it’s to make sure we don’t forget about them.
• Bernie Sanders. I liked what he had to say but I supported Hillary. Not sure if he would have won, but in hindsight, it seems pretty clear that he would have been more competitive.
• I’m still furious that the Republicans nominated Trump. There were people in contention that didn’t frighten me as much. That didn’t violate basic human decency. That didn’t feel like they were going to burn the whole thing down. But that’s why they lost, right?
• I understand the appeal of an outsider that will shake up the system. (Confession: I voted for Perot in 1992.) But installing C-list conservatives and right-wing crazies is not “draining the swamp.”
• His cabinet might be more frightening than him. Think about that statement. Trump might end up being the most liberal, rational guy in the room.
• Is hope that it won’t be as bad as we think really “hope” or “dangerous acceptance?”
• I have to take breaks from the news because it depresses me. Then I think I’m ready and I log on and I read “Sarah Palin as Secretary of the Interior” and I realize that I’m not ready.
• Climate change is real. A climate change denier is going to be president. Boggles the mind.
• The liberal fantasies where the absentee ballots push her to a tie or a “faithless elector” gives her a victory in the Electoral College? Ain’t gonna happen. (And I totally called everything right in this election so far, so I obviously know what I’m talking about.)
• She won the debates. All three. She was clearly more qualfied. 61% of the voters said Trump wasn’t qualified to be president…and 20% of that group voted for him anyway. That just kills me.
• Maybe Trump will be just as hard on the Republicans as he is on the Democrats?
• I mean, who knows what that guy really believes and what he’ll do?
• I don’t think Trump really wanted to win. Or rather, he wanted to WIN, but I don’t think he ever wanted to actually be president. He looked that way on election night and he looked that way when he met Obama at the White House post election. I think he’s going to hate the job.
• I think we might see President Pence at some point. I can’t decide if that terrifies me more or less.
• The Supreme Court. Donald Trump could pick the next 3–4 Supreme Court judges. Judges that will still be deciding cases throughout my GRANDCHILDREN’S life. Boggles the mind.
• I hope Trump doesn’t start World War 3 and that I get to HAVE grandchildren.
• Oh, shit! If he kills Obamacare, am I going to be able to get insurance for the family?
• One of my Facebook friends was already talking up Elizabeth Warren for 2020. I like Elizabeth Warren a lot. But she’ll be 71 in 2020. That’s not ancient but it’s also not the “fresh new face in politics” that people rally behind. (Like Obama in 2008 and, yes, “political outsider Trump” in 2016.) The Democrats desperately need a deeper, younger bench of up-and-coming talent. And they need to win some statehouses since that’s where the bench develops.
• I really don’t want to be in constant election mode.
• Maybe I should run for something. Get in the game at the local level. Try and be part of the solution. (But then, when you see what they have to go through, who wants to put themselves and their family through that?)
• Yes, she won the popular vote. But I’m not sure how I feel about abolishing the Electoral College. I suspect it’s a long shot anyway. Maybe just win both in the future?
• As somebody who has spend much of his career in advertising trying to persuade people to do or buy something, it pains me to realize that the candidate I supported did such a poor job of persuading people to vote for her.
• It’s clearer to me than ever that a LOT of advertising does a pretty piss-poor job of persuasion.
• That 97% Conference thing I got some attention for last week? REALLY doesn’t feel funny to me right now. Not sure if/when it ever will.
• It’s hard to untangle how much of this was a vote against Hillary and how much of it was a vote against women. But she faced a shit ton of sexism in this campaign. I truly don’t undertand the fear of female leadership. Women GET SHIT DONE.
• Science! Is there going to be a war on science??! On facts?! Sigh…
• Now, I guess I have to hope that Trump does a good job, right? I mean, I don’t want him to drive the country into a ditch. Maybe he’ll get something not-horrible done for the country? Infrastructure improvements?
• Holy shit. Could he be a TWO-term president??!
• Breathe, John. One day at a time.
• Get Zen. Maybe something good will come of this. If Kerry doesn’t lose in 2004, we probably don’t end up with President Obama.
• I’m sad about President Obama. I love that man and I’m going to miss him. The Trump administration will work hard to erase much of what he accomplished. That sucks.
• I’m sad for the country but I’m secretly sort of glad for Hillary. They would have made her life hell. She’s done so much for the country. She deserves a break. (I love this story about a woman running into her on a hike this week.)
• I’m not ready for stuff like “think of all the amazing music and art that’s going to be created in the next four years.” I could have handled more Twenty-One Pilots if she’d won.
• I’ve hugged my kids a lot this week.
• I’m sad. I’m frightened too. But I’m mostly just sad, right now.

More Politics from John: The Need for ONE Anti-Trump Tagline

About the Author

John Kovacevich is a writer and creative director based in San Francisco.