So, Not To be All Obama On This, But: Tell Me About Your Emotional Journey Last Night

I think I mentioned mine: I expected Trump to lose. I said early in the night, on Twitter, "Look, if Trump is going to lose, can he just lose early? These Psych repeats aren't going to watch themselves."

I meant it. I did not want to sit through a grueling night like I did in 2012, watching the TV in a daze, not believing the awfulness I was seeing unfold.

If the pain was to come, I wanted it to be quick, so I could turn the page and get on with my life.

Then I put on FoxNews at 8:20 or so. FoxNews was talking as if Trump had a chance. Looking at the map, I saw the Reverse Romney: I knew in 2012 Romney was in trouble because "Obama states" were being called quickly for Obama, but "Romney states" were being called much... more... slowly.

And ultimately, of course, a passel of "Romney states" was called for Obama.

North Carolina was eventually called for Romney: the next day, after Obama already had over 290 Electoral Votes.

But now, watching Fox, I saw that "Trump states" were being called quickly for Trump, and many Hillary states remained... undecided.

I immediately put on CNN Because I did not want my hopes raised only to have them dashed. I expected CNN would give me a more upbeat assessment of Hillary's odds.

But when I put on CNN, I saw Howard Finemann saying that the vote represents "a massive primal scream against globalism."

So I turned them off and but on MSNBC, still looking for someone to squash my hopes so I could accommodate myself to defeat.

But MSNBC was funereal, and they weren't calling the Hillary states any faster than anyone else. They had a guy on, I think, a Dem shill, who was saying "We're still confident" but when you have to say "We're still confident," this implies, unavoidably, that you have experienced a setback that many would take to be confidence sapping.

Then I kept hearing about the New York Times forecaster from commenters. They said that Trump's odds had risen from 27% to 37%.

So I clicked on that widget. And I found out they were wrong. Because When I clicked on it, Trump's odds were at something like 41%, and while I was watching the thing, they jumped up to 43%.

Then for an hour I kept clicking that thing. It creeped up every single minute, almost. Eventually it got to 49%, then 50% (!!!), then... 51%.

Then, Katy Bar the Door, it began climbing into the high 50s, then the sixties.

At this point I stopped trusting the widget and tried to put it out of mind. It was lying to me. It was a stupid algorithm without the ability to figure out where in a state votes were coming from; it was just tabulating early votes, and those come from more rural counties, so it was stupidly crediting Trump as more likely to win than not simply because it was so stupid.

That's what I told myself.

I did not believe what I was seeing and I did not want to get my hopes up, only to be crushed with another Romney drubbing.

Then... came Wisconsin. And I decided that okay, maybe the circumstances warrant -- or even demand -- some optimism.

But I still din't believe he could win. Even as the networks said "Hillary's path has narrowed" and then "Hillary must now run the table and cannot lose a single other state," I said: "I don't want to be the guy saying this, but Hillary's path may be narrow, but it is not very steep."

All she had to do, after all, was win some traditionally Democratic states -- and she was close in those, in Michigan for example, and we all know what happens when the Detroit vote comes in -- and Arizona, where she had sometimes led in polling.

Even when Decision Desk called it, I did not believe it, because Hillary did not concede, and I was pretty sure armies of lawyers would be filing forests of lawsuits and the Democrat Fraudulent Ballot Printing Presses were running so fast and hot the rollers smoked like brimstone farts from the Devil's ass.

I didn't actually believe it until Hillary conceded, and even then, I still thought maybe I was having a bizarre and lengthy waking dream of some kind. Maybe the election had broken me. Maybe I'd simply gone mad.

It's happened before, of course. And this has been a trying season on the psyche.

I'm still not sure I fully believe any of this.

Jim Geraghty named me as one of the "Trump-friendly" people who saw the possibility of a Trump win. "I did not see the possibility of a victory," I responded, "but merely its necessity."*

I still don't see the possibility of a Trump victory. Honestly!

And yet -- it moves.

* My friend Mike Flynn, RIP, was a big Rick Perry supporter in 2012, as I was. As Rick Perry plummeted in the polls, Mike was still convinced that Perry had to be the candidate.

"But what's his path?" I asked. "How does it happen?"

"I don't know how it happens," Mike said. "But it must happen."

He still believed. I wanted to believe, but could not.

And even today, now watching the media repeat "President-Elect Trump," I still don't know how any of this happened.

posted by Ace at 02:03 PM

| Access Comments