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It was a surreal experience. I was glad to be done with the Clintons but I was never a fan of Trump. My only hope out of this election is to show that the executive branch is way too powerful and we as a country try to re-balance the power about the three branches of the government.
Where was I? I was at home watching the results on TV, where else would I be? Do you think I get invited to victory parties? Just at home shocked and thrilled!
Edit
Oh 2016 herpa-derp
I went to bed early. I got burned by Romney, and didn’t want to invest.
You can see my story of the Night to Remember in my post, “O Frabjous Day!”
A good thought but fat chance of getting any desirable result out of the other two corrupted branches.
I was working the polls at a precinct in Boise, ID. We had a record turnout, so there was no time to follow news until we got a lull in late afternoon. Then one co-worker who was sneaking peeks on her mobile said that exit polls showed Florida was up for grabs, which was unexpected and interesting. We finally finished tear down and count checking at 9:30 (MST) and I didn’t get home until 10:00. The first site I checked (probably Instapundit) had a link to the NYT’s odds chart where I immediately got an eyeful of the Hillary:Trump reversal. I stayed up until the wee-small hours for a schadenfreude fest of whinging news critters.
In answered to title question of “Where Were You When The Political World Changed,” last night I was at home last night where I watched our 32 member margin in the Virginia House of Delegates be decimated by the Democrats, while we also lost the Washington State Senate Majority and both governor’s races, as the Democrats won the governorship in Virginia by the largest margin in 32 years.
Last night I watched the beginning of the end of my Republican Party in my home, and I pray that we remove the Trump albatross from around our necks so that we can have a chance under President Pence.
I would have invited you, Manny! American beer and apple pie for everyone!
Is there an archive of the Ricochet live chat that night?
Actually, it was kind of a wake-up for both my wife and myself. I was reservedly pleased about the outcome, if only because I imagined that at this point I was ready to roll the dice, and I knew that Hillary would be a disaster. But also because, in that moment (the night of the election), I realized that I had actually just resigned myself to how obnoxious and horrible everyone (well, every liberal) would be the next morning if Hillary won. In spite of my opposition to Trump, I was pretty happy about it.
Where it became a wake-up for my wife was when she walked into work the following day, and people were pissed. She had a co-worker come in and loudly declare (directed, I think, at another worker who she had just discovered to be conservative) that if you voted for Trump, you’re not my friend, and please don’t ever speak to me again. It became downright hostile. For her, it’s an interesting situation, because she works in an environment where everyone is Mexican, and she is the only white person. It is a generally friendly group of people, and they all get along, but in a lot of ways, they are just openly racist (often times subconscious). Generally, it’s in ways that they think (and society says) are perfectly acceptable, but if you play the “what if white people did this?” game, it’s kind of jaw-dropping.
In the past year, my wife has observed this kind of thing in a lot of different places. She voted for Trump, but she’s quiet about politics. There have been several times where she’s kind of depressed about it, and will turn to me (looking at facebook or something) and say something like “…these people are so mean and so openly hateful.” Just the fact that people who you know and interact with every day are willing to paint with such a broad brush, and in such violent terms, and she’ll point out: “that’s me they’re talking about, and they have no idea. They just assume that because they like me, we believe the same things.”
At Ricochet, I’ve seen that the polarization goes both ways. There are a lot of pro-Trumpers who have decided to give no quarter to people who disagree on even the smallest things. Liberals are worse, but the whole situation is bad. As an ideological conservative, what I’ve realized is that I’m a part of what is a much smaller group of people than I ever quite realized.
I was at the only place to be on election night-at my computer following the Ricochet live chat. It was amazing, especially seeing what the east-coasters were saying. Shout out to Jim Gawron, whose comments on % likelihood of victory were priceless.
I don’t see the result in Virginia having any particular tie to Trump. This direction has been clear for some time as the Northern Virginia annex to the District Of Columbia continues its growth under the central government. There was probably some underlying rationale that led to the non-voting non-self-governing feature applied to the District when it was created (I don’t know the details related to this, I’m guessing). But it is easy to see what happens to an essentially conservative state when an area becomes saturated with enough government bureaucrats and contractors to change that conservative character. Virginia will look like Maryland soon.
How does that explain the loss of local governments in Pennsylvania and New York counties? Or the Washington State Senate? We cannot win nationally with a President who is supported by only 38% of the voters.
I went to bed around 1030 when all were reporting doom.
Woke up around midnight and tried to check the results on my phone but no websites would load. CNN app worked and they were reporting some promising news in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Michigan.
Went downstairs and turned on the TV and opened the ricochet election liveblog. If memory serves, NYT and CNN split. One was saying Trump was ahead in Wisconsin but not Michigan and the other vice versa.
An interesting point from earlier in the night was watching Krauthammer and O’Reilly on FNC.
Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome” but appeard to be suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome regarding how Florida will break:
https://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/fox-analyst-predicts-clinton-win-and-the-look-on-bill-oreillys-face-is-priceless/
What I said applies uniquely to Virginia. I’m not familiar with those other places.
Moderator Note:
The moderators thank the member who pointed out that this comment is veering off topic. The commenter has exited the thread.Chester County is a suburban Philadelphia County. It has not elected a county-wide Democrat for over 100 years. Yesterday it elected four.
The incumbent Republican County Executives in suburban Nassau and Westchester counties were defeated.
I am not aware of any incumbent Democrats losing yesterday.
We are going to be crushed by the American voters. They are so angry at Trump, they won’t look at if his policies are working.
There must be a German word to describe how I was feeling. I was:
One year in, I keep reminding myself of Peter’s eclipse metaphor. I still don’t like the man, but I like some of the things he’s done.
I didn’t even watch the returns, as I didn’t want to suffer through seeing Clinton win. I went to bed early, but I woke up about midnight and decided to find out what happened. I turned on my radio and heard the DJ say something like, “Donald Trump is three states away from winning and he’s leading in all of them.”
WHAT?? I got up and joined my wife, who did have it on TV all evening. I watched in amazement as they announced that Hillary had conceded and Trump took that stage in victory. Wow! I’ve observed a lot of elections, but never one that was so completely unexpected.
Dude, go find another thread and let us have this one! This is about Nov. 8, 2016.
I live in California, where everyone I know was posting pictures all day of “I’m With Her” and their little stickers and how happy that they were a part of history. I had decided at 2 to go vote. I couldn’t rationalize a Trump vote, I tried to bargain that maybe I could write someone in while doing my civic duty, maybe I should just give in and vote for Hillary. Maybe I should vote for that fraud McMullin. Ultimately, I went with pragmatism, who is the candidate most close to me that can win (in general, in California I knew this was a wash but I delude myself). I voted Trump.
I went to bed at 8pm PST, a bit depressed. I wake up at 1:30 am, a little earlier than my usual 2am call (I have to be at work at 3:30) to see that Trump has been declared the President by some networks, some are saying that the process isn’t finished and there might be recounts and I just giggle to myself.
It was a hateful catharsis, at people who told me that Trump had destroyed the Republican party for 20 years that it was going to be an annihilation, that this country had turned progressive, and “my types” would die out soon enough. You closed minded bigots with that patriotism, religion, who are against big government are done, Obama got rid of you, and that ilk I had to read every day on the message board I moderate. I thought about the three week victory lap, how I knew in my heart they were probably right because the media had told me so, how after 8 years of Hillary I’d probably be giving half my income to the state to pay for people’s stuff and lose a lot of my inheritance because of wealth redistribution.
I watched the despair and smiled. The most vocal jerk took off for 10 days and it was the best silence I could hope for. I gave it 48 hours for them to mourn and with a measured prologue explaining how I had allowed enough of a grieving period I then typed the following screed.
“Eat it.”
I went to a party but made the mistake of carpooling with a fierce anti-Trumper who saw the writing on the wall at 10:30 and took us home.
I watched the remainder of the night while watching CRTV and the Townhall feed while having a Fox feed on mute. I was on the phone several times that night with a friend comparing notes and laughing maniacally.
Having predicted the win I was pleased by the margin. I thought it would be 272 votes though. I thought we would all be watching New Hampshire till 4 am.
Looking back he won as soon as Alaska was called. At that point he was sitting at 269 votes. The rest was just gravy.
After Trump carried Texas he wasn’t going to win Arizona so they should have called it for him.
Best part was watching Times Square in NY be perfectly still.
Apropos of nothing, but that movie is used as a case study in many film classes, both for the way it structures the narrative and also for its innovative use of colour saturation.
I was a vocal Trump opponent up until the very last minute, one of the ones who worried that the damage Trump could do to the Republican brand might actually be worse than the damage that a Hillary Clinton Presidency would do. It wasn’t enough to get me to vote Clinton, in fact I ended up giving in* in the end. My concerns about Trump were all long term.
There were a lot of things I was not prepared for that night. The fact that he won was high on that list,** but number one, and the most memorable, was just how downright giddy I was watching Hillary Clinton lose the Presidency. My concerns about Trump were, and still are, long term issues, and my dislike of Mrs. Clinton more visceral, so I suspected all along that my lizard brain would end up rooting for him, but I was not prepared for just how gleeful I would be jumping from Daily Wire to the NYT*** to Ricochet and outright reveling in the victory of a man to which I would have told you six hours previously I was indifferent.****
*Actually I voted straight ticket Republican and “forgot” to uncheck the box for President.
**And anyone who tells you they knew he would win all along is either a fool or a liar.
***Say what you will about them, but their election coverage is top notch.
****I mention Daily Wire. This night also marks my first experience with Ben Shapiro who I suspect was going through pretty much exactly the same thoughts/emotions I was.
**And anyone who tells you they knew he would win all along is either a fool or a liar.
–I am not a fool or a liar. I knew he would win since the Nomination.
–I am a Canadian, and I saw how Rob Ford and ‘Ford Nation’ swept Toronto one of the most Liberal cities in North America.
Point well taken. I will exit this thread.
I live in Israel so I went to sleep, planning to get up when the polls started closing. I had my hopes up for a Trump victory. I like to think it’s cause I’m so darn smart but my kids point out that I always think my side is going to win.
Woke up around 2 AM (7 PM Eastern) and checked Twitter on my phone. Sean Trende, the last mainstream pundit to think Trump had a chance, thought he was done after some early Kentucky and Indiana numbers.
I went back to sleep, but not for long.Looked at Twitter again and the Eastern swing states were too close to call. This was good. It was a race. Got a bit more sleep then turned on the TV. Brett Baier was saying how shocked he was that it looked like it was going to be a long night.
I had a ride to work at 6 AM, for my second day on my current job. So I ran into the shower during a commercial and dressed while waiting for results from the last swing states. Kept refreshing Twitter on the ride in. I was the first one in the office so I kept refreshing web sites, and got to watch some of Trump’s acceptance speech.
President Elect Trump. Even though I thought I was expecting it, I had to laugh every time I heard that phrase. I was on almost no sleep, but I spent the day at work wide awake and on quite a high.
You know what this threads calls for the trump happiness video:
I was living in a blue state (albeit in a conservative part of one) last year. At the university where I was lecturing, there was a marked difference between the joy on most students’ faces and the despair on most of the faculty’s.
GREAT question! Well, @blueyeti?