Election Night, Part 2

I could just keep adding to my last post, but part of me wants to write more posts than I did in 2019, so here we are.

An hour after I last wrote I'm breathing a little easier. Early results indicate that Inslee is safe as governor in Washington, and Reykdal holds a comfortable lead for the Superintendent of Public Instruction. These are important.

First results also look promising for two folks I was excited to support in our local elections -- Jamila Taylor and Jesse Johnson. Local elections matter.

My home state is more depressing, but I can't vote in Montana anymore, and Montana wouldn't welcome me home anyway. Montanans don't take kindly to outsiders (ask me how I know), and as someone who has put down deep roots somewhere else for her entire adult life, I think that's what I am now. I've written more about that than I can process here tonight. But I have to say, tonight when I was trying to distract myself I read a post that was one of those, "You know you might be from Washington when..." things, and I related to literally all of them. I didn't hate that. It made me smile. I chose my home well. And believe me, in this country, staying where I am feels like a matter of survival. Anyway, no one in Washington has ever suggested that I don't belong here just because I'm not a sixth-generation Washingtonian, and this is the state my children can claim as their birthplace. They'll have roots in other homes as well, because Matt and I love other landscapes and that runs in our blood, but tonight -- tonight especially -- I am clinging to the home I've chosen.

But toxic individualism is alive and well across landscapes that I love, I think, and it still saddens me. Maybe that's why my home state is likely to elect as governor the man who assaulted a reporter a few years ago. And I watched on national news as a former Montana neighbor, one who fed me peanut butter sandwiches as a child, on whose pullout couch I slept more than once, proclaimed that it just made her love him more.

Cool cool cool cool cool.

The "pro-life" party that celebrates and incites violence. (Trump obviously loved Gianforte for that moment.)

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And Trump takes Florida.

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I voted in my first presidential election twenty years ago. We didn't have the results that night, but I remember creeping out to the living room in the little apartment I shared with Carmen, turning on the tiny TV, and hissing, "Are you kidding me?"

I wasn't particularly excited to vote for Al Gore, but I did. And I was very excited to vote.

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2000. 2004. 2008. 2012. 

As a white straight woman raised in a traditional Christian family, I didn't stand to lose a lot in any of these elections, obviously. I grew, I think. I learned. I hope. (I hope I learned to listen. I'm still learning how to put that into action.) I wept when Obama delivered his speech in 2008. And I breathed a sigh of relief in 2012, but I also had some great conversations with friends who voted for Romney.

Those friends didn't vote for Trump in 2016. Things are different now. If you still think it's just a matter of opinion and not folks's literal lives, I don't know how to talk to you, and I probably wouldn't have had a great conversation with you in 2012.

I'm so anxious. I'm not without hope (which is not the same thing as optimism) but I'm anxious all the same. Please, don't let this happen again. I fear the breaks that cannot be repaired.