We can only move forward.

How I'm coping with the election results

Photo by Drew Perales on Unsplash

The only thing I could think to write about this week was a reaction to the election results. I know it's all over everyone's feeds, and part of me feels like I don’t need to add to the noise, when what a lot of us likely need is to unplug. But I also think that it’s important and valuable, especially now more than ever, to voice my opinion.

I remember when I used to think I wasn’t political (oh, little naive Morganne). I didn't consume much political content, and I didn’t become very engaged in politics until the 2020 election.

So on the eve that Trump was pronounced victor over Hillary in the 2016 election, I wasn't sure what to think. Having voted for Hillary, I was shocked, but found myself watching his inauguration speech that following January because I thought, “ok, we elected him, it's only fair to see what he has to say as he addresses the nation.” I am feeling anything but that this time around. 

This time, I was stunned with disbelief. I cried and I mourned and I got pissed off.

Call it hope, call it naivety, call it detachment from my nerves - but I felt confident that Kamala was going to win this election, right up until Tuesday night. Because I simply couldn't fathom the alternative. 

I proudly wore my RBG Vote tee to work on Tuesday. I imagined Kamala as our first female president and it felt so right. So within reach.

It wasn’t until checking the electoral vote count before going to bed on election night that it hit me. We probably weren't going to win this thing. Pennsylvania’s electoral votes haunted me in my sleep, my unconscious praying they’d turn blue.

I still don't know what I was most shocked over the next morning—that he won, or that it happened so fast. I was prepared to hunker down for a few days before we had the results, similar to what happened in 2020.

As I write this, I find that I’m still pretty stunned. Tears pricked my eyes multiple times while I watched Kamala's concession speech. First at her pure radiancy as she walked up to the podium—she certainly didn't look like the loser. That alone gave me a breath of fresh air back.

While I searched for solace earlier this week, looking for anything to comfort me,  I quickly noticed a pattern. Content that was data-driven or an assessment of how and why this happened helped me process. It helped me come to terms with reality, since I still couldn’t believe it myself when I left for work Wednesday morning. 

What made me feel worse was scrolling my Instagram feed. Right away, I noticed an abundant amount of posts that were hatred-fueled. People I know looking to relieve their pain, blaming the voters in this country who cast their ballots for Trump, calling them the same names we call him.

I get where they’re coming from because it is so hard to understand why someone would vote for him, let alone think he’s the best candidate for this country after all the evidence against him. 

Do I think there are some Americans who are racist or sexist or transphobic, etc. and voted accordingly? Yes. Do I think that everyone who voted for Trump is racist or sexist or transphobic? No. 

It saddened me when I saw those posts in my feed because as upset as I am about the results, hatred is not the answer. Pointing blame is not the way. It’s one thing to establish a boundary between yourself and someone whose values are different, but another to automatically shun half of our fellow citizens. 

More than Trump winning, that is what discourages me the most. The lack of compassion and empathy that divides our country, our communities, our families.

As I processed the events this week, I couldn't help but kick myself a bit. What could I have done differently? I’m fortunate to be surrounded by friends and family and colleagues who all voted for Kamala. In fact, I only know of a few people personally who voted for Trump. It’s few and far between. 

But could I have talked to them? To understand their point-of-view? I’m so afraid of conflict and confrontational conversation as it is, that it’s hard for me to imagine “stirring the pot” politically so to speak. 

But I know now that isn’t the way to live life. By avoiding these conversations I'm not giving people the benefit of the doubt, to hear their perspective. We have to seek to understand one another. To do our best to treat one other with curiosity, not judgment, as Ted Lasso says.

And the other morning, still searching for explanatory content to ease my woes, I heard the same message on Ezra Klein’s show.

His message, loud and clear, was that we have to move forward with curiosity, not contempt. It will require us as Democrats to open ourselves up to discomfort, conflict, and hard conversations.

Because there is something in everyone’s lived experience that caused them to think Trump was the answer. Let us not challenge their intelligence or empathy, but instead challenge ourselves to ask them why.

Right now, this is the only action I can think of to take moving forward. I want to figure out what else I can do, how I can continue to further engage myself in politics. A commitment I made back in 2020 was to pay more attention to local politics, to educate myself more in that space.¹ Because if there’s anything that 2020 taught me, it was the importance of what’s happening in my own backyard. And engaging locally feels so much more tangible and impactful.

One silver lining of this election was the introduction of ranked choice voting here in the city of Portland. We used ranked choice voting for the first time ever to vote on our mayor and city council. The state of Oregon also voted on a measure to implement ranked choice voting at the entire state level.

While the measure unfortunately didn't pass, it gives me hope that Oregonians are starting to consider it, and my own city is trying something new to change our political system. I strongly believe that allowing more nuance in voting will pave the way to disrupt our two-party system and create a more diverse set of candidates to lead our cities, our states, and our country.

I really hope I live to see the day that a woman wins the presidency. I’m not giving up on that dream.

1. It’s what prompted me to buy this book.