First off, I only have myself to blame. Everyone said don’t freak out on Tuesday night. There was going to be a Red Mirage. Since Trump implored his base to only vote in person on election day, since those would be counted first, he would take big leads in battleground states. Once the mail-in ballots were counted things would shift. (And they did. He was hoisted on his own petard.) Intellectually, I understood that. But watching the early results Tuesday night was like watching HOSTEL after being told it was a teen comedy. Despite all the assurances from MSNBC (and James Carville who was Foster Brooks with better whiskey), I got 2016 PTSD flashbacks.
That was my first mistake. Number two was watching election coverage Tuesday night for eight straight hours. That was like being traumatized by HOSTEL then sticking around for HOSTEL 2. And not turning off the TV just in case there was a “Making of HOSTEL” aftershow.
I’ll never make that mistake again.
I started the night watching CNN. It was like being in a video game but louder and more frenetic. Blaring fanfares, in-your-face graphics, Wolf Blitzer, and John King at the Magic Wall. Prior to Tuesday night I was a big fan of John King and the Magic Wall. But when they would go to him prior to election night, it was for two minutes. John would cram ten minutes of information into those two, but then it would be done. He was a jello shot.
Tuesday night, however, it wall-to-wall Magic Wall. A relentless data dump. I felt like I was someone just learning rudimentary English listening to Gus Johnson call a basketball game on the radio. It was exhausting. Not that he didn’t know his stuff, but counties were zooming in and out, and graphics and numbers and comparisons to Hilary Clinton’s performance in 2016, and who’s over-performing and under-performing, and the top of my head felt like a Jiffy Pop bag ready to explode. Slow down! Or take a breath.
But what really pissed me off was when he’d show Virginia as red and say it should go blue, votes from Goober County aren’t in, but who knows? They might not. Virginia could surprise people and flip red. That’s what makes this night fun.
NO! There is no FUN this night. This isn’t March Madness where Weber State beats Duke and you go, “Huh. Didn’t see that coming.” This is literally the fate of Democracy and the United States of America. Get your FUN elsewhere.
That would be interrupted by blaring fanfare and percussion, a giant graphic filling the screen with an ELECTION UPDATE. Then they show a graphic of Trump and Biden. At the top of the screen it says “Nevada.” Under Trump’s photo it has his percentage at 93% and Biden’s is at 6%. I’m thinking, Jesus, we’re fucked. Then underneath the percentages are the actual votes. Trump: 82, Biden 9. WTF?!
And all of this hysteria was just in the first hour.
By the way, did you know that CNN’s Dana Bash was once married to John King for four years? They had a child together. I just assume when they had sex that John was still wearing that black suit.
I decided to see what the broadcast networks were up to. CBS was in love with swirling cameras on jibs floating all over the set. Like someone tied a camera to a moth. I could only do five minutes.
Maybe it’s because I’m from a different age, but when it came to network news there was CBS and NBC. ABC was the station that had THE FLINTSTONES and BRADY BUNCH. I’ve never taken ABC News seriously. If you want to eat healthy you don’t go to Shakey’s. So I skipped ABC entirely.
I didn’t watch Fox News for the same reason I don’t join Scientology or leave snacks in the backyard for visiting extra terrestrials.
If I was going to watch NBC I figured I might as well watch MSNBC. They were less frenetic than CNN and I felt like I was with my peeps. Interesting that Rachel Maddow anchored the coverage and once-golden-boy, Brian Williams was relegated to the projection desk. “NBC projects Oklahoma goes to Donald Trump. Now back to Rachel for the next forty minutes.”
Rachel conveyed sanity and perspective. Again, my fault for ignoring all the times she and her co-anchors implored me to relax and be patient.
The highlight of the MSNBC coverage was Steve Kornacki at their Magic Board. I love his enthusiasm. Kornacki is the nerd in High School who got a girlfriend. As knowledgeable as King but less polished and refreshingly goofy. He maybe got four hours sleep in total last week. I suspect he’s going to emerge from this coverage as the star.
Late into the night, Biden gave a “just wait and relax” speech, and then Trump gave a truly horrifying insane victory speech from the White House to a crowd of maskless, brainless toadies who gave him a standing ovation as he spewed one shameful lie after another, standing at a podium with 200 American Flags behind him (probably stolen from local public schools).
To both MSNBC’s credit (and CNN’s), their hosts and analyst ripped the shit out him, said he had reached a new low, which is now the reaction every time he speaks. I thought it was interesting when he tried the same thing the next day in the briefing room, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and ABC cut away from his speech about two minutes in when they could see it was just a blizzard of reprehensible lies. Think about that: All three networks cutting away from the president of the United States.
So I went to sleep suicidal that first night. I woke up at 4:30 and checked the website to see that Biden had pulled ahead in Wisconsin & Michigan. Ohmygod! James Carville (the happy drunk relative at every family function) was right.
For the next few days I avoided TV coverage. I’d check websites every few hours. And day by day things started looking better. He took Michigan and Wisconsin. When Biden turned the corner in Pennsylvania I actually was able to keep food down. Like everybody, waiting was frustrating. But I took comfort in knowing that meticulous vote counting would make it harder for Trump to challenge, and the wait must’ve been extra torture on Trump. Reports were that everybody close to him was afraid to tell him the reality of the situation. I might’ve done it this way: “It looks like you’ll no longer be president with all the privileges that come with that, and instead you’ll lose your empire and spend the rest of your life in prison. But the good news is a new SHARK TANK airs tonight on ABC.”
The announcement Saturday morning was GLORIOUS. And with Biden winning by quite a margin and record popular vote, the Genie is out of the bottle. All the celebrations over the weekend, victory speeches Saturday night (which reminded me of how real presidents act), congratulations from world leaders — the country and world has spoken. Trump’s baseless legal challenges will go nowhere, as all of his legal challenges the last two weeks have. It’s over. Finally. We can turn our attention to healing, justice, decency, stability, empathy, and stopping this pandemic.
As someone said on Facebook: One plague down and one to go.
from By Ken Levine
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