Taking a Moment to Reflect: The Day After the Day After Election Day

The texts started before the sun even rose over New York City. 

There was one from a young friend of mine in South Africa — “Congratulations, Mama P!” —   and several from friends in Italy, filled with joyful emojis. A film director in Trieste enthusiastically wrote, “This is wonderful news for all democracies!” I heard from a fellow canvasser — “It is because of YOU that we are in this place this morning!” One friend, usually a resolute pessimist, sent a link to “I Can See Clearly Now” which I listened to on repeat while I brewed my coffee. 

Just two days earlier, Cait Conley, an LGBTQ veteran, daughter of a construction worker and a postal worker and the first in her family to go to college, had been in an extremely tight race against the incumbent, Republican Mike Lawler, for New York’s 17th District. Conley ended up beating Lawler by roughly four-and-a-half points despite Trump joining a rally with Lawler last May; despite Elon Musk’s pouring $500,000 into Lawler’s campaign. Money can’t buy everything, apparently.

This summer and fall, canvassing for Conley, I trudged up driveways to rap on doors and ring bells, taking people’s temperature about whether they planned to vote, how they felt about the state of the country, and nudging them to consider Conley and other Democrats. One weekend, I was lucky enough to hear Conley speak. Her words stayed with me: “It’s not about Democrat or Republican. It’s about right and wrong,” she told a small crowd gathered in a suburban park in Westchester County.

Indeed.

I’m not a glass-half-full-person by nature, but doing this work, talking to people, and meeting candidates hoarse with speech-making made me feel more optimistic than many of my friends (and even some colleagues at The Persistent!). (I don’t know who you’re talking about! — Ed.) 

Compared with two years ago, when I was canvassing for Kamala Harris, there was a feeling of change in the air; a feeling among both Democrat and Republican voters that the country wasn’t headed in the right direction; that there needed to be a shift. “Things are so divisive now,” one young father told me. A mother of a 20-something confessed she was concerned about her son’s future and whether he would ever be able to support himself in a world where the cost of groceries, gasoline, rent, and healthcare had become exorbitant. 

I’ve been replaying many of those conversations in my mind, conversations that we now know people were having all over America, in red states and blue, about whether this was truly what we wanted, and truly who we wanted to be. 

Try though we might, it’s nigh impossible to point to one reason (or even a handful of reasons) that can explain this blue wave, or blue tsunami, or red rout or whatever else you want to call it. 

For some it might be the simple fact of the pocketbook. For others it might be about callous and cruel policies (nearly 600,000 people detained by ICE, including mothers, caregivers, and even pregnant women, since the start of Trump’s second administration). It could be the projected total of 22.6 million excess deaths including up to 6.8 million children by 2030 as a result of cuts to USAID, or a potential 9% rise in pregnancy-associated mortality due to Trump’s conservative Supreme Court appointees who overturned Roe v. Wade. The vice president, JD Vance, has blamed the Iran war. 

One thing I do know: What happened on Tuesday was most certainly not about a sudden and overwhelming rush of love for the Democratic party, particularly among those living in red states. Here’s what I think it was: a yearning to return to a semblance of normalcy where the Constitution is respected, where democracy is revered, where we can trust the system, and indeed one another, even if we do not always (or ever!) agree. 

So here we are, after the fact, looking at results that point to something truly refreshing: That when we want to, we can be a little less divided, and that we can also say no thanks to things we know to be wrong – the denigration of women, the personal attacks, the dissolution of decorum, and the attempts to snatch away a slew of safety nets that have been in place for decades — health insurance subsidies, food assistance, education, and effective government agencies intended to safeguard our food supply, medications and health. These are things that most Americans say they want (as long as they’re not labeled socialism).

Of course, this week’s surprisingly definitive election results would never have happened without so many people doing the work, whether making calls or writing postcards or donating money or knocking on doors. They could never have happened without millions of people, often with kids in tow, showing up to vote on and before Election Day, mailing in ballots and lining up at polling places where election officials ensured that every vote was counted.

The morning after the morning after, it seems as if the world has been nudged in a kinder direction. And I’ll let myself think of a conversation I had with a potential voter last weekend when I spotted him in his driveway and introduced myself as a volunteer for the Democrats. “Honey,” he said. “You’re in the wrong neighborhood.”

It turns out I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all.