Disconcerting States #3

Day 2, USA: November 5, 2024.

By John Dean

We are down to the finishing line. On late-night TV last night a comic said: “It feels like the whole country is waiting to get the news of a biopsy”. Democrats declare they are “nauseously optimistic”. Kamala Harris keeps vigorously belting out her message.  From Pennsylvania we heard her say: ”I want to thank everyone…I will be a president for all Americans!…Momentum is on our side…Can you feel it?”

Who knows? She running on faith and drive and a lot of voter support and reason above emotion and maybe…

Otherwise hear Mr. Trump interviewed this election day after he voted. The guy who hogs the stage.

Who spoke in an exhausted voice, with slumped shoulders, an outsize MAGA hat that flopped down to his ears, his face thick with burnt orange make-up. After sixty straight days on the road at the age of seventy-eight not lookin’ too good.

He said a few times that “something else” could happen with this election. But he expects to win. And added: “I don’t even want to think about the losing part.”

So here we are. Election Day evening today. Before either side has won each side has declared they will win. But almost every single serious pundit in the nation — specially here on the ground in the warm autumn sky-blue days of the greater Washington DC area — consistently claim neck and neck.

Get ready cautiously, people. These final moments linger. The process unfolds throughout this Tuesday night. Voting places close at 7:00 p.m. in sultry George through 1:00 a.m. in chilly Alaska. Then the counting begins.

America is not like many a European election where by eight p.m. sharp on election day night election races can be more or less called. This is the home of great modern story telling and the entertaining performance. Tensions are drawn out. This is a movie without precedence.

Please let’s not forget you’ve got fifty states plus the district of DC to count. Each with its variety of tabulating systems. When the polls close the counting starts. In a close race such as our 2024 this is specially important. Most states use paper ballots that need to be verified, opened, flattened, and counted one by one. (with an estimated 97% that use paper).

Just when you thought it might be getting simple, it doesn’t. America is nothing if not consistent, unpredictable, and profoundly interesting at the same time. Tantalizing is the word.

Here we are now, early evening November 5th, 2024, with about eighty-four+ million votes cast — more than half of those cast by this time in 2020. And roughly another eighty-four million piling up. While the majority group at the polls have been out there in the flesh, in rain, sun or storm in their long lines throughout the day.

Reflect.  What we’ve seen of our two candidates, up till today.

Mr. Trump has become darker. He did not seriously try to extend his voter base with get-out-the-voter efforts. He appealed to and relied upon his old, hard-core groups of angry, white, dissatisfied and less-educated US voters. Lots of women do not favor this man. A woman brought Trump into the world and a woman could take him out.

Match this with how Kamala Harris is seen by many as a shadow of old Joe Biden. Why didn’t she distance herself more and become more distinctive? With her do we hear the same old un-re-invented Democratic Party? However sweet & bitter and true as an old Edith Piaf song Ms. Harris is, does she sing an old liberal tune that promises change and falls short of delivery?

My point?

There is a lot of dissatisfaction in the air here about most politicians. It’s the land of the free and the home of the brave and the disgruntled. I heard a guy say late this morning: “You know, I haven’t voted yet. But I will. But I am so angry that my choice of who I can vote for is so awful.”

What’s news? A lot has been said that’s re-said. Are we going over old ground?  Yet isn’t this what happens in times of threatening expectations? Recall the American fall-winter-spring of 1860-1861 before the Civil War broke out and the cake hit the fan.

People thought, people said: I know, I know, I’ve seen it all before, I know. What’s new? And then…”BOOM!”.  It happened. The war began.

Is that what’s happening here, in the storm, in the eye of the storm?

As I write it is 10 p.m. Tuesday night. Mr. Trump leads. The neck and neck continues.

And hope? Their must be hope. And action. There must be the new. You should see the way young Americans have expressed themselves in an abundance of ways for the new, for change, for free choice and not anger, not stifling restrictions nor desperation or revenge.

But will America get it?

Tune in again tomorrow. Here, it’s going to be a long night, and a longer week.