8:00 AM… A friend asked what we should tell our children this morning. This was my response.
7:30 AM… Best case scenario. People who have been waiting on the sidelines with information on Trump, thinking that he’d likely lose, now come forward. This results in bipartisan impeachment proceedings. A weakened Pence administration is contained by the Democrats, who retake both houses of Congress in the mid-term elections, fueled in part by the votes of former Trump supporters, who are pissed that, before leaving office, Trump repealed Obamacare, leaving them and their families without insurance.
7:00 AM… I’m at a loss for words right now. I knew, when I went to bed last night, that this would likely be the outcome, but I still allowed myself to imagine that things could change as votes continued to be counted in Detroit and Philadelphia. And I delayed picking up my computer and checking for as long as I could this morning. But now I know… Now I know the magnitude of what we’re up against. And, to be honest, I’m feeling a lot of despair. I know I said last night that we could organize and fight, but the reality is I’m not terribly hopeful. I feel like I just watched the American people collectively vote to bring not just the American experiment to an end, but our entire species. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t think that’s an overstatement. Given what Trump has said in the past, and the fact that he now has all three branches of government behind him, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve missed the window to address global climate change. Now it’s just a matter of watching it all play out. More environmental refugees. More wars over water, land and food. More despair. More poverty. More fear. The cycle, I’m afraid, is just beginning. I hope I’m wrong, but I know that I’m not. We’re in too deep of a hole to ever get out. Trump won with no ground game whatsoever. He didn’t have to drag people to the polls. They went willingly. This is what the American people want. They don’t want to be led by real adults with actual plans for addressing complex issues. They want punchy slogans on brightly colored hats. They just want to be told by a reality television personality that America will be “great again”. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. We’re all complicit. We sat on our asses when we should have been in the streets, and this is where it’s brought us. And, sadly, it’s not just that United States that will be effected. No, we just fucked the entire world.
12:36 AM… We’ve had over 20 years to fight back against the post-truth society. We didn’t do it. And this is what it’s gotten us. This is the world that we’ve created.
12:20 AM… Alright. Let’s finish our drinks, have our angry outbursts, and get serious.
11:45 PM… I enjoyed talking on WEMU tonight. I liked it so much, I’m going to write to them tomorrow and see if they’ll simulcast the Saturday Six Pack. Given the situation we’re facing, I think I’m going to need a bigger audience.
11:30 PM… OK, so I guess you could say I’be been radicalized.
10:30 PM… I’m now at Sidetrack, talking with two women at the bar. According to them, they were here on election night 2012, and things were different. They said people cared then. They said people were huddled around the television. This time, not so much. They told me they were just at Aubree’s and all of the televisions were tuned to hockey. Priorities, right?
9:10 PM… I’m back at the Clinton office on Michigan Ave, watching CNN, and worrying about Florida…. Jesus, they’re showing Michigan in red. I do hear, though, people are still waiting to vote at UM and in Detroit, so I’m not giving up hope yet.
8:30 PM… The Detroit Party Marching Band outside of DejaVu.
8:00 PM… Awaiting a speech by D’Real Graham, candidate for Washtenaw County Prosecutor at Bee Roll’s 23 North Washington space. The Detroit Party Marching Band is playing outside. It’s lovely.
7:26 PM… I thought I should move this comment from iRobert up to the front page: “No networks have called South Carolina, even though the polls there closed 15 minutes ago and exit polls should have shown Trump winning it easily. This suggests Trump is in much worse trouble than expected there. This could be the first sign of disaster for Trump beyond what anyone expected.”
6:16 PM… Sadly, I saw this after casting my ballot… Man of god, convicted conman, and end-times stew salesman Jim Bakker announced today that, if Clinton wins, this will be our last Christmas.
6:16 PM… My friend Ian, who lives in downtown Ann Arbor, just wrote to say that he’s already been in line for three hours, waiting to vote at the Michigan Union. That’s him on the right, with the melting face. “A girl near me in line fainted 15 minutes ago,” he says. If you’re int he area around the Michigan Union and have some food to hand out, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. He just tole me that someone brought pizza and bottled water, but I’m sure they can use more.
The longest I’ve ever waiting to vote was for Clinton, when I was a student at the University of Michigan. I loved every minute of it.
6:09 PM… I just left the basement phone bank at 418 West Michigan Avenue and there are still a few seats free. So, if you’ve always wanted to call up Democrats across the state and urge them to get out and vote before the 8:00 deadline, here’s your chance.
4:29 PM… Something to think about as you stand in line, according to The Nation, “there Are 868 Fewer Places to Vote in 2016 Because the Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act.”
4:21 PM… It’s being reported that Trump was booed at his polling place. It’s been reported that one person yelled, “New York hates you,” which is apparently true, according to my friends from New York.. Trump then proceeded to look over his wife’s shoulder to make sure she was voting for him.
4:13 PM… So, WEMU had this idea that, tonight, to supplement their national NPR coverage of the election, they’d reach out to a few local people to get their take on how things are going. And it would appear that I’m to be one of those people, along with CivCity’s Mary Morgan and EMU professor Edward Sidlow. So, the question is, when the folks at WEMU call, where should I be? Where in Ypsi will people be watching the results? [I’m told that they’ll be calling me at 9:15, 10:15, and 11:15.]
4:11 PM… Remember, in Michigan, as long as you’re in line by 8:00 PM, you can vote.
4:04 PM… I haven’t seen or heard of any local instances of voter intimidation, but, just in case, here are numbers that you can call, should you see anything that doesn’t look like.
3:20 PM… Our friend Katrease Stafford just posted an article on the Free Press site about a polling place fight in Ypsi Township between a Trump supporter and a Clinton supporter. Hopefully it’s an isolated incident… Here’s the video.
[note: It’s not completely clear, from what I’m hearing now, that this incident was between a Trump supporter and a Clinton supporter. I’m hearing now that one of the women was standing out outside the polling place, advocating on behalf of Green Party candidates, when this transpired.]
2:00 PM… Based on absentee ballot returns, which are apparently up 9% over previous years, the folks at MLive are reporting that, “Michigan may set voter turnout record today.” Of course, the rain has’t really started in earnest yet, though.
1:00 PM… I just met Ruth Kraut, the woman behind the blog Ann Arbor School Musings, at the Ypsi Democratic campaign office. She said the Ann Arbor office was too busy, so she came to see if we could use help, and ended up canvassing with an EMU grad student who’d been looking for a partner. I know I said it before, but it’s awesome to see so many people coming and going through the Michigan Ave office, all pitching in to both get Clinton into the White House, and keep Trump out. It’s heartening to know just how many people in this community really care about the issues enough not only to vote, but actually pitch in.
12:30 PM… I stopped by the campaign office after voting and picked up a canvassing shift with a young woman who just recently moved to Ypsi from Indiana named Deveny. And we hit a neighborhood off of Ecorse. All in all, it was a good experience, although one person did yell at me through a closed door, “Get off my porch, and go away.” Otherwise, things were cool. Lots and lots of happy people telling me how excited they were to vote.
8:25 AM… Taking advantage of the time I’ve got in line, I start writing to those progressive types I know who I know who aren’t voting for Clinton. These exchanges resulted in the following post.
After posting this, a friend followed up with a link to an article by John Halle and Noam Chomsky titled An Eight Point Brief for LEV (Lesser Evil Voting), which I proceeded to read it line. If you haven’t yet, it’s well worth checking out, and sharing with any Jill Stein fans you might know.
8:10 AM… I’m not sure why, but they changed things around this year at our polling place, and sent us upstairs into the Lutheran church where I vote.
Oh, if you’re in Ward 2, Precinct 4 and Ward 3, Precinct 1, you should have received notice that your polling place is no longer the Lutheran church where I vote. Apparently, you’ve been reassigned to the EMU Honors College at 511 West Forest Ave. It happened in front of me, so I didn’t see it, but I heard that a female police officer, after waiting for an hour to vote, was told that she was at the wrong polling place, due to this last minute change. Im hoping that she didn’t give up, but went to her new polling plans to wait in line again, but I’m not sure what happened. I reported it to a number of people, though, and they assured me that they put signs up, so people waiting in line are now aware of the change.
7:40 AM… My polling place was full by 7:30. Here’s what I shared on Facebook. I thought I was about 40 people back, but that was before I realized just how much farther the line continued inside. I don’t know how rare it is, but I like standing in line to vote. I’ve got a lot of anxiety today, given his this might turn out, but election day, I think, is still my favorite day of the year.
7:00 AM… I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it up, as I’m not sure if I’ll have my computer with me once the election results start rolling in, but I thought that I’d start a live blog thread, just in case things occurred to me that I wanted to share with you throughout the day, of if, perhaps, you had things you wanted to share. If you do, just leave a comment. I’ll try to get back here as often as I can throughout the day.
