An Electrifying Election and Its Fallout

By Karen Michelle Raines

Without a doubt, Election Day 2016 was the most thrilling day of my adult life. For some perspective, let me be clear. I have never been political. EVER. But this time was different. On this election day, the mounting anticipation, the rush of adrenaline pumping through my veins, and the raw urgency of the moment kept me hurtling toward the finish line like a horse at the Kentucky Derby. To say that it was a day I'll never forget would not do it justice. For it did far more than sear a lasting imprint on my memory. For me, it was a defining event: the culmination of a political season that sparked a longing to express my thoughts as nothing had ever done before. I'd always been told I should write, but never felt driven to it. Journal upon journal, gifts from friends, had lain dormant in drawers for years until eventually re-gifted. Now I found I could no longer contain my thoughts, ignited as they were by a clarity and purpose that steadily became a passion. Until suddenly, all I wanted to do, lo and behold... was write.

The day began as every day had for the previous six weeks, with door-knocking, as a proud member of the Trump ground team. Only, on this last, crucial, day, instead of taking brief surveys as we had been doing, our new mission was strictly to urge registered Republicans to get to the polls, before joining the rest of the team that was holed up in the field office, doing the same by phone. During and between calls, all eyes were transfixed on the running tally streaming across the bottom of the TV screen on the opposite wall. A cheer arose from the twenty or thirty 'Trump-eters' when the first state, Kentucky, went to Trump. Followed by another state. Then another. The cheers kept coming. Somebody called for a prayer huddle. "Ask for Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina!" For my own I threw in one or the other, of either Michigan or Wisconsin. And Pennsylvania, just for good measure. Our calls abandoned, the phones were collected and put away. The electricity in the room began to build with every victory until it had reached a point that could have powered Manhattan. Then it happened: the room exploded into a wild cacophony of screams, hoots, and high-fives as key state after key state began to fall. Florida. Ohio. North Carolina..., The hits just kept on coming. Finally, around 12:30am, I went home to crash in my own bed, hoarse, hopeful, confident and exhausted. All that turned to elation when I awoke five hours later to the realization that all our work over the past six weeks had, indeed, paid off, just as we'd all dreamed and prayed that it would.

What we as a nation just witnessed in Mr. Trump's miraculous real-life rendition of 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' was the manifestation of what I had begun to sense from my work out in the field: that rippling beneath the surface of many a doorstep on which I'd stood were the rumblings of a groundswell on the verge of eruption. Smoothed over by the mainstream media with a pavement mixture of every '-ism' conceivable was a veritable volcano built of layer upon layer of disappointments, stalled ambitions, frustrations, disillusionment, and the very real fear of being unfairly labeled an '-ist' of some sort, for stating an opinion contrary to that of the media or the government, which had somehow become one and the same.

Some with whom I spoke had conspiratorially murmured of it, as one predicting a revolution; others warily hinted at it, as if fearful of awakening it by merely giving voice to its existence. None of the polls seemed to feel its stirrings. But those of us on the doorsteps of society did. We knew it was coming, and eagerly stood by on election night to watch it unfold.

Now, mired in the fallout from the eruption that is Donald Trump's victory are the pundits, the pollsters, and the puppeteers of the press, all scratching their heads in bewilderment, while the formerly maligned masses dance joyfully amid the ashes of their discontent. Call it what you will: a revolution, an eruption, a reset, or an eviction; those of us doing the dancing call it about time.

#vote, #voting, #election