11/3
How long can you hold your breath?
It’s Election Day. All day long, you try to do other things. Take care of other business. When all you can think of is the election. You’ve waited four years for this. There’s been this surge of expectation. The long, hope filled lines at the polling station across the street with people anxious to believe that their vote can bring a change. Your 92 year old mother in her assisted care facility determined to get her vote counted. You feel like you are just marking time until the votes start to come in.
Take a walk. At the school yard as darkness falls, a solitary guy on the basketball court working on his game with intensity. One way to fill this time. I wind up at my neighborhood Cantina for the Tuesday nigh taco special, keeping the routine I’ve established to help keep covid sane. The 115th street Halloween craps game has become the elction eve craps gamed has become the election night craps game stretching out like a vote too close to call.
My rabbi friend has set up a ZOOM room for friends just to hang out and talk. That’s the closest we can come to being with on another. Uli my friend from Germany emails me remembering being with us in 2008 when Obama won. How we poured out into the street in spontaneous celebration and the police shut down Broadway for the all night party. He said that night that it reminded him of when the Wall came down, And I responded that another wall came down for us that night. He wishes that for us this night. But it will not be. Both because we can’t be together and because hour after hour it’s just too close to call.
I find myself amazed at the numbers the President is rolling up. I just can’t understand it.I think of my friend in Pittsburgh in the ICU on a ventilator with covid and pneumonia. At risk, just like me. And they say he is not responding. And I look at the President and think, you bastard, you did this. We are not rounding the fucking corner, You are killing us because you won’t act. And my friend hovers between life and death.
I toggle myself between CNN on the TV and the ZOOM room. I’m taking it easy on the bourbon but finally give in and go to the deli for junk food snacks. Nervous and anxious. The ZOOM room closes. I watch a show about abolitionist John Brown and go back to CNN. Too close to call. Coming down to battle ground states. No matter what happens, I have to face the reality that half of my fellow citizens believe that things these last four years are ok. Acceptable. And want 4 more years. And I don’t know what to do with that. Biden is actually too moderate for me but I have come to want his easy, calm way. Feel that’s what we need. Like Gerald Ford after Nixon.To be able to get through a day without the headache, the heart ache, the sick feeling ii the pit of my stomach as I read the President’s latest tweet. To just breathe for awhile and I almost cry because I just can’t live like this for another years. I just can’t.
Biden addressee the people. Says he’s feeling good, but not able to claim victory. The American people will decide. But if he wins, he tells us, he will be the President of all the people.
They say the President will speak later. I stay up to hear him. After 2:30 AM, almost 45 minutes after his scheduled appearance, he finally emerges at his White House not social distanced not masked super spreader party. Flanked by banks of American flags, he stands to speak and fulfills all emu worst expectations. Claims s he has won. No desire whatsoever to represent all the people. And that they, some very sad people. are trying to The greatest fraud in history. Demands the voting stop. Even though voting did long ago and what’s being done now is counting. Even though it seems he’s still got a good chance to win, says he’ll be going to the Supreme Court to stop he election count. That his people are being disenfranchised. And stop the counting everywhere except Arizona, where he’s still got a chance. He says one thing I agree with, that this election such an embarrassment. Word, as they say. Vice President Pence tries to make a more conciliatory, normal statement. As if…..
Even Republican stalwart Rick Santorum called the presidents words distressing and that as a Pennsylvanian he respected his state’s counting process. And that all votes should be counted. I am sure that the 45 minute delay was filed with friends and advisors trying to gtee ho not to say what he said. But that is not who he is, lek a demagogic stand up insult comic.
After hearing the President’s remarks, I once again cannot fathom how he could be on the verge of reelection. I can’t do this anymore. And so finally to bed. How long can you hold your breath?
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