I love presidential election years. No really. You may not believe me right now because for 2020, I am doing everything in my willpower to not look at everything with a fine-tooth comb. I am fine not digging into scandals and looking at the various controversies as something ridiculous, finding politicians who are desperately trying to gain reputation by putting the other side down. This isn’t to say that I’m ignoring current events, but when offered a chance to watch presidential debates, I’d rather put on a podcast and work ahead. To me, the idea of giving my hopes up in this election feel like it holds a potential to dismantle me. I can’t be optimistic about anything right now. I voted two weeks ago, got confirmation, and yet I don’t feel like anything is finite.
Don’t get me wrong. I still like the election enough to view key moments as presentation. I look at how Democrats and Republicans present themselves at The National Convention, trying to understand what people see in these figures. Otherwise I limit my exposure on Twitter and have gotten most of my information from ABC 7: a general news outlet that gives me enough to understand but not enough to question every word that has been said. I know that some may call this feckless, that I’m not getting all of the information, but I have to be honest. I will sleep better this way.
I know this because, in November 2016, I had a mental breakdown that remains difficult to escape. I still remember the day after the election, driving to school, and the world feeling emptier. I was listening to a podcast about how the president-elect held a rally with journalists in a cage, being mocked from the stage. I was crying, the idea of my former major being relegated to a falsehood remains offensive. By the time I got to class, my English teacher had a somber tone. By some irony, we were studying Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,” which fit like the most ironic glove. By the end of the week, ABC 7 was reporting on a rise in racial profiling and hate crimes. This wasn’t how elections were supposed to make us feel.
I remember that sensation so clearly because I love presidential elections. I consumed media coverage regularly, watching documentaries and trying to get into the experience. It was the moment of the ultimate compromise. We’d all agree that one of (usually) two men were going to lead this country. Up to this point, I never had reason to believe that one was entirely not qualified. I may disagree, but it was on ideology, not competency. I believed in this idea that good always prevailed, that we were putting our best and brightest up for consideration. I even took a political science class just to get their insight into the election. Turns out he’s just as confused as we all were.
To be totally honest, 2016 felt like a special moment in my life. I saw it all as this bigger symbolism. My nieces were born earlier that year. After a two-year hiatus from college, I found inspiration to go back and start building my reputation. So much of that year felt like an upward trajectory, even finding myself doing these small productive projects that made the summer eventful. I would revamp the backyard during the day and watch The DNC in the evening. It sounded like a pretty good trade-off.
Of course by then I had been invested in the election for a near year. To shift into the more personal side of things, I will begin in 2015. Curious to know what would happen next, I watched a Republican debate among a dozen candidates. When asked if anyone would betray their party if not selected, I should’ve known that something was going on. However, I was still at the stage of my life where him saying that there was no time to be politically correct (in reference to his launch speech where he called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug-dealers) was very shocking. I couldn’t believe that we’d ever select a candidate so against the grain.
My mistake was becoming obsessed after that, watching the dozens dwindle down to three and eventually one. I’m aware of those arguments they had online about whose wife was a bigger whore. I remember him saying to “check the sex tape.” It was all absurd, and I like to think that I was no different than the other prognosticators, laughing in July 2015 that we were witnessing a clown waiting to be laughed off the stage. Who would trust a man with no government experience and dodged the draft on faulty causes? I know, I know… but herein lies a labyrinth that should test your faith, asking for some guidance.
Barrack Obama may have perfected a presidential campaign with social media, but it feels like a mistake now. He was decisive with his posts, and you admired it because you believed he was off doing something more important. He had no time to be among us lowly mortals. Now that we had a presidential candidate who defined the worst of reactionary culture, it felt like the floodgates were open. Suddenly I began to question the idea if social media was a mistake. Later on it was announced that Russia hacked the election, and we did nothing about it. We expected leaders to lead, and instead they blocked a Supreme Court Justice pick that mostly looks pathetic and spineless today.
I’m not sure why, but the counterrevolution with Bernie Sanders never reached me. It could be, as his supporters endlessly claim, he never got the media attention he deserved. He was never going to win, and it was only the start of the divide between the party. There were leaked e-mails, the convention was in disarray, and I became too uncomfortable hearing cynics claim that choosing Hillary Clinton as the candidate was the downfall of the party. Were they Sanders supporters who just wouldn’t give up the fight? I know that they exist. As someone who worked the election, I know firsthand that people wrote his name in. They also wrote in Harambe which… fuck you.
The problem is that in 2020, I have bad déjà vu. When the Democratic primary was being selected, I squirmed a little at it once again coming down to “Barrack Obama Administration Figure” vs. Sanders for the nomination. While it feels like both have learned their follies, it’s still one of those uncomfortable uncertainties. This would be another terrible round of mud-slinging so that most of the attention was not on actual politics and goals. It would be smear campaigns, and I remember that clearly. The bad thing is that I still remember 2016’s Democratic Vice President pick Tim Kaine speaking and having my ultimate resolution being “At least he knows where the minibar is.”
I remember being frustrated at Hillary Clinton’s personal podcast, which played on the warm, motherly side of her persona. What could’ve been a look into the campaign process ended up being these calm conversations with very little meat on their bone. You couldn’t come away from it with confidence. They could be your friends, but at no point did they help their case. It symbolized how comfortable everything was, and hindsight only makes me more annoyed even if deep down I knew that nothing could really be done. The whole idea was to make her more open and accessible to audiences, and all it did was make her feel strange. Let’s just say that we had two major propaganda documentaries, both rushed as these important messages. On the left was Michael Moore. On the right was Dinesh D’Souza. Somehow Moore, an Oscar-winning documentarian, was outshined by a man whose very credibility wasn’t all that great.
My media coverage intake was immense during this time, wanting to hear many sides of the same story. I became a victim of the 24/7 news mentality, even if I never watched any of those popular channels. I wanted to calculate this moment so that when the fall came, it was triumphant. On election day, I took a break from my poll job and watched Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’s closing argument for the campaign. It was so hopeful, making it feel symbolic of women’s rights as a bigger achievement. It was that energy boost I needed for the remaining seven hours.
Did I mention that I was obsessed with the election? I watched those debates. I saw Twitter lose its mind in real time each time. Even then, my big takeaway from the debates once again came from Full Frontal. During one she had journalists report from two different perspectives to see who they think won. It may be the most telling thing I’ve ever seen about the election. In both cases, they believed that they had won. They put the other side down in ways that they deemed acceptable. It’s something that informed my belief that the constant social media belief that somebody “destroyed” somebody else’s opinion was never true. It only made them more aggressive.
The feeling of divide is something that only becomes clearer as years have ticked by, where a hat or a flag now feels offensive. Still, I kept wanting to believe that somewhere the reason would kick in. I personally don’t know why people still hold onto the Access Hollywood incident. Yes, it’s offensive and demoralizes women, but he’s done so much worse. When I had breakfast one day shortly after with my grandparents’ friends, they were laughing at the idea of “locker room talk” being considered offensive. This wasn’t going to solve anything.
I worked the election because I still had faith that everything would "go right." I worked that whole day, marching down the street to the polling location while it was still dark out. I’ve rarely been up that early, but it felt important to me. I went through training, and I was ready to have a very memorable day. A redundant one, but one that would see me see the world pour in, ready to vote. I rotated my position often to get the full experience. I remember at one point the head spoke to us about how elections were on a Tuesday as a way to keep Blacks from voting. At various points, because this was at a school, students would run past the door and yell random slogans. Time ceased to have meaning that day.
To me, the election was one of those very important moments in my life. We were selecting a new leader, and the turnout was abysmal. We went most of the final three hours without voters, only receiving a brief rush here or there. As the sun was beginning to set, I remember my coworker checking her phone, growing a bit concerned. She never told me why, but it was clear that it was an election thing. I did my best to keep it a secret, if just for my morale. I was already cranky and starting to grow a little sloppy. I needed to make it to the finish line in one piece.
The issue is that the results overwhelmed my opinion of working at a poll. Had there not been Coronavirus, I still think that I’d refuse to work on the grounds that I couldn’t work a 15+ hour day again. I felt letdown. My father and I (who finished The West Wing marathon days before) had a joke that we’d eat “freedom fries” as celebration. I got home well into the reporting and he apologized. The fries were burned. It felt strangely like the perfect way to end this whole endeavor.
I worked so hard only to eat barely edible food. I had grown up with the belief that being kind to each other would be rewarded. Instead, I had to break free of The Bubble Syndrome so that this didn’t happen again. I spent the following night reorganizing kitchen cabinets while listening to The Cracked Podcast make sense of everything. I haven’t grown sympathetic, but I’ve tried to not outwardly blame without reason. It’s grown increasingly difficult, but it was the moment where I decided to disappear from the internet for a month, reducing my news input. By the time of the inauguration in January, I gave up on shows like Full Frontal and The Late Show, believing that they were too snarky and negative.
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I needed to work on bettering myself, and I knew that it would be a difficult road. Anything symbolizing criticism wouldn’t be talked out, but more yelled out by someone refusing to listen. We validated that behavior, and I felt useless, grappling with faith. The figures that a month ago I held as inspirational now made me cringe. I felt cheated, and I began to pay closer attention not to the white noise, but to how it’s being said. I began to realize how accusatory everything was, and it’s made 2020 a particularly hard year to admire as blindly, recognizing potentially similar traps.
That’s the thing. I feel hurt after 15 months of obsession, of believing that politics was going to course correct. In time I saw Supreme Court Justices get ignored. I saw a man who attacked Gold Star Families, and we accepted him. I want to believe that we’re above it, but I can’t celebrate just yet. I still hold that trauma from the first time around, the disappointment that loving the democratic process would amount to anything eventful.
I’ve been passing the time watching old presidential debates on CSPAN-3, and in some ways it is cathartic. There is at least some false sense of friendliness between the candidates. They both don’t step on each other’s toes. I can understand what people saw in them not for their lurid actions, but for the platform they represent. While I notice people like Ronald Reagan starting the bullish nature with sly quips, it was subtle at the time that you simply saw it as a homely tool. They felt inspiring even when they were boring and at times incomprehensible.
I want to believe that we should go back to a time where the president is boring. I am tired of caring so much about his everyday, especially in a year where everything is going terrible. The most presidential election coverage I’ve consumed recently is Totally Under Control (2020), and Alex Gibney remains an excellent documentarian. Otherwise, I’ve found ways to avoid being caught in the madness. I just can’t right now, even if I recognize how uglier everything is. If it went on a few more months, what’s not to suggest that it gets downright homicidal? I can’t take it.
Elections aren’t supposed to fill me with dread, make me feel insignificant like my effort is going to be ignored. And yet, I am doing everything in my power to not get there. I have stared into the abyss a few times a week and have at best a silhouette of what’s going on. I know that if I go any deeper, I will get obsessed. I will start becoming a madman who loses sight of his own personal interests. There needs to be some divide, and I hate that it’s come at the expense of me saying that I want this election to be over. It should be a lot more fun than this.
I don’t get any humor from anything that’s happened in the past 10 months. What may be the most disappointing part is something that should be expected. Every president has a handful of quips that become lingo because they’re humorous in a dumb and inoffensive way. My issue is that he hasn’t said anything that lacks the vindictive undertone, making it all feel daggered and awful. There’s nothing hopeful in it. That, on top of everything else, may be my biggest issue with the election and modern life so far.
I hope you voted. If not, go out and vote. Do it for your own sanity, to at least know that you contributed towards making a difference for whatever future you want to live in. I don’t expect it to be one that we agree on, but hopefully it will be one where we can compromise and not treat it like the end of the world on an hourly basis. That would be nice.
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