On hour ??? of Election "Day," I fell asleep watching workers sort ballots in rural Nevada and Pennsylvania. I've started to think that CNN's bright red and MSNBC's more burnt orangey-red deserve further analysis. (Pantone, can you weigh in?) Also, I am pretty sure Jake Tapper is flirting with me through the TV. Oh, wait: KEY RACE ALERT. Oh, never mind: These are just more projections. Is this what purgatory feels like?
This purgatory was probably inevitable. How else could the 2020 election end? Or, not end? And yet the sense of impending doom we've had for four years didn't leave us any more prepared for the endless parade of Trumpers rejecting democracy and pundits arguing over whether or not the country "deserves" this level of uncertainty. But perhaps the silver lining to our absolute dumpster fire of a Democratic process as that we might not spend another four years subjected to the insane tweets of a man who once had a cameo in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
As I idly watched numbers inch forward — with surprising heroes like Michigan and Wisconsin pulling through for Biden — not all hope seemed lost. My hourly mantra for the past 48 hours has been: If he loses Pennsylvania, this is all going to be over soon. And now it looks like Pennsylvania is going blue. And like there's an end in sight to our purgatorial existence. Is it heaven up ahead? Hardly. But at least it's not the hell we've been in for almost four years.
As a very wise colleague (and then later Reductress's Instagram) told me, "I look forward to having a president that I can hate a normal amount."