I’m going to summarize the last five to six hours or so. Basically, the TV has been tuned to KHOU-TV (channel 11 in Houston, our local CBS affiliate) watching the CBS News coverage of the election. Next to the TV, I have the laptop with IRC open and chatting with some people who happened to be talking about the election, with the web browser open to check results of the local elections (I’ll get to those tomorrow). I have watched as Donald Trump has inched closer and closer to the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. CBS News has shown both the Trump and Clinton campaigns’ election watch parties. I get why the people at the Clinton watch party are downright crestfallen; some were even crying.
I’m more angry than sad right now. There is still a very faint glimmer of hope remaining that enough of the last few states will turn blue on the map and Hillary Clinton will be our next president. As I write this, the electoral vote tally is 244 to 215 in favor of Trump. The reporters are all talking about how he pulled this off, the campaign stops Hillary Clinton didn’t make, the voters Donald Trump attracted, yada yada yada.
They also brought up that it’s been rare that the same party wins three presidential elections in a row. That may be true, but we’ve never had a candidate this unqualified and who has behaved this badly and this erratically throughout the campaign. That terrifies me. It terrified me this morning before I voted, and it terrifies me now that I’m back home watching the election coverage.
I’m not calling it either way right now. I’m hoping something changes big time before CBS News signs off for the night. I’ll be back on tomorrow night with some final national election thoughts after I discuss the local elections.