It was disconcerting Tuesday morning to walk downtown through the Hub, a big intersection that is crammed with people waving placards for every cause and candidate every election day. The Hub was deserted. Certainly our small town in its deep blue bubble was not a place to expend national resources, but no one<\/em>? Not even people vying for highly competitive local races? It was as if the election weren\u2019t even happening, except for a Trump\/Pence bumper sticker on a parked truck a block away, and a handmade poster complete with horns and a pitchfork that read\u00a0\u201cHellary 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite these ominous signs, I was sure I\u2019d be celebrating the election of our\u00a0first female president that night. The polls were looking pretty good, despite the FBI\u2019s damaging salvo. During my final phone banking shift, when we were making calls to Florida, one supporter I spoke to told me her seven-year-old daughter\u2019s class held a mock election, and Hillary had won in a landslide.<\/p>\n Then came another inkling of trouble that I also dismissed. A man told me that his first-grader was one of only ten Hillary voters in her classroom\u2019s poll. \u201cThis is a blue county,\u201d he said, \u201cAnd Trump blew her out of the water. I am so frightened.\u201d I told him about the woman I\u2019d just talked with, reassuring myself if not him. A few hours later, as I headed off to our friend\u2019s house with a plate of scrumptious chocolate layer bars and a bottle of bubbly, the closeness of the Virginia returns was worrisome. But I told myself that the northern suburbs had not yet come in, and remained confident.<\/p>\n As we tuned in to MSNBC, CNN, even Fox, looking for a different reality than the one that seemed to be unfolding, I started fielding texts from our daughter:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019M SO NERVOUS HOLY CRAP! HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?<\/p>\n \u201cKeep the faith,\u201d I texted back. \u201cIt will just be closer and a longer night than we\u2019d hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n Two hours later, as Stephen Colbert\u2019s national wake<\/a> ended on Showtime, I had dropped all optimism, all pretense of maternal comfort, unless \u201cFucking unbelievable\u201d counts as reassurance.<\/p>\n Our host took the dog out to pee, and upon his return reported that the party at the neighbor\u2019s house seemed oddly raucous, unlike our gloomy gathering. My husband and I left a bit before 10:00, still with no verdict, but with our champagne unpopped and our hearts broken. Some people were leaving the party across the street, and we heard a voice call out, \u201cWhite men rule!\u201d\u00a0We tried to convince ourselves that we might have said the same thing in an ironic attempt at gallows humor. But we could not deny that they were celebrating, while\u00a0we were in shock and mourning.<\/p>\n I know that I must engage in soul-searching to understand what I missed, and why. I must acknowledge my own failures of empathy, my candidate’s poor choices, the legitimate concerns of those who voted for her opponent. There are a million different converging factors that have resulted\u00a0in this outcome, and I know that blaming it on racism and misogyny\u00a0is overly simplistic and insulting. Still, it is naive to deny the powerful influence of these virulent\u00a0strains.\u00a0They are here in my own backyard.<\/p>\n This is our deep blue bubble. This is my deep denial. This is where we live.<\/p>\n *<\/em><\/p>\n What was your election day and night like?<\/em><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was disconcerting Tuesday morning to walk downtown through the Hub, a big intersection that is crammed with people waving placards for every cause and candidate every election day. The Hub was deserted. Certainly our small town in its deep … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n