And Now It's Friday...

 Tuesday election and we still don't know the result.

Well, we sort of know the results.

Biden is now leading in most of the remaining states. The election could be called for him today. 

But...

Trump has already started with his lawsuits. He has declared the whole thing a fraud and wants to take it to the Supreme Court.

Which the me from four years ago would be like fine. Take it to the Supreme Court. Even after living through 2000 I wouldn't have batted an eye. The difference is too large. The accusations are too unhinged. 

But...

This isn't four years ago. This is 2020. After living through a Trump presidency and seeing time and time again that the things we thought would protect our institutions didn't. 

So the dread from Tuesday night when Florida went to him and I thought we we were going to see him re-elected faded into the disappointment of Wednesday when the giant blue wave did not materialize and the realization that authoritarianism and racism were popular is now the trepidation of "could he steal this election?"

I have pretty much stopped watching him give speeches over the past few years. It's just never helpful. But yesterday I watched his press conference. He stood at a podium for 17 minutes and lied about what happened. Cast huge shadows of doubt on our election process. Which he has been doing for months, but to see it after the vote? To realize that he is not going to back down, and because he's not going to back down his followers are going to always believe this election was stolen somehow. 

Which the best response I've seen to that is that if Democrats were going to steal this election why wouldn't they have ousted McConnell?

But of course logic isn't really strong there.

I was afraid that if Donald Trump was elected it would mean the end of our little experiment of a country. Now I'm afraid that it is anyway.

Trump might have been voted out but it appears Trumpism is here to stay.

Sad.

Now the hopeful part...Georgia.

Thank you Stacey Abrams for not taking your marbles and going home when your election was suppressed right out of your grasp. Thank you so much for instead making sure everyone had marbles to play. (Okay, it fell apart a little but still...) Thank you for continuing to fight to get people registered and out to vote. Georgia is a squeaker and will go to a recount who would have ever guessed that? And more importantly, the senate runoff election. Control of the senate is still in play. It's a long shot, and my goodness I would hate to live in Georgia for the next couple of months, but still... It's in play. 

Stacey Abrams did that. 

Make her the head of the DNC already. 

So right now I believe that Biden won but I also believe that Trump is not going to go quietly into that goodnight. But there is still hope on the horizon. 

And sometimes that's enough.