Election Grief: Nov. 5 Wasn't Ladies Night
Four women speak up about the grief and fear they feel following the election.
Grief is not linear.
It feels like it should be; after all, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ outline of the five stages — denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance — puts you on a sort of turnpike of emotions, where you might eventually exit. There might be detours and road work, but it seems like you should be able to go through all five easily, right? Right?
Wrong.
Grief, in reality, is the East Los Angeles Interchange1. Just a bunch of lines swirled together with no seeming start or finish. You may never experience denial and may go directly to depression. You may never get to acceptance and just live in anger. You might bounce back and forth between some points.
Grief of the tangible very much applies to the collective feelings of 48.3% of American voters following the 2024 Presidential Election season2. For a large portion of this group, the race started in denial (Biden is too old to serve a second term), moved to bargaining after the disastrous June debate (Someone has to replace Biden on the ticket. Anyone else…), and then acceptance and hope when Harris was nominated.
But, because American politics are a fever dream of short-attention spans, newsrooms seeking clicks, and people who want change but can’t define it, the electorate spent much of July through November rocking back and forth on the Sea Dragon at Funland in Rehoboth Beach3; Biden is old > WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT DEBATE? Trump is going to beat Biden’s ass > Harris? Okay, Harris is fine. > HARRIS IS GREAT > White Dudes for Harris > OH NO HARRIS HASN’T DONE ANY INTERVIEWS > TRUMP GOT SHOT IN THE EAR? > THEY’RE EATING THE DOGS. THEY’RE EATING THE CATS. > Wait, is Trump talking about Arnold Palmer’s dong? > HARRIS IS PACKING ARENAS > TRUMP IS LEADING IN SWING STATES > FLOATING ISLAND OF GARBAGE > THERE’S NO WAY SHE CAN LOSE TO THAT GUY…
And in the end, half most of the country voted for Trump and 48.3% of the other voters4 found themselves grieving.
Caught in the middle of this are a few different groups of people that, because of the words and actions of Trumpworld, feel fear in the results of the election. We’ll start with the easiest and largest group to define — women.
A History Lesson…
After the 2016 Presidential Election, when Donald Trump defeated Hilary Clinton, one of the pundits doing post-mortem analysis5 rightly pointed out that it was foolish to take women’s votes for granted.
Conventional wisdom held that a woman was running for president against a man who was a blatant misogynist and alleged (at the time) rapist, so surely women would unite and shatter the glass ceiling together, right? Right?
Wrong.
Two in five women — a group that made up more than half of the electorate in 2016 (52%) — cast their votes for Trump. Yes, Clinton won a majority of her gender — 54% — but there were still 41% that voted to elect Trump. Clinton won every age and nearly each race grouping among females, losing only non-college educated women, white women, and rural women to Trump.
Naturally, in 2024, with another woman at the top of the Democratic ticket, you would have expected Trump to be defeated. This time, he civilly liable for rape by a court, had spent four years eroding women’s reproductive rights through his selection of Supreme Court justices, and committed other acts during his presidency that set women back. Surely, women would come toge…
Ahh, fuck it. You know what happened.
But, did you know that Trump closed the gender gap? Women still make up more than half (53%) of those who cast ballots, but a greater percentage of women cast ballots for him than in 2016 (or 2020, for that matter). Harris still won 53% of the female vote, but Trump picked up 45%. Four percent is not insignificant; it’s 3.2 million votes, enough to win the popular vote.
This time around, Trump captured majorities of married women and women 45-64, in addition to those other groups from 2016, and padded his margins in nearly every demographic grouping — age, race, community, religious affiliation — among females.
In an election decided by less than 2.5 million votes — and less than 250,000 votes in the swing states — it was women who delivered the biggest win for RePresident Donald Trump.
Now, I stipulate that a lot of those women who pulled the lever for Trump weren’t going to be swayed by messages of hope or promises to enshrine access to abortion into law. Red-hot culture wars and so-called “kitchen table” issues like inflation were big drivers of the day. And, as we’ve established in previous Dirt Nap episodes, religion plays an outsized role in American decisionmaking.
As a cis-gendered, heterosexual, slightly-better-than-mediocre white male, I wonder what message would have resonated with women this year. In eight years since the first Trump election, we have seen nothing less than an assault on women’s freedoms, rights and equality, yet each time women have had a chance to elect a woman as president they’ve elected this guy:
The parallels between 2016 and 2024 are all too familiar and have little to do with the gender of the candidates. Bogeymen — questionable email security in ‘16, transgenderism in ‘24 — led each new cycle. The polls lulled us into believing that Trump would lose and were proven wrong by a silent, undersampled portion of the electorate who were going to come out and pull the lever for him. Where the polls showed the Democrat ahead in multiple swing states, the Republican lodged early and, sometimes decisive, victories. Change6 was cited by people as the reason they voted for him.
The reaction in 2016 was swift. Thousands of women protested the election of Donald Trump as an affront to their values and an attack on reproductive freedom. All of the pussy hats, marches and Nazis getting punched in the face were inspiring. It did little to stop him from setting in motion a regression in women’s rights, from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to gutting of social safety nets to protect single mothers. But, it set the stage for a resistance movement that sparked action through a broad coalition of groups following the BLM/George Floyd protests.
Today, well, it’s different.
From the New York Post:
Stewart played a clip of the MSNBC hosts explaining their decision to travel to Mar-a-Lago during his opening monologue Monday night.
“For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back — why wouldn’t we?” Brzezinski said.
Stewart quipped: “Because you said he was Hitler.”
Today, The Resistance is exhausted. People aren’t digging out their pussy hats and lacing up their shoes to march. And, for every J.B. Pritzker, there’s a Phil Murphy7. There’s no cavalry coming; we just have to ride this out for now.
How? For that, I turned to author
, from my favorite podcast, with this analysis:It’s fair to say “MAGA” means the 1850s to many Trump supporters, but for some 2024 voters, it refers to what they think they remember about the late-2010s. Of course first-time voters remember their childhoods before COVID as being better than the time after, for instance.
Tens of millions of people voted for Trump, and many of them have now done so three times. They’re all accountable for what happens next, and what happens next will be terrible for many people and possibly bad for almost everyone. But I am telling myself that many of those 2024 voters are people who made up their minds on this election as soon as they saw a $7 bag of Ruffles, thought back to a time when Ruffles were probably like $3, remembered who the president happened to have been at that time, and then went back to never thinking about the infinite coincidences, contradictions, and complexities in the gap between those two prices.
He ends his entry by writing:
“In my experience having spent much of my life surrounded by people bent on my political destruction,” said my friend Jane, “the most irritating thing you can do to them is have an inner life and protect whatever peace you can have.”
And that’s not a retreat into nihilism, but an advance past it and into action, any kind of action.
So…
…what is driving the grief for women in the wake of this election? This week, we have entries four women, solicited before any cabinet appointments were announced. Two are mothers, two are very politically active, three are married, one is a teacher, and all four were Harris voters. Each entry is separated by a bolded, italicized quote.
If you have thoughts that you are interested in sharing along these lines, drop me a line at jaredpaventi@gmail.com with the word “Election” in the subject line.
I also know something equally scary: democracies do not die in the dark, they die in the light of day.
I was listening to a podcast8 where there was a conversation about how these results were disturbing for the future of America and democracy and, heard a person that I find deeply thoughtful say:
“It is a searing indictment of any person to align yourself with a serial sexual offender. There is always hope and there are people who want to still create a better world out there. Human dignity did not die yesterday and people’s regard for it didn’t dissipate. Some of the pressure against poor behavior has been relieved and that is going to cause us some problems over the next decade…”
I live with the daily results of people’s behaviors. I work in a place that is a microcosm of American society. There are people where I spend my time that don’t care about others and live in a selfish space of “me first.” That said, there are many people who give their time generously to helping others. People who are allies and can see how their words and actions are greater than just the immediate. I work in a place where those with privilege walk around all day and never understand just how safe and protected they are. Nearly the same number of people where I work understand that a step out of line puts them at risk of being shunned, ostracized or, in the extreme case, in danger. The people I interact with are still working on trying to find their own voice and own thoughts. Many of them can be easily led by the bombastic and popular. Others question what they see and hear. Still others don’t care about what they see and hear and it will just be someone else’s problem. Sound familiar?
I’m left wondering what dangerous behaviors will become so commonplace that we just accept them? Much like how Americans have accepted that at any time or place someone can pull out a gun and begin shooting. Will we have to accept more of these behaviors that put us in danger? Do the “losers” of the 2024 election just all become targets for the “winners”?
How worried should I be for people I know who are transgender?
Should I worry about my friends who are gay?
What about the people I care about who are not white?
The people I care about are Muslim or Jewish. What happens to these friends?
How about the young people I know that were not born in America or do not speak English?
I have loved ones who need special services or mental health care, do I need to worry about their future?
And the one that weighs directly at the front of my brain, what about my daughters?
I have dedicated much of my daily efforts to helping people understand democracy. I do not hide from the truths of this nation and revealing these truths has sometimes gotten me in trouble. Maybe the fact that I know exactly what America has done during its nationhood, while claiming that all people have rights and are equal, is why I’m so afraid for the people I know. Am I afraid of the “winners”? I think that if a person can “excuse” the behaviors of a serial sex offender, they can find a way to make anything excusable.
So while I’m scared and worried about people I care about (and increasingly scared about being out in public places), I also know something equally scary: democracies do not die in the dark, they die in the light of day. Democracy needs a few key ingredients to keep functioning. First, democracy requires rule of law. Second, it needs people to care about themselves AND other people. Third, it needs competing points of view and compromise. Finally, it requires participation.
Democracy dies in the light of day.
Asking actual me about her feelings though and I would say that I am deep in the throes of confusion, sadness and fear.
It’s important to note that prior to 2006 if you talked to me about politics, I would have likely tuned you out or walked away. I simply could not be bothered with something that I just didn’t care about. When I became of age, I asked my father what I should register as and he said Republican, because that’s what he was. And let’s face it, that’s how most 18-year-olds do it.
Thank God for education and independent thought, and that fact that we live in a country that allows us to such privileges (for now). Long story short, I grew a brain, and that brain for the first time began to think for itself, and had opposing opinions to what I was told my ideology was. It had taken me 25 years at this point to get here. I was overwhelmed with this new sense of enlightenment that I had, and it was fucking awesome.
The years that followed, I changed my registration, graduated with a masters in social work, worked for a high-profile member of Congress, traveled near and far to help elect Democrats to Congress, was a board member/protester for my local chapter of Planned Parenthood, and now have a fairly successful career as a lobbyist for a trade association which also affords me the opportunity to dip my toes back into the political pools of New York’s downstate region.
Asking “professional me” about her thoughts on the outcomes of the elections, I will tell you that locally, I am pleased with the results. Working in a pretty conservative industry, one of my jobs is to remind my membership that our trade supports champions of our issues and not a party. All went well on Tuesday…
Asking “actual me” about her feelings though and I would say that I am deep in the throes of confusion, sadness and fear. I will admit, I was not an immediate fan of how the administration handled the nomination nor their choice. Kamala Harris was not my gal at first; but in the same breath, I will admit that I was clueless as to who would be. So I put aside my difference and pushed myself hard into hope. And boy was I there; I donated, I hung the sign, I dialed and encouraged others, and I proudly cast my vote for Kamala Harris at 6:13 a.m. on Election Day. Along with everyone else, I watched the glow of CNN on my TV until the wee hours, and at around 2:48 a.m., I had a quarter of hope left in my once full cup. And then…well…you know.
Right now, I am bouncing back and forth between anger and fear. I am angry that people feel that the best candidate for our country’s highest office is a person who has been found guilty on 34 felony charges, who refused to hand over tax documents, who has degraded women, separated families, and looks to world tyrants for advisement and support and denies any involvement in the inciting of MAGA Republicans that stormed our sacred Capitol on January 6, 2021. I’m maddened that women voted for him; WOMEN who by casting their vote for him handed over the ability to make decisions about their reproductive health and rights. And I cannot wrap my head around that people voted for a man who keyboard cowboyed his way through managing “peace” during BLM protests, with every text making matters worse and empowering institutional racists like the Ku Klux Klan to remove their hoods and proudly show the face of hate for all to see. I’m scared for our democracy, I am scared for our safety and I am scared about ALL the unknown and what’s to come.
I realize that there may be some that read this and disagree with my sentiments, and don’t think that Donald Trump is a dangerous, masturbatory ego maniac, and that’s fine. Facts are facts, though.
But isn’t it great that we live in a country where we are able to have difference in opinion and diversity of thought, at least for now?
On my honeymoon, the Supreme Court decision comes and I cried because I am officially a second-class citizen in my own country, a body with fewer rights than my new husband.
Removing the Blinders (Or, Some Times I’ve Cried in the Past Eight Years):
November 8, 2016: The night of the 2016 election, and I cried because I threw a party and didn’t understand yet how many people hated women.
September 18, 2020: Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, and I cried because I knew with absolute clarity it was the final domino that ended Roe.
June 24, 2022: On my honeymoon, the Supreme Court decision comes and I cried because I am officially a second-class citizen in my own country, a body with fewer rights than my new husband.
November 2, 2024: I cast my vote for Vice President Harris and I cried in the polling place because I was afraid it was the last time I’d ever be able to vote for a woman for president.
November 6, 2024: I woke up to find out that my fellow Americans aren’t bothered. I didn’t even cry.
I woke up Nov. 6 unequivocally in the latter camp. This time, my stages of grief are stalled, overlapping and all tangled up. I don’t know how to mourn something that feels like it was never real.
I had a lot of time to think on Election Day, mostly because my brain wouldn’t let me sleep for about 36 hours. So when my husband woke up on Nov. 6, truly mourning the hope he had felt the day before and looking for a sympathetic ear, I was useless9. Not a tear to be shed, not a single angry sigh or commiserating rant.
I was just…okay?
I hesitate to say that, because a lot of us — and me, truly — are not okay10. Don’t let that anecdote fool you. I’m aware that I’ve skipped right past the first four stages of grief. What I don’t quite know yet is whether I’ve accepted hopelessness or if there’s still a light at the end of the tunnel. (Actually, I do know, and we’ll get to that.)
But when we talk about the death of a collective something, it’s important to talk about what came before it.
To say I was devastated in November 2016 is an understatement.
I like to think of myself as a pessimist, but if there’s one thing Trump’s existence has taught me over and over again, it’s that I’m actually an eternal optimist who’s always shocked when someone supports him.
Lessons learned, I guess.
Anyway, 2016: The year I was blindly optimistic. The year I helped my 6-year-old daughter put an “I voted!” sticker on Susan B. Anthony’s headstone. The year I cried. A lot.
It was a swift death. Denial when the polls closed, anger by bedtime, bargaining in the morning, depression on my ride to work and acceptance by dinnertime. I felt every one of them, but came out fighting. We went to protests, planted signs in our yards, my husband ran for (and is now on) our local school board, we volunteered, donated, educated, learned, read banned books, cheered at America Ferrera’s monologue in “Barbie,” and planted new signs this fall to support our local women running for office.
All with blind optimism that next time — this time — we’d have put in the work and people would show up.
Let’s go back a little further.
Are we mourning Nov. 5? Or are we mourning the hope and optimism that came before it? Are we mourning our future? Or our past?
For me, this loss has felt a lot like losing someone to a long-term illness. Sometimes the thing we want most desperately to hold onto is gone long before the actual death. Did we mourn 2009 Michael Jackson? Or did we mourn 1980s Michael Jackson and the future we thought he’d have? Did we mourn my mother-in-law at the end of her long, unkind battle with cancer? Or did we mourn the grandmother who held her first grandchild and believed she’d watch her grow up?
Are we mourning the result of this election? Or are we mourning a version of our country that didn’t really exist?
I woke up Nov. 6 unequivocally in the latter camp. This time, my stages of grief are stalled, overlapping and all tangled up. I don’t know how to mourn something that feels like it was never real.
I’m in denial that I got it all so wrong. I’m angry that I can see the good but not enough people care. I’m bargaining with the next generation to please do what we couldn’t. I’m depressed every time I see someone celebrating hate. And I’ve accepted that this is the reality.
So what’s next? All of this is just a lead-up to the question I was actually asked: Is the despair and hopelessness real, or is there still a light at the end of the tunnel?
I think it’s both, and in a way, it’s neither. And that’s what makes this so hard.
Many of us are being forced to reckon with a really tough truth right now: This really is who we are as a country. We can’t excuse this one with the popular vote or a messed-up electoral college. This feels multigenerational.
Is the despair and hopelessness real? Yes.
But maybe we got it wrong. Maybe our generation’s job was never to fix this. Maybe our real job is to raise the next generation so they can help us do what we can’t do alone. And from what I see in my own house, these kids take zero shit.
Is the despair and hopelessness real? No.
I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t know what we can do better or different, and posting more “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people” memes isn’t going to change that.
Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? No. I don’t know. Ask me in a year.
I do know where to go from here. This year’s election feels like accepting that your starter home is really your forever home. We’re grieving the loss of what many of us deeply believed was going to come next—what we held out for and were excited to start building.
It’s time to get our starter house in order. To mourn this loss, hold onto the things that gave us hope and to do good with the reality we have right now, instead of sitting still on the maybe of big wins later.
Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Final Thoughts on Finality
Dirt Nap is the Substack newsletter about death, grief and dying that is written and edited by Jared Paventi. It’s published every Friday morning. Dirt Nap is free and we simply ask that you subscribe and/or share with others.
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True story. I drove through this intersection once, as I was taking I-10 west to get to Santa Monica. Without changing lanes, I ended up on I-5 north to Sacramento. Wizardry.
Can I shoehorn in a topic or what?
Rehoboth Beach is so much better than Jersey shore towns. I’ll hear none of your arguments on this topic.
I was a Harris voter. There was a Harris sign in my yard. I’m not a Democrat; I was a Republican, but the MAGA heel turn by the party left me without a home. So, I wander the political desert. There’s not a home for a pro-abortion, pro-military, pro-police and pro-police reform, pro-regulation, pro-flat(ter) tax, pro-socialized medicine, anti-Big Pharma, anti-Big Tech, pro-marijuana reform, anti-speed limit, pro-limited gun control law and order secularist that believes in an all of the above approaches at the northern and southern borders. I’m a walking fuckin’ conundrum.
I think it was John Heileman, but I can’t remember for certain.
I can’t wait for the tariffs and deportations to begin. I always wanted to pay $65 for an avocado.
The biggest rats are always from Jersey.
The podcast is the Dan Lebatard Show with Stugotz and the speaker was John Amaechi, OBE, one of the smartest people I’ve ever heard speak on any topic.
From the writer: Speaking of useless, I am mentally and emotionally all. over. the. place. So if this all feels like I’m incapable of drawing a line from point A to point B, you’re not wrong.
From the writer: Let me be clear: Before we go too far, there is absolutely no thinly veiled belief here. I’m a very liberal middle-class Democrat who will always need a special savings account for vacations but doesn’t care at all about national fiscal decisions because people are more important to me than my grocery bill.
I can't deal with most of the current news around the election transition since the election - so much drama and shocking announcements. I'm skimming the headlines of a few trusted on-line news sources as to not completely unplug and not listening to many of the sources I trusted since the 2016 earthquake of news (The Daily from NYT has been awful for the last 6 months, maybe more) - UpFirst is pretty much my go to. I'm barely connected to news at this point. I went back to original Malcolm Gladwell audio books and love his Revisionist History series as comfort audio intake. Paper/written intake - back to books. Its part of my healing process.
The more semesters that I teach Sociology 101, I realize how women are so conditioned to respect the patriarchy that we often vote and act in ways that don't serve us personally or help women in general. Thank you for another great article and for highlighting four female voices.