Over the next few days, somebody may try to tell you that whatever you're feeling right now is unhelpful and embarrassing

Please don't listen to them!

It’s a rainy but unseasonably warm fall day in Milwaukee and the word on the street is that there’ll be a DJ at my polling place. I’m all in. I’ll cast my vote and then try to give the DJ a cool guy nod and, in so doing, reveal myself to be a big dopey galoot. I am always a big dopey galoot on Election Day— earnest, frayed, prone to magical thinking.

Since the polling place in question is also my kids’ school, I’ll stop by the bake sale out front and make small talk with teachers who love my son and daughter nearly as much as I do. That part is easy. What comes next, well, I’m still figuring that out. My sense is that nerves are frayed and everybody’s anxious, so I’m going to do my darnedest to be kind to people, both near and far. If I have your number, I might send you a message. I owe so many of you kind messages. I owe so many of you so many things. Perhaps there will be a burst of joy or relief in the next few days, but I hope I don’t make the mistake of assuming that temporary wave, if it comes, will wash all the nerves away. I hope I remember to keep reaching out.

I’m not a prognosticator, nor do I trust those who claim to be prognosticators. My only thought has been to pace myself. I have no idea what’s about to happen, but one way or another I’m pretty sure that the most important work has yet to reveal itself.

Tonight, there will be a rally at our city’s central vote counting facility, a pre-emptive “let’s not allow bad actors to mess with the count” situation. I’d like to be there, but like so many people who would like to be more helpful to their communities, I’m juggling a few different plates at once. My daughter is getting her tonsils removed today. A tremendously routine event, but it’s my job as a parent to be overly nervous on her behalf. My mother-in-law is on hand to help us out, which is great, but that means that I’m also playing host (and caring more than I should about whether I’m keeping the house tidy and getting a non-cereal-based dinner on the table). If you’re searching for a metaphor here, you probably don’t have to try too hard. I’m privileged and skittish and distracted and over-stating my own level of vulnerability while potentially ignoring what’s going on for anybody outside my nuclear family.

Can I admit something? As somebody who writes words on the Internet (and who may very well might write more words this week, depending on if I feel like I have anything useful to say), I’m preemptively exhausted by the flood of dashed off rhetoric that’s about to come our way. I’m afraid that we’re about to be lectured— about what we should or shouldn’t feel, about who is to be blamed or who is to be exalted, about whether others are being too hysterical or too jubilant.

it’s funny that we do this, that we try to police each other’s instinctual emotions, that we act as if a think piece can somehow change the honest gut feeling that’s going to pop out of us one way or another.

Not that you need my permission, but today you can be frightened or jubilant or hopeful or anxious or heartbroken or distrustful or judgmental. You can be full of rage. Lord knows there’s plenty of worthy sources for your rage. You can feel sappy and sentimental when you fill out your ballot, or you can hold your nose. You can feel something with all your heart today and regret it tomorrow.

Being that I’m now firmly entrenched in my forties, this will be my seventh Presidential election as a legal voter. I remember exactly what I felt as I cast my vote each year.

2000: self-righteous (I voted for Nader)

2004: underwhelmed in a way that felt novel at the time but that would later become very familiar (Kerry)

2008: meteorically hopeful, immensely pleased with myself and my particular cohort of hope-having Americans (Obama)

2012: pretending as if my feelings had not changed in the intervening four years but knowing damn well that they’d dampened (Obama)

2016: conflicted (about electing another Clinton), smug and self-satisfied (about my role as a good man electing America’s first woman President), impossibly anxious (because our daughter was about to be born at any moment and my wife and I convinced ourselves it would happen that day) (Clinton)

2020: exhausted, overwhelmed, masked (Biden)

In many of those cases, there was an almost entirely orthogonal relationship between how I was feeling on Election Day and what I felt just a few months later. Some years, I regretted the initial feelings. Some years, I denied that I felt that way in the first place. I crafted a new story, a cooler story, a story that made it seem like I was never burdened by sentiment. Every year, I learned more a few months after the election than I knew on election night. That’s a gift, mind you, but it took me a while to recognize it as such.

The truth is there are no bonus points for having the most pristine, irreproachable Election Day emotion. We judge each other’s feelings when we’re staring down our own sense of powerlessness, when we’re not sure what to do with our clumsy, goopy hearts. Even in our judgment, we know deep down that what we’re seeking isn’t a hierarchy, but a connection. We may shout out loud about how other people’s feelings are pissing us off, what we’re really saying is that we’re searching for people who are feeling the same thing we are.

I am not suggesting that there is nothing to learn from each other’s feelings, nor that there is nothing to critique about whose feelings are traditionally validated and whose are punished. This is not an essay about how all feelings matter, nor about how “sure the women are super angry this election, and yeah Arab Americans are faced with an impossible choice, but you know who deserves to hear his feelings heard the most? Me, a White guy.”

All I’m suggesting is that if politics is merely a game of saying the correct thing, or feeling the correct thing, or avoiding saying or feeling the incorrect thing, then we miss the point that on the other side of everything that everybody is feeling around us— hope and confusion and rage and hurt and fear and isolation— is a clue about what we will need to demolish and what we need to build for the sake of all of our lives.

That’s my only real reminder, this Election Day. We don’t actually want to be cool. We don’t actually want to be right. The thing we’re seeking is collective efficacy. We want to keep others safe, and to be kept safe. We would like to be loved, and to learn what it takes to love others.

Back to the subject of prognostication. There are a million things I can’t predict but one thing I know for sure. There’s work ahead if Trump wins and even a small percentage of the worst left-liberal fears about his second term come true. There’s work ahead if Harris wins but that win is contested by the kind of characters who aren’t above marching with tiki torches or marching on the Capitol. And there’s work ahead if Harris wins in a massive, incontestable landslide. Many of us made a promise that we were going to celebrate her victory and then immediately pivot to pressure— for poor and working class people, for a planet hurtling towards calamity, most urgently, for Gaza. I’ve lived through promises like that in the past. If I’m being honest, I’ve reneged on promises like that in the past.

That’s just the immediate work, mind you. Regardless of who wins, the core hierarchical instabilities at the center of the American project will still be with us tomorrow: big money calling all the shots; men ruling both our world and our households like petty dictators; a few more groups being welcomed into the devil’s bargain that is Whiteness, as long as the broader project of racial stratification continues. It doesn’t matter how sneering or righteous or astute your opinions are this week. Just wait. The work will reveal itself, as long as ears, eyes and hearts are open for it.

As for my emotion on this particular Election Day? It’s longing. I still feel alienated from so many of you. I still feel far too small in the face of a system that hurts all of us in profound ways. I care far less than I once did about being right, about punishing those I deem wrong. I hate being disconnected from you all, is the thing. I love everything I’ve learned and am learning from what your feelings, including those who I’ve personally harmed. I want the best for you and for us.

Today, I don’t know more beyond that yet. But I have a sense that we will soon.

This has always struck me as a hopeful rather than arch illustration, which may be a sign of the belief I have in our ability to build a better world or it may be a sign that I don’t understand subtitls.

I’m keeping the end notes short today because, once again, my sense is that very shortly we’ll learn a whole lot more about what the work ahead looks like. Right now I’ll just say…

-My sense is that all of us need SOME PLACE to find community today, but I’m trying to resist the part of my ego that says that I am the best possible facilitator of that space for everybody. With that said, here’s what I can offer today:

1. If you’re feeling like you’d like to talk to somebody, just toss me an email. We can write back and forth, or alternately I can toss you the link to office hours sign-ups I use with my Barnraisers crew (just email me at garrett at barnraisersproject.org).

2. This may seem counterintuitive to creating a welcoming environment for all but stick with me. Normally I keep comment threads open to everybody. Nine times out of ten, they’re lovely spaces, but I do occasionally get folks who want to jump on to make people feel like crap. With that in mind, because folks do deserve spaces they can trust to be welcoming, I’d love for you all to hang out in the comments here if you’d like (or, alternately, in the Flyover Politics Discord I share with

   lyz
   ) but I’m going to restrict both spaces to paid subscribers. BUT WAIT!

   1. If you can’t afford a paid subscription and still want to hang out with us, I trust you. Just send me an email (again: garrett at barnraisersproject.org) and I’ll comp you, no questions asked.

   2. Obviously, if you do have the means and can become a subscriber, that’s a huge gift on a number of levels (for instance, it makes it easier for me to subsidize the space to those who can’t afford it).

3. Again, I’m not offended if you have other spaces that are making you feel loved and welcomed today. I just wanted to make the offer (“No problem if not!”). As always, I appreciate you all.