By Cindi Branham
By the time you read this column, we will be on the other side of the 2024 election, and we hope to know the outcome of the election.
In 2016, I think many of us went into election day elated that we’d finally elect a highly competent female president. One who was highly qualified to take on a myriad of issues that could make life better for us and for the world.
Former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been working to exactly this end: improve healthcare; create greater levels of equity; shore up public education; end gerrymandering, and so much more. Things Republicans had ignored – or worse – done their best to degrade.
There was no way the self-proclaimed billionaire, fraudulent businessman and pathological narcissist could win that election. The nation’s voters were too smart to vote for a man who’d already shown himself to be a sexual predator, an adulterous liar who bragged about assaulting women on tape and had been tied to paying for sex with a (much nicer than him) porn star and paying to cover it up.
For a woman who’s been a feminist since before she’d ever heard that word, who was certain that a woman could do better in leading our great nation and at least deserved the chance to try, the loss was a blow.
My political party held an election watch party that night. Every major local news media was there. The gaiety was palpable. One of the reporters – a good one and a friend who was soon snapped up by a larger market – was there reporting on all things local and national. She was also watching news from her home county in North Carolina, because her father was up for re-election for his judicial seat.
Her father lost. She was in tears, and I was in shock (the entire room was in shock). As she cried, I did what friends do and gave her a long hug. But I still couldn’t face what I didn’t want to face.
I went to bed in the wee hours of that night, still in denial. It wasn’t real; it would be different in the morning. How could it possibly be real?
It wasn’t different in the morning, and I find myself triggered this year.
At least I wasn’t one of the tens of thousands in the arena waiting for Hillary Clinton to come out and say something. Anything.
I’ve been telling myself – and my readers – that what we know now about Trump’s mental decline, his relationship with and adulation of Vladimir Putin and every dictator past and present, Project 2025, his stealing and subsequent loss of Top-Secret government documents and targeting of minorities and women are less likely to happen this time around. That we’re surely not reckless enough to elect him again…are we?
I say that because countless friends and acquaintances admitted to me after the 2016 election that they hadn’t voted; they thought Trump was such an imperfect candidate that he couldn’t possibly win.
Add many more who turned up on social media saying the same, as well as disgruntled supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders voters, many of whom voted for a third-party candidate. When any voter did this or didn’t vote, they added to the vote offsets that could have kept Trumps numbers down. Could have turned the election in his favor.
We know better this time around, don’t we?
Do we? I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there will always a part of our population that will never see the unintended consequences of their protest votes, and a part that will vote for a person like Trump.
The man who promises to be a dictator on day one of his new administration verbally threatens the media and every opponent who’s ever said a disparaging word against him. That’s a police-state under a dictator.
I know many others are triggered as well. The polling doesn’t seem to be showing us a positive outcome, when we see the difference between the candidates and know that life under a Democrat will be better for the Middle and Lower Classes.
Ahead of the election, I’m taking hope from one thing: That the polls that have this race so tight are not just flawed, they’re deliberate.
Pollsters were clearly wrong and embarrassed in 2020 and especially 2016. Since many of them are generated by traditional news outlets, few are willing to anger the would-be dictator; just in case he wins again and moves us towards state-run media.
That’s why a seriously major news outlet’s headlines the morning after a Trump interview talked about crowd size. They didn’t mention that Trump had said he’d like to see nine barrels (guns) pointed at former Representative Liz Cheney’s face.
Maybe – just maybe – the pollsters are also keeping the Harris votes lower to motivate the groups of voters I mentioned earlier to cast their ballots. Could they possibly be that altruistic in their actions?
I don’t know who the president-elect will be when you read this. I hope our collective angst is at ease, and I hope it’s the woman.