My 2016 Presidential Concession Speech
OK, fine. We lost. But, Let the Resistance Begin….
Guys, did you see me on SNL last week? I know you were tuning in for Dave Chappelle and A Tribe Called Quest, but did you recognize me in the election night skit? I was the naive white girl clinging desperately to my #NeverTrump narrative while the math and Van Jones told a different story. You know, the girl who, even when John Podesta told us to go to bed, remained foolishly optimistic that at any moment shattered glass was going to rain down on our country.
How did I get it so wrong?
I did everything right. I read all the NYT and WaPo op-ed pieces, I listened to every NPR segment my like-minded friends shared on Facebook, I donated to the right candidates, I phone-banked, I door-knocked, I caucused for her, I shouted at my Bernie or Bust friends, I shamed my racist uncle, I un-friended my childhood friend-turned-gun nut. I dotted my liberal i’s and I crossed my progressive t’s and I could taste the fucking victory. We were going to vote-slap that monster so hard he’d beg for relief from the waterboarding he campaigned on bringing back (and we Geneva Convention-loving liberals would deny even him that request). I had the perfect 140 characters to convey my joy all ready to go. I felt like Beyoncé must have the night before she dropped Lemonade. I mean, I’m sure it was exactly the same feeling. And, speaking of Queen Bey, she was on OUR team, as was Jay-Z. We had Bruce Springsteen and John Legend and Sarah Silverman. They had Ted Nugent and Chachi . . . and Kanye for god’s sake! This was a no-brainer. A slam dunk.
Because — OF COURSE — our country was better than all that “build the wall” talk and “lock her up” nonsense. And that nonsense talk was ALL there was. No way could a concern about insurance premiums or wage stagnation trump — literally and figuratively— the racism, the climate change denial, the sexism, the overall deplorableness. That wasn’t the America I knew and loved. I was the real patriot.
But, now, 2 1/2 weeks out, I am ready to finally concede the election. After partaking in the collective temper tantrum (they had one too and it’s known today as the Tea Party), signing petitions to banish the electoral college to the “ash heap of history”, thumbs-upping every page that promised a march, protest, boycott, or recount, and seriously considering whether I could assume the fetal position until at least the midterms, I know that the time has come to concede this election. But first, a few things to get on the record.
Number one: blame we must. Now, I want to blame whites for their bigotry, and male whites, especially, obviously. But shit, my fucking Dad voted for Hillary and that makes me so happy that I’m willing to give them their usual privileged pass and move on. On to white women that is, 47% of whom embraced the patriarchy over their grabbed pussies. But, why stop there? This was a team effort.
The pollsters for the shitty data (I’m not complacent, you’re complacent), Mark Zuckerberg for facilitating the dissemination of fake news. (Full disclosure: I read and I believed that Mike Pence signed legislation forcing women to pay for the funerals of their aborted or miscarried fetuses. That was fake news. Although his (later vetoed) bill did require burial or cremation for all fetal tissue and denied women the right to donate that tissue to scientific research so, yea, he sucks and anyone rooting for impeachment should think long and hard). James Comey for his thumb-on-the-scale October Surprise, Gary Johnson/Jill Stein/third party voters/write-in voters/abstainers because their protest was ill-timed and, unfortunately, we can’t actually elect Harambe the Gorilla even though he may have turned out to be a better POTUS than Trump (oh wait, the mass Harambe write-in story was fake news too), the Founding Fathers for that whole fucking electoral college idea (which now looks as bad as their poorly-worded 2nd Amendment idea), Putin/Russia for being more insidious to our electoral process than Citizens United and the Koch Brothers combined, Michael Moore for not going on Bill Maher just ONE more time to tell us that this very thing was going to happen, and, yes, even Hillary for (like Colin Powell before her) setting up the damn server in her house (Stupid? Yes. Criminal? No). But, there’s more blame to go around so let’s not forget Debbie Wasserman Schultz and, of course, liberal darling Anthony Weiner. We would have been burnin’ the Javits Center down were it not for Weiner, right?
Well, congratulations fellow liberals, we have myriad scapegoats to choose from but still not a single branch of government to call our own and no magical potion that will keep RBG alive until at least 2021. Perhaps it’s time to admit that while we ate our kale, gripped our New Yorkers, and rolled our eyes at the flyovers, his message was resonating in places where hers was not.
Now, my willingness to finally concede this election took 17 days and happened despite celebrating Thanksgiving in friendly Democratic territory where we spent the day gratifying each other’s egos and reinforcing each other’s opinions. By then I had cycled through all of the stages of post-Trump victory grief (which, thankfully, the Huffington Post legitimized with a convenient, enumerated list (Arianna should stick to sleep shaming)).
To be sure, I remain appalled at the level of comfort so many Americans who voted for him under the auspices of “it’s the economy stupid” have with racism, misogyny, sexism, homophobia and blatant disregard for human decency, but it’s a big country and we can’t all fit in Manhattan, Portland, and Boulder (and I’m not willing to share my barista, yoga studio, or my farmers’ market with a Fox-watching red-stater anyway).
But, with this concession, I also pledge to participate in the re-evaluation, of my party, our platform, our candidates, and our message, but also those of our “opponents” (partners?), our “enemies” (neighbors?) because the aisle is not that wide and I was lying when I said I would “literally” embrace the expat life (I like my barista too much).
And, while I’m stickin’ it out stateside and engaging in the the obligatory soul-search for how we got here, I will proudly reaffirm my party’s values — science and facts matter, diversity should be celebrated and defended, policies should espouse acceptance and respect and freedom to love whom you want and be who you are and to be lawfully protected while doing so, that consumers need protection and Wall Street needs monitoring, that black lives matter and women’s rights are worth fighting for.
Granted, the Hamilton cast did a better job of articulating some of those than many of the Dems we’ve put in office, but that was our platform to articulate and that articulation was ours to fuck up. I can just hear the DNC saying, “hold my beer.”
I know, what about the media? Free airtime and false equivalencies wrapped up in bow after bow. Duly noted. What about Russia? Of course Russia. “Thanks Obama” for not going public (his hands were pretty tied), thank Facebook for providing the fake news platform (I dare you to stop using it…beyond 3 days of “self care”), and thanks Julian Assange for not hacking, hmmm, I don’t know, say Paul Manafort too.
And let’s stay focused. I will concede, but I will not normalize. He exploited fear, legitimized hate, vilified the undocumented, blatantly lied, demeaned women, mocked the disabled, spearheaded the birther movement, and failed to vehemently denounce white supremacists acting in his name and perverting his message into “Make America White Again” (or IS that what he means?) — he is in his own separate basket of deplorable and he’s making room in there for his cabinet choices, most of whom are not worthy of our tax dollars their unneeded salaries will come from.
But, still, in the spirit of reluctant capitulation, I declare #NotMyPresident to be #FineHesTheFuckingPresident with the promise that we will scrutinize every move he makes because, if the appointments/nominations of Bannon et al. mean our worst fears about a Trump administration coming to fruition, then he is going to see just how popular that popular vote was. Not to mention, I don’t believe that half of what he stumped on will come to be and can’t you just not wait to see the look on the Evangelicals’ faces when they finally realize that he couldn’t care less which bathroom his buddy Cate Jenner uses?!
So, concede we must, and concede I will. But, let the Resistance begin.
