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Special Report

When I was a kid, the “NBC Special Report” logo and music held a special terror.  From the time I was six, a “Special Report” meant risk or tragedy.  

• “Special Report”:  missiles in Cuba.  
• “Special Report” Kennedy assassinated.  
• “Special Report”:  Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower; dead.  

And that was all when I was younger.

The mid-sixties were worse:  Apollo I burned on the launch pad, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy shot and killed; the summer riots, the Chicago Democratic Convention, Four Dead in Ohio.  It was like a morbid version of  “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel.  I still get a special “twitch” when the “magic” words are intoned:  “We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for an NBC Special Report”.  Who’s dead; what’s crashed?

In recent years though, that “special report” music has less impact on me.  Now, it’s the “election music” that gives me a traumatic reaction.  It’s weird; I’ve been involved in politics all of my life (at least since I was three).  Elections were exciting; like the final game of football season or the state championships in cross country.  There was always that energy, that magic moment right before election day, when everything is possible. 

Stages of Grief

But since November of 2016, “election music” doesn’t create the same sense of anticipation.  Now, it’s more like the dread of the old “Special Report”. It’s been since that long Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when we discovered that the polling was wrong and Hillary did not “break the final glass ceiling”.   For a Democrat like me, it was unimaginable.  And, after going through the stages of “grief”; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance (maybe never acceptance), we sat and watched President Obama and Michelle, with ultimate dignity, hand the “keys of the nation” to Donald Trump.

Come to think of it, maybe we never got much past the “anger” stage of grief.  And that anger came out in record strength in 2018, when Democrats regained control of the Congress, and stood up to Trump’s demands.  

Relief

In 2020 there was excited anticipation for the vote.  But there was still that lurking dread that we might have to relive 2016 again.  So it was with relief rather than joy that we accepted the results of the Biden Presidency.  It took four days, until Saturday, to be sure Trump was “over”. Besides, we were in the throes of Covid and celebration was a mostly solitary activity.

But then there was a “return to normalcy”; perhaps too quickly.  We grew complacent in the “regular order”, the “norms” of politics and government.   We thought it was 2012, not 2024.  I would say that many Americans underestimated the power, the attraction, and the desperation that drove Donald Trump back into the Presidency. I surely did.

Again the polls mislead us.  Kamala Harris lost every swing state, and the disbelief of November 2016 came crashing back.  We knew that this time, there were no guardrails or norms, that if Donald Trump was “restrained” back in 2017, he wouldn’t be now.  There would never be an “acceptance” phase in this grief; we were trapped in “depression”, watching the democracy we loved almost instantly altered beyond recognition. 

Music Again

Tuesday night the “election music” played once again.  Depression fiercely guards against false hope.  Allowing that would make the “fall” even worse.  So Tuesday’s MSNBC (MSNOW??) no longer elicits joy and excitement.  Instead, it serves as a warning of bad news to come.

But that didn’t happen. Tuesday was a resounding Democratic victory, from New Jersey to California,  from Pennsylvania to ruby-red Mississippi.  Sherrill won in New Jersey, Mamdani  won New York, Spanberger won Virginia, and the California re-districting amendment passed overwhelmingly.  Even in the Virginia Attorney General race the Democrat won.  Jay Jones, hamstrung by a stupid text sent three years ago, (in the middle of a gun control debate, he suggested that the Republican Assembly leader should get “bullets to the head”). He still pulled off a narrow victory over the Republican incumbent.

So what does this all mean?  Trumpism, MAGAism isn’t over.  The battle will continue day-to-day; by Governors, the Democratic minority in the Congress, and in the Courts. And by “everyday Americans” (I hate that phrase) who will to stand for their beliefs and march in the streets.  But there is a twinkling “new dawn” in America.  Maybe the dread of “election music” will return to an anticipation of success.  Or, as Winston Churchill so loquaciously put it:

Now this is not the end.

It is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.