The Morning After

The alarm on Gregory Wendell’s phone jangled, breaking the calm stillness of early morning. He dismissed the alarm and scanned the latest notifications on the screen, his eyes blurry with sleep. He jolted awake as he read the headlines. 

“Daniel Trounce projected as winner of presidential election,” proclaimed one headline. Another said, “Daniel Trounces Karris in decisive election defeat.” Nice word play. Any other time, it might be funny. But not today.

His breath caught as a wave of nausea swept over him, and he felt like vomiting. He hurried to the bathroom medicine cabinet, found the pink Pepto bottle, and took a swig. 

What happened overnight? How on earth did this guy win? When he went to bed late last night, the results were still being counted, and his candidate — Tamala Karris — was ahead by a considerable amount. How did she lose her lead?

The nausea passed, and now he felt sad and perplexed. He hoped that Karris, with her boundless energy, fresh ideas, and positive vision for the future, would win. So hopeful that a majority of Americans would see it the same way he did, that she was the best qualified person to lead America over the next four years. Surely Daniel Trounce, with his negative message of despair, hate, and retribution, would not win.

Gregory checked his social media accounts and saw a flood of posts from many of his friends gleefully whooping it up with unabashed celebration.

Perhaps most disappointing was reading the giddy posts from his religious friends and fellow Christian believers, saying, “Praise God,” “Hallelujah,” “God’s anointed wins,” “As the prophets predicted,” and so on. Gloating. Rubbing it in, like salt in a wound. They seemed to view this man as God’s divinely chosen candidate — a messianic figure ordained to lead his followers to the promised land. How could anyone argue with God’s will?

And how could his religious friends — who claimed the moral high road on so many issues, and stood by the principle, “character matters” — vote for a man of such low character? At least that’s what they said for all those years until Daniel Trounce came into the political picture. So much for principle, Gregory scoffed.

Gregory remembered the threats Trounce had made during the campaign. About mass deportations. Prosecuting political enemies and those who opposed him. Fear-mongering. Name-calling, put-downs, and denigration.

Despite that, according to the headlines he was reading, the election was not even close. Daniel really did “trounce” Karris with 5 million more votes than she got. At least there would be no uproar about vote stealing and rigged elections this year. It seemed elections were always rigged whenever Trounce lost; whenever he won, things were fair and honest. What a hypocrite.

What to do? At this moment, Gregory didn’t know. All he wanted to do was go back to bed and wake up again to find it was only a bad dream. But he knew this was real, and no amount of sleep would change this outcome.

He mulled it over and concluded there was nothing he could do for now but accept it. He had voted according to his conscience, as did millions of other citizens — unfortunately, more than half of whom voted differently than he did. He had cast his vote for the candidate he thought best qualified, although it was a losing vote. He reassured himself that a vote in good conscience is never wasted.

One thing for sure, he would never say, “not my president,” no matter what he thought of the president-elect. He would accept the election outcome, but he didn’t have to like it. As a Christian believer himself, he knew he would pray for the new president, as scripture urged.

Conversely, he would not stand around idly for the next four years. He decided at that moment that he would do whatever he could — by prayer, grass-roots activism and everything in between — to help bring about a different result next time. He smiled at the thought and was at peace. This is how we do it in a democracy. This is the American way.