Presidential election memories

[GeneralMacArthur]

2000 (age 8 ):  I had no idea what was going on but I remember playing in the kitchen and my mother calling me into the living room.  She told me "this is history right here.  You'll remember this night for the rest of your life."  I think she tried to explain to me what was going on but I didn't understand.

2004 (age 12):  I don't remember watching this election in real-time but I remember walking the dog the next morning down to the local coffee shop to get a bagel, and being upset at the newspapers celebrating Bush's victory.  I remember knowing that Ohio was the clincher state because we visited Ohio later that year and I was like "booo, Ohio!"

2008 (age 16):  I watched this one with my parents in our living room.  I was very passionate about the election, a big fan of Barack Obama and really despised Sarah Palin.  Not only did Obama win but I was also closely watching the Senate races, I remember being particularly excited at Kay Hagan's victory over Elizabeth Dole.  I think Dole had run some ad attacking Hagan for not being sufficiently christian, which I found incredibly offensive.  I was taking advanced classes in high school and during one of the senior days off, I was the only underclassman left for one of my classes, so the teacher and I watched the Obama inauguration on TV.  The guy was retired Army and kept a running commentary on the security protocols for the inauguration parade.

2012 (age 20):  I watched the election returns at an event with John Aldrich at Duke University, along with some other notable local pundits and politicos.  Most of the other guests were obsessing over 538, whereas I already knew all the contours of the election, so I was annoyed by the guests and spent most of the time hanging out with Aldrich and the politico types.  I was pretty surprised that the Democrats did as well as they did.  Aldrich and I spent a lot of time commiserating the what-ifs of the GOP primary, where we both thought Romney would have been an easy mark for a more talented field.  Aldrich thought Christie would win in 2016.

2016 (age 24):  I had planned a bar crawl with some friends to watch the election, but only a few people showed up, and it quickly became clear that Clinton was in deep trouble as she was way behind in Florida and Virginia, so the party dissipated.  I went to a dive bar and got hammered as I watched OH, FL, NC, and Clinton's odds dwindle to near-zero.  The bartender thought it was a big joke and was talking about what a laugh it would be to have Trump as president, so I left and went to an expensive place, now all-but-abandoned, and watched miserably as the election was called for Donald Trump shortly after he won Pennsylvania.  Somehow I still made it into work the next day.

2018 (age 26):  After the 2016 election I became a radicalized Democratic Party hack and obsessively modeled and tracked every single House and Senate race.  I had my own "big board" and 5 or 6 friends who relied on me for updates and prognostication.  One of my friends had a birthday party that night and I attended but insisted on CNN on the TV.  Bounced back and forth between socializing and celebrating.  I was the only person who gave a damn when CNN officially projected Democrats to retake the House.

2020 (age 28):  Once again I have my "big board" tracking all the key races, and I'll be inviting 5-6 people over to watch in my living room, as well as popping into some Zoom parties and being on the phone with some family members who have also enjoyed having the election as an easy topic of conversation.

[GeneralMacArthur]

2016: 19. Was generally disappointed with the rise of Trump, but didn't really feel like I could support Hillary to defeat him. I voted for Kasich in the primary (mostly because I vote in Ohio, where he was the only serious choice; I was nationally for Cruz through most of the primaries after Rubio exited the race), and supported Johnson in the general.

2020: 23. Still generally see the Republican party as a better fit for my values than the Democrats, but still have quite little faith in DJT. Voted for Weld in the primary (since Biden had already won the Democratic nomination by that time), and I intend to vote Jorgensen in the general.

This voting record paints me as rather substantially more moderate than I actually am.

Not to start this conversation, but if you want the party to return to its pre-Trump state, the best thing you can do is be part of an overwhelming rebuke of Trump.  He needs to lose in a landslide for the GOP to finally be forced to purge his QAnon-type base from the party.  And that means voting for Biden.

Think about it this way -- on election night, are you going to be watching the numbers and hoping Biden beats Trump by as many votes as possible?  Or are you going to prioritize hoping for Jorgensen to get 1% or whatever her goal is?