The election was a huge shock and the future looks worse than I have ever seen it. I think people are still reeling and not yet up to where you are. This also follows 8 years when we made historic progress on everything from health care, gay rights, climate change, some regulation of banks and lower rates on student loans. The fear is ALL of this and maybe more will be lost.
After every election, there has been a period of mourning which I would venture to suggest that the depth and length of it might be a function of whether we already had to some degree thought it a likely possiblity and how bad the alternative was. I was devastated after 2004, because I really thought (and still think) that John Kerry was an extremely good alternative and, though I thought it a long shot until he surged at the end, I really was amazed how relieved I felt when the good exit polls came out mid day. Many even were happy that Bush, not Kerry, would be blamed when we left Iraq without it becoming a glorious democracy as the neo cons promised. Yet by Thanksgiving, a favororite in law smiling an ever brightening smile, said," but in 4 years we can elect HRC."
I think of my inability to respond and the fact that I clearly was not past Bush being reelected and never having a President Kerry with his incredible wife as first lady. Most of the people still here were not just for a Democrat, many had waited for decades for Hillary Clinton to be the first woman President. At this point, many of them seek what really brought me to DU was that the DU JK group was a community that I needed at that point. They are not yet ready to move on. In 2004, after the election, the main forum - where Kerry was routinely attacked was not a safe place. People were far more willing to move on -- and the goal was winning 2006 and winning in 2008.
2016 was an incredibly strange election with the FBI investigation, Russian spying and a bizzare Republican nominee. There is pessismism that we can do well in 2018. That needs to change. In 2006, we were not predicted to be able to win back the Senate majority, but we nearly ran the table and got to 51 seats. Another difference is that the thought was that we had a wealth of possibilities for 2008. That created optimisim. There is now a perception that we have no power at all in the the incoming government. That ignores that we can push for change in our states and in our cities. We also need to actively fight Trump and the Republican Congress.
I suspect that each step of grief is harder this time and we are in the middle of that grieving period. Possibly after the January, more of DU will be back to fighting bad legislation and working to move forward.
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