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“Suddenly, that whole thing starts to come apart.…”: Looking Back After One Year


The “they” of “They” didn’t like it what they felt the knife begin to go in to the hilt: Here are just a few examples of the quotes, from earlier in the evening to later:

Zara Rahim, Clinton campaign national spokeswoman: We were waiting for the coronation. I was planning my Instagram caption…

Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight: When I was coming in on the train at 5 p.m., according to our model, there was one-in-three chance of a Clinton landslide, a one-in-three chance of a close Clinton win, and a one-in-three chance of a Trump win. I was mentally preparing myself for each of those outcomes.…

Ashley Parker, The Washington Post, formerly of The New York Times: The RNC thought they were going to lose. The Trump campaign supporters thought they were going to lose. They were rushing to get their side out of the blame game. I spent part of my day lining up interviews for later that night or the next morning to get their version of events.…

Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, Trump’s religious adviser: I called Sean Hannity and said, “I really think he’s going to win tonight.” Sean said, “Well, I’m glad you do, because the exit polls don’t look good.” I found out later that Trump was very pessimistic, too.…

Steve Bannon: Jared [Kushner] and I were out on this balcony in Trump Tower. We looked at it on Jared’s iPhone. And the numbers were so bad that we regrouped inside. We look at each other and we go, “This can’t be right. It just can’t.” And Jared goes, “I got an idea, let’s call Drudge.” And Drudge says, “The corporate media—they’ve always been wrong the entire time—these numbers are wrong.”…

Sen. Tim Kaine: Based on the returns from one bellwether Virginia county I know well, I realized that we would win Virginia by a significantly larger margin than President Obama four years earlier. This was a huge feeling given all the work that Anne and I have done for 30-plus years to help make Virginia more progressive. It struck me for the first time, “I will probably be vice president.” That feeling lasted about 90 minutes.…

Van Jones: You got smoke coming out of every gear trying to figure out what the heck is happening out there. And you’ve got John King who had said, over and over, that there is no pathway for a Trump victory. Suddenly, that whole thing starts to come apart.…

Jim Margolis: I finally called Steve Schale, who ran Florida for us in the Obama campaign. I said, “Steve, what’s going on here? Is this just a lack of information?” He said, “I think you’ve got a problem.”…

Bret Baier: At 8:30 I turned to Chris Wallace, who was sitting next to us on the set, and said, “This does not look like it’s lining up.” We came back from commercial break and Chris said, “Donald Trump could be the next president of the United States.”…

Ana Marie Cox: I did a couple of on-camera news hits where I was told, “What you need to do here is tell people not to panic.” Meanwhile, I was panicking.…

David Remnick: Not only did I not have anything else ready, I don’t think our site had anything, or much of anything, ready in case Trump won. The mood in the offices, I would say, was frenetic.…

Desus Nice, Desus & Mero: It’s one thing to find out Donald Trump is president, but another to be on TV with people watching you watch Donald Trump become president.…

Joshua Green, Bloomberg Businessweek correspondent and Devil’s Bargain author: At 9:05 p.m. I sent Bannon an email and said, “Holy shit, you guys are gonna win, aren’t you?” He sent a one word reply: “Yes.”…

Dave Weigel: I had told my parents, who are Clinton supporters—my dad actually knew Clinton growing up as he’s from the same town in Illinois she is. I texted him early in the night saying, “These Florida counties seem to be going the way they usually go.” But once I realized there was no way for Clinton to win, I called them saying, “I’m sorry, this is what I do for a living and I was wrong.” My dad said, “Well, I’m still holding out hope.” And I said, “Don’t bother. Process this, and figure out what you’re going to do next, because it’s not going to happen.” Curated by neo-neocon » Tales of Democratic Election Night woe

What can one say to such a meltdown except:

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • ghostsniper November 7, 2017, 1:08 PM

    “Meanwhile, I was panicking.…”
    ======================

    There’s a whole buncha people runnin’ around out there that are stealin’ our air.
    I think it really started going haywire when we crossed over the 300 mil mark.
    With each successive 100 mil things got worse and worse.
    One gov’t obviously can’t handle 300 mil.
    Either they have to eliminate 200 mil (willingly or unwillingly) or get 2 more gov’ts.

  • Casey Klahn November 7, 2017, 1:42 PM

    “Stronger Together.” That was the fascistic slogan Hillary finally, tardily, arrived at. She badly needed a slogan, after, “PSHHHH-YeaH! I’m Hillary,” didn’t work so good.
    I had an apparently naive belief that Trump would win the whole night. The effect of that attitude was that the media looked clownish the entire night.

  • Deana November 7, 2017, 3:00 PM

    25 years from now, all of this will still be as delicious as it was the night of the election.

  • EndOfPatience November 7, 2017, 3:02 PM

    They have no clue as to why they lost. Absolutely none.

    “Disconfirmed expectancy is a psychological term for what is commonly known as a failed prophecy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disconfirmed_expectancy

    because they can’t process the failure in a normal, rational manner, they’ve lashed out. In doing so, they’ve let the mask fall away and made it crystal clear that they don’t just hate us, they want us exterminated.

    Good. Because now we know that it’s “when”, not “if”, the Cold Civil War becomes hot.

  • Bill Jones November 7, 2017, 3:50 PM

    All of the useless political parasites never recognize that a falling down drunk liar who couldn’t get a crowd of 200 people to listen to her drivel was a loser?

  • Howard Nelson November 7, 2017, 5:50 PM

    Hillary relied on sophisticated analytics to guide her campaign to doom.
    Those analytics are just a contraction of anal lying tics. First present your pitch, then twitch, then bitch, bitch, bitch.
    The Donald did not duck the reality of the angry public so he beat on the drum of better days coming.
    Is this news to anyone other than Rip Van Winkle?

  • Howard Nelson November 8, 2017, 12:09 AM

    EndOfPatience has it right.
    The scary part is that their continuing resentment, anger, self-righteous need to coerce others puts them in the kiddies pool, next to the simmering cesspool of longer-term grudge holders and haters — those who’ve degraded to abusing animals, children, women, frail elderly. Also in that cesspool are those who were never taught a code of decency, among them those taught jihadism from the age of three or four.
    What percentage of cruel kids grow up to be persistent bullies or violent criminals?
    How many become murderers of only one or two, thus gaining no nationwide publicity unless the victim is a celebrity of sorts — mild cases on point is the whacko who attacked Rand Paul and the whacko that shot the congressman a few months ago.
    The kiddie poolers will soon graduate to the simmering cesspool boiling over every now and then as individual or group violence on streets and at schools.
    Cooking toward chaos among the habituating disgruntled (I’m running out of synonyms) will be the murderers, mass and miniscule, of the near future.
    We have failed to teach too many of our children well. So now, as they grow up raging at their own incompetence, they turn that rage at others. They number in the 10’s of 1000’s.

    The hell to be paid will be paid by the innocents and the warped, distorted, maleducated perpetrators.
    — h/t Jeremiah

    O

  • Fuel Filter November 8, 2017, 3:20 AM

    I’m still bathing in these LibTard tears!

    It’s sooooooo luxurious.

    Especially with a good single-malt in my hand.