daringfireball-net-9cm2ax.txt (23063B)
1 [1]Daring Fireball 2 3 By John Gruber 4 5 • [2]Archive 6 • 7 • [3]The Talk Show 8 • [4]Dithering 9 • [5]Projects 10 • [6]Contact 11 • [7]Colophon 12 • [8]Feeds / Social 13 • [9]Sponsorship 14 15 [10] 1Password 16 17 [11]1Password — Secure every sign-in for every app on every device. 18 19 How It Went 20 21 Friday, 8 November 2024 22 23 My mom died at the end of June this year. 24 25 I know, and I’m sorry — that’s a hell of a way to open a piece ostensibly about 26 a depressing, worrisome, frightening election result. But here’s the thing I 27 want to emphasize right up front: my mom’s death was OK. It really was. She was 28 78, which isn’t that old, but her health had not been great. She was 29 hospitalized for several days in May, just a month prior, after she had 30 collapsed at home, too weak to stand, and for days it wasn’t clear what was 31 wrong. Then some more test results came back and we had the answer. She had 32 ovarian cancer, bad. It had already metastasized. The prognosis was grim: 33 months to live, at best. And those months, toward the end, would inexorably 34 grow ever more painful and profoundly sad. 35 36 Her mental acuity had begun to slip in recent years, too. Not a lot, but if you 37 knew her you’d notice. But she faced this prognosis with remarkable dignity, 38 courage, and clarity. She knew the score. It was what it was, and she’d make 39 the best of the time she had left. She was tired but still felt pretty good 40 most days. There were flashes of her younger self, the Mom I remember growing 41 up with. It was wonderful to see those flashes. The bad times were coming, but 42 they laid ahead. On the last Monday night in June she and my dad went out to 43 eat at their favorite restaurant. They had a good meal and a good time. It was 44 a great day. Tuesday morning she played Wordle and reported her score to our 45 family group chat. Then around noon, she just fell over, dead. My dad found her 46 unresponsive, called 911, and they arrived in minutes, but she was gone. No 47 suffering. The whole dreadful grind of battling cancer never came. It’s such a 48 cliché but clichés are often true: given what she faced, it was a blessing she 49 died how and when she did. She never wanted to suffer and she didn’t. I loved 50 her and I miss her. 51 52 Like I said, it was all OK, in the end — the way and how and when my mom died. 53 54 But my dad. My dad is 86, in exceptional good health, and he remains sharp. 55 Until recently he not only played golf but walked the course, carrying his own 56 clubs. He stopped playing golf last year, because — and I realized this only 57 after my mom was hospitalized in May — he’d more and more been shouldering all 58 of the responsibilities of daily life for the both of them. Even just nine 59 holes of golf takes a few hours, and he didn’t want to leave her alone for that 60 long a stretch of time, so he stopped playing. He still walks a mile or more a 61 day, weather permitting. They were married 52 years and spent only a handful of 62 nights apart in that entire span. They were in some ways an opposites-attract 63 couple, but they were inseparable. They were good together. After accepting her 64 cancer diagnosis, my mom was ready, I think, even for something as sudden as 65 what happened to her at the end. My dad was not. 66 67 But he’s an optimist at heart. You’d like him. I, of course, don’t know who you 68 are, dear reader, but I know you’d like my dad, Bob Gruber, because everyone 69 likes Bob Gruber. He can tell a good joke and he loves to tell them. There’s a 70 quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, that I was reminded of, just the other 71 day, from of all things [12]a garbage can: “I don’t like that man. I must get 72 to know him better.” I don’t share Lincoln’s 73 there’s-something-to-like-about-everyone optimism about our fellow men, but my 74 dad does. 75 76 He’s been doing good, I think, these months since her passing. I talk to him 77 almost every day. He’s naturally outgoing and still goes out. He’s got 78 friends — which fact alone can be rare for an 86-year-old — and he sees them 79 regularly. He attends mass frequently and takes tremendous solace in his faith. 80 He misses my mom, his wife, desperately, but he puts on a good face. He gets 81 sad and he admits he gets sad. But the very last thing he wants is for anyone, 82 especially me or my sister, to worry about or even feel sorry for him. I’m like 83 that. I get it. You often hear about old men who just shut down and fade away, 84 rather quickly, after their wives die. My dad’s not shutting down. 85 86 I thought of my dad this week when I watched [13]Harrison Ford’s gravelly 87 endorsement of Kamala Harris, which he began thus: “Look, I’ve been voting for 88 64 years. Never really wanted to talk about it very much.” My dad’s politics 89 are like that. His religion is too. Strong beliefs that he doesn’t feel the 90 need to broadcast or proselytize — and deep suspicion, bordering on contempt, 91 regarding those who do. My dad is old and white and lives in a suburb in a red 92 Pennsylvania county, but he is a lifelong Democrat. He can’t abide Fox News and 93 never understood his age-group peers who succumbed to Rush Limbaugh’s daily 94 siren call. His entire life he’s seen the Democrats as the party of and for the 95 people. The party for working men and women. The party of equality and justice 96 and minding your own goddamn business what people do in their private lives. He 97 votes every election, even the odd years, when the only office on the ballot 98 might be the borough tax collector or members of the school board. He rightly 99 sees voting as a citizen’s civic duty. My dad is the most honest and 100 trustworthy person I’ve ever known, or even imagined. If they ever somehow met, 101 my dad and Joe Biden would become fast friends. They share a worldview, and 102 grew up at the same time, in similar places, from similar means. They even both 103 love trains. (My dad, though, thought Biden was too old to run again. “I know 104 that walk,” he told me early this year, regarding Biden’s stiffening gait. He 105 thought it was good, and noble, when Biden dropped out.) He despises Donald 106 Trump and sees right through him. 107 108 So, when my dad called me Tuesday morning, I thought it would be the election 109 on his mind. It was all that was on my mind, that’s for sure. He had, in fact, 110 just come back from voting, but it was something else. His voice was chipper, 111 upbeat, but I could tell it wasn’t a good story. I know him too well. 112 113 Turns out, he had gone out to eat, by himself, Monday evening. In fact, at the 114 very same restaurant where he and my mom ate their last meal together. He ate, 115 drove home, and once home went to wash his hands before going to bed. That’s 116 when he noticed his wedding band was missing from his finger. 117 118 It was lost. 119 120 He looked around to no avail, and went to bed without it. In the morning light, 121 he retraced his steps. He felt certain he had it on while at the 122 restaurant — not because he took any note of it while dining, but because he 123 knows he’d have noticed its absence. If you wear a ring every day on the same 124 finger, you know how true that is. He almost never took that ring off. 125 126 At some point when I was a little kid, my dad told me he had never once removed 127 his ring since my mom put it on his finger at their wedding, the year before I 128 was born. My mom, I knew, took hers on and off all the time. In fact she often 129 wore other rings in place of her actual wedding band, because she found them 130 more comfortable, and she placed little sentimental value on the ring from her 131 actual ceremony. I asked my dad that day about his, and he told me he simply 132 had never taken it off. I found that to be amazing. From my childhood 133 perspective, he’d worn that ring nonstop for a lifetime. He broke that streak 134 eventually, for some small reason, and it wasn’t a big deal to him, the 135 never-having-taken-it-off thing. But I knew from that time I asked him about it 136 as a child, that the ring itself was deeply important to him, in a way that my 137 mom didn’t feel about hers. Some people imbue meaning and sentimental 138 importance to certain objects. My dad saw his wedding ring like that. It was a 139 sacred token. And now he’d lost it. 140 141 Through my youth — his 30s and 40s and early 50s — my dad always looked how I’d 142 describe as “of average build”. Neither thin nor heavy. Strong but not muscled. 143 He looked like the sort of man who in his youth played third base, and batted 144 near the top of the order, which he did. A former athlete who could still hit 145 the living shit out of a golf ball. In his middle age, he gained a bit of a 146 paunch. (It happens, I now know.) But in the last few years he’s lost quite a 147 bit of weight. He’s downright bony now, in an old man way. His old pants (and 148 nearly all his pants are old — he’s 86) need to be cinched with a belt or 149 they’d fall right off him. His fingers too, have gotten bony. So his ring had 150 gotten loose. He’d offhandedly mentioned that fact to me a few months ago even, 151 telling me he needed to be careful whenever his hands might get wet. 152 153 After waking Tuesday morning, he searched everywhere he could think it might 154 be. The kitchen. The bathroom. The shower. The sink. The other sink. He took 155 the couch cushions off. He looked in his car. He went back in the house and 156 searched everywhere all over again. He took a break to vote, came home, and 157 went back out and searched the car again, this time with a flashlight. To no 158 avail. It’s a sick feeling after you’ve lost something of value, when you start 159 losing count of how many times you’ve looked for it in the exact same places 160 you’ve already checked. You can’t stop looking, but can’t think of new places 161 to search. 162 163 He called the restaurant, but they weren’t yet open, so he left a message, 164 leaving his name and number in case anyone had found a simple well-worn gold 165 wedding band — and if no one had, well, maybe could they keep an eye out for 166 it. He called me after he left that message. He wasn’t forlorn. He laughed 167 even. That’s how he is. That’s how I am. That’s how we are. I’m his boy, as he 168 still sometimes reminds me. But I know what that ring meant to him. 169 170 And my mom had just died so recently. It has only been a few months. The 171 seasons have only changed once since we buried her. 172 173 Fuck. 174 175 It was a bad start to a day that I began, like any keen political junkie, with 176 a nervous feeling. I’m not superstitious but a bad omen is a bad omen. You want 177 every little thing to break right on a high-stress big day, and Election Day, 178 for us, had begun with a small heartbreak. I told my wife about my dad’s ring 179 and she almost burst into tears. She loves him so much. “He just lost your 180 mom”, she said. 181 182 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 183 184 You know how the rest of Election Day went. My wife and I voted. We both like 185 the ceremony of voting in-person on Election Day. It helps that we live in a 186 neighborhood with a vibrant civil infrastructure, with no-wait polling places 187 no more than a block or two away from any residence. We were both feeling good. 188 189 But then what? I was reminded, once again, that I never know what to do with 190 myself on Election Day in a presidential election. No information or results 191 can be gleaned until polling places start closing in early states at 7pm ET. 192 What do you do until then? It seemed pointless for me to write anything further 193 about the election, but equally futile to think I could concentrate on anything 194 else. Expounding upon [14]Kottke’s treatise on the art of hypertext writing 195 [15]was a good distraction. I got to write about something I care about, and 196 because the inspiration was the NYT editorial board’s [16]receipts-packed 197 110-word admonition to end the Trump era, my effort felt at least tangentially 198 related to the election that was then (and alas, remains now) front of mind for 199 me. I could focus on that, and I didn’t finish it until just before 7:00pm. 200 Perfect. 201 202 That’s [17]Kornacki time. Steve Kornacki’s data-driven, map-based analysis has 203 been the heart and soul of MSNBC’s presidential election night coverage for all 204 three Trump elections: 2016, 2020, and now 2024. I honestly don’t remember how 205 I watched election results before Kornacki. I know I’ve been watching election 206 night results on TV since at least 1992. As best I can recall, before 2016, I’d 207 flip around between CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast networks. I basically just 208 “watched the news on TV”, not on any particular channel. But starting in 2016, 209 we just watch Kornacki. We put on MSNBC and we don’t flip. The desk chatter 210 amongst commentators and panelists that consumes the time between Kornacki 211 updates is background noise. But what Kornacki does is genius. Maybe the other 212 networks have caught up and do something similar now. I don’t know, because I 213 no longer flip. 214 215 The way it works is that every news operation has a “decision desk”. The 216 decision desk staffers are off-screen analysts, not on-air talent. They call 217 state-by-state results only with absolute certainty. That absolute certainty 218 can and usually does come before every single vote in a state has been counted, 219 but comes after the likely winner is ascertainable beyond a reasonable doubt. 220 The decision desks make their calls not when the writing appears on the wall, 221 but when the paint has started to dry. 222 223 They weren’t always so fastidious, because nerve-rackingly close results in 224 American presidential elections used to be the exception, not the norm. But 225 after the contentious and almost impossibly close election of 2000, when, on 226 election night, multiple networks — including Fox News — [18]had projected Al 227 Gore the winner early in the evening, based on exit polls rather than tabulated 228 votes, every such major decision desk has become quite rigorous about this, 229 regardless of the political bent of the network or publication. Rigorous to the 230 point of almost entirely avoiding controversy. We can see that even now, on 231 Friday 8 November, as I write this. At the moment, none of the major decision 232 desks have yet called Arizona or Nevada, despite it being a near-certainty 233 Trump won both. The only exception I can recall was four years ago, [19]when 234 Fox News called Arizona for Biden at midnight and the AP followed a few hours 235 later. Biden did in fact win Arizona, but when Fox and the AP called it for 236 him, with 80 percent of the state’s ballots counted, Biden was ahead by a 237 seemingly comfortable 9 percent. By the time all ballots had been counted, days 238 later, the margin had closed to a whisker-thin 0.3 percent. They were correct, 239 but by their own standards of rigor were mistaken to call it when they did. 240 It’s an interesting sign of how independent the Fox News decision desk is, 241 though, that when they got reckless, it was in Biden’s direction. 242 243 What Steve Kornacki does at MSNBC is make de facto calls without making actual 244 calls. Or better put, he presents real-time data and context that allows you, 245 the attentive viewer, to start making calls long before the decision desks 246 reach their standards of absolute certainty. “You don’t need a weatherman to 247 know which way the wind blows” goes the Bob Dylan line. Steve Kornacki isn’t 248 the weatherman. He’s our finger in the air. 249 250 What he does is find telltale counties in important states. A suburb of 251 Atlanta. A suburb of Charlotte. A suburb of Philadelphia. With, say, half the 252 vote counted, he might show that Harris is winning 75-25 in that county. That’s 253 a solidly blue county. A 50-point margin is, you know, good. But then comes the 254 context. That same county, let’s say, went 80-20 for Biden in 2020, and went 255 75-25 for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Now that 75-25 margin for Harris doesn’t 256 look good. It looks like 2016, not like 2020. Or go the other way. Kornacki 257 finds small rural counties of note. Some red county Trump was certain to win, 258 but which he was winning this year by margins that looked like those in 2016, 259 not 2020. 260 261 It’s quite remarkable, Kornacki’s gift. He presents the story, the explanation 262 of how the election results are going, without ever saying what exactly it is 263 he is explaining. He shows you just the right trees to give you a sense of the 264 entire forest. He never says “It looks like Trump is going to win North 265 Carolina.” He simply presents facts, cold hard facts, that, if you consider 266 them, explain why it looks like Trump is going to win North Carolina. They are 267 conclusions left for you, the viewer, to draw. It’s incredibly disciplined. But 268 he never ever gets ahead of the actual NBC News decision desk. He doesn’t have 269 to. The way he does what he does, he can’t be wrong. If Kornacki paints a 270 picture of live data and historical results that indicate that Trump is heading 271 toward a win in, say, Georgia, hours before any official decision desk call is 272 made, that’s because the data available up to that point just factually shows 273 that Trump is on a path to win Georgia. And if something were to happen with 274 the remaining votes that change that path, he’ll simply present that new data 275 as it comes in, later in the evening. 276 277 Closely watching Kornacki didn’t mean I knew Trump was going to win early in 278 the evening. But it meant I knew it sure looked like he was going to. I was 279 concerned when Florida’s results came in, shortly after their polls closed at 280 8pm. (Say what you will about their debacle in 2000, but in the aftermath, 281 Florida got its shit together and now tabulates the entirety of their statewide 282 vote with remarkable alacrity and promptness.) I of course had no expectation 283 that Harris might win Florida, but [20]she lost by 13 points. Trump only won 284 Florida four years ago [21]by 3 points. That swing alone was an ominous early 285 sign of the nationwide trend. That’s when the pit formed in my stomach. Uh-oh. 286 287 I don’t flip channels but I do of course watch with my phone in hand. The New 288 York Times’s infamous “needle” lurched sickeningly rightward early. I stopped 289 looking at it, but not because I thought it was mistaken. Because I knew it was 290 probably correct. By 10pm or so, it seemed obvious that Harris’s only plausible 291 path to victory was for three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and 292 Wisconsin — to buck the nationwide trend of red counties getting redder, and 293 blue counties getting slightly less blue. There was reason for hope, but not 294 much. It was like “Tom Brady could lead the Patriots to a comeback in the Super 295 Bowl even though they’re down 28-3 in the third quarter” hope. [22]That 296 happened, but that’s not how 28-3 football games tend to go. That’s not how 297 elections tend to go. And it’s not how this one went. At 11:20pm, my friend 298 Taegan Goddard [23]wrote this lede in a post at Political Wire: “Donald Trump 299 is now very likely to win re-election. He has the edge in Pennsylvania, 300 Michigan and Wisconsin — all states Kamala Harris needs to win.” I wasn’t yet 301 at the point where I’d have put that into such stark words, but I knew they 302 were true. So it goes. 303 304 I watched MSNBC for another hour, but only with resignation, not hope. I 305 watched a Harris spokesman take the podium at her stage at Howard University 306 and tell the nation she wouldn’t be speaking until Wednesday — just like 2016. 307 I posted [24]one brief item here, commenting only, “Strong déjà vu as 308 acceptance sets in.” 309 310 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 311 312 I woke early on Wednesday, at least by my night owl standards. A gut punch is 313 not a sleep aid. My dad called, just after 9:30am. He seldom calls that early, 314 knowing my sleep habits. I hadn’t stopped feeling heartsick about his ring. His 315 voice though, was excited. He’d gone to mass that morning, driven home, and 316 parked in front of his house. (Still hard for me not to call it their house.) 317 Same exact spot where he’d parked the night he lost the ring. It’s a one-way 318 street, and in front of his house, cars park on the left. He opened the car 319 door and thought to look down, just in case. There it was. His ring. In the 320 street, between his car and the curb, nestled amidst some dry leaves. It must 321 have fallen off his finger as he was opening the car door that night, and the 322 leaves perhaps deadened any clink it might have made hitting the ground. If 323 that parking spot hadn’t been open again, he wouldn’t have found it then and 324 there. If it had rained, it would have washed away. 325 326 He said, “John, when I picked that ring up, I kissed it. 52 years I’ve had this 327 ring on my finger. I thanked St. Anthony, and I thanked your mother. I think 328 she found it for me.” 329 330 Given the circumstances when I went to bed Tuesday night, it was no surprise I 331 was welling up with tears come the morning. But I’d never have expected they’d 332 be tears of joy, with a sense of hope — however diminished — and abiding love 333 in my heart. 334 335 Previous: [25]It Doesn’t End 336 337 [26][ ] [27][Search] 338 [28]Display Preferences 339 340 Copyright © 2002–2024 The Daring Fireball Company LLC. 341 342 343 References: 344 345 [1] https://daringfireball.net/ 346 [2] https://daringfireball.net/archive/ 347 [3] https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/ 348 [4] https://dithering.fm/ 349 [5] https://daringfireball.net/projects/ 350 [6] https://daringfireball.net/contact/ 351 [7] https://daringfireball.net/colophon/ 352 [8] https://daringfireball.net/feeds/ 353 [9] https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/ 354 [10] https://1password.com/daringfireball 355 [11] https://1password.com/daringfireball 356 [12] https://www.threads.net/@gruber/post/DCDGU6bPsJm 357 [13] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/11/04/harrison-ford-harris 358 [14] https://kottke.org/24/11/the-powerful-density-of-hypertextual-writing 359 [15] https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/kottke_on_the_art_and_power_of_hypertextual_writing 360 [16] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/02/opinion/vote-harris-2024-election.html 361 [17] https://www.vulture.com/article/steve-kornacki-2024-election-coverage-live-msnbc.html 362 [18] https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666812854/the-florida-recount-of-2000-a-nightmare-that-goes-on-haunting 363 [19] https://www.npr.org/2020/11/19/936739072/ap-explains-calling-arizona-for-biden-early-before-it-got-very-close 364 [20] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/florida-president-results 365 [21] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/florida-president-results/ 366 [22] https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/02/06/super-bowl-51-falcons-patriots-comeback-overtime-peter-king-nfl 367 [23] https://politicalwire.com/2024/11/05/where-the-race-stands-now/ 368 [24] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/11/06/overnight-status-check 369 [25] https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/it_doesnt_end 370 [28] https://daringfireball.net/preferences/