Margo Ellis, Opinion Editor–
Before 7 p.m. on the night of the election, I hadn’t worried much about the results. Looking back, it might have been my way of coping, or a foolish notion that everything would go the way I wanted it to.
Some of my friends had expressed anxiety about the outcome in the weeks prior, but strangely, I felt fine. I was somehow confident that it would work out, in the end.
So waking up the next morning was a slap in the face.
Part of my shock was that I just didn’t expect to know the results so soon. Every political analyst and commentator I’d watched warned that we may not know the results until the weekend, or even the next week.
I wasn’t worried when I went to bed early on election night or when I woke up and rolled over to check the time. I didn’t even think about the results when I turned my phone on.
Shock might not be the right word to describe what I felt. I was sad, at first, and then angry, and then numb. It’s natural, I think, to be disappointed when your candidate doesn’t win. In this case, disappointment was the least of my emotions.
I was in elementary school when President-elect Trump won the 2016 presidential election. I was in middle school when he was first impeached and high school when he was impeached again. Now I’m a freshman in college. A couple of days after the election, it hit me that he would be in office for the rest of my time here at Denison.
It’s important to note that this was a free and fair election. As tempting as it is to turn around and scream “fraud!” those of us who condemned the GOP for its claims of a stolen election in 2020 cannot, without hypocrisy, declare the same this time around. The disappointment of a lost campaign does not condone the violence nor the conspiracy that has existed in previous election cycles.
Of course, I have the right to be angry at those who voted for him. I have the right to post on my Instagram that “if you voted for Trump, I never want to speak to you again.” But, what good does that do? I want to speak to the people that voted for him. I want to know why they chose Trump over Harris. I need to know why.
I need to know why, at this point in our nation’s history, we cannot bring ourselves to elect a woman as president. Why did Vice President Harris win multiple million fewer votes this year than Biden in 2020, when she was running alongside him? Is it possible that after years of fighting, losing, winning and dying for women’s rights, a country with a higher female population than male still cannot elect a female leader?
Evidently, it is.
I said initially that shock might not be the right way to describe my feelings, and at this point, I’m just tired. I’m tired of false hope and “we’ll get them next time.” I’m tired of wondering if my daughters will have fewer rights than I did at their age, or if I’ll even be able to have children.
Ultimately, I know there is no good in wishing for what could have been. The election happened, and it cannot be reversed. The only way forward is to remember that this is not the end. There is no end to the fight for equality. We will not be silenced.
Margo Ellis ‘28 is a politics and public affairs major from Akron.