🇺🇸 Post-Election Reflection, Part Two
Who were you four years ago? (Not to mention your Before Self from November 2019!) How have you grown in these pandemic-colored years? What did you accomplish that you didn’t think you could?
Check out part one here first:
Where we left off . . .
For two months, I said to anyone who would listen, “The polls are wrong!”
I just didn’t know if this gap between what the polls showed and how the news media reported them—versus what I knew in my gut to be true—was deliberate or not. After all, a closer race keeps people glued to the headlines and is more likely to send them to the polls; the latter a good thing, of course.
In my own neighbor test, many were struggling mightily.1 No matter how messy the discourse, I could see that large swaths of people were ready (if not desperate) for economic change, myself included.
As I shared in part one, that doesn’t mean any single voter’s top concern is the economy, or that it is the even issue that determines their vote. Lynn’s research does not negate the presence of other deciding factors like immigration, education, women’s rights, my in-laws living under now-constant bomb threat in Beirut by American-made and funded weapons, etcr. Rather that the state of the economy (and how Americans feel about it) does tell you how to predict the outcome of the election with remarkable consistency across history.
Most major news outlets called this year’s presidential contest by six a.m. on Wednesday, November 7. Among myriad other things, it also meant that in parallel to 2016, I had less than one week to sort through my thoughts before delivering another keynote. I would be entirely different this time, yet with a message for the audience that stayed largely the same.
“This is a massive pivot point for the country,” I offered in that 2016 post-election speech in Texas. My voice shook as the adrenaline traveled through my body before I launched into how Pivot as a mindset and method could help audience members respond individually to map what’s next.
Although the post-feedback was largely positive, it wasn’t my best delivery; I was still tweaking the material and finding my sea legs for a crowd of that size.
Out of hundreds of survey responses one wrote, “Did not care for the interaction with each other, as some people were uncomfortable after the election.”
On the other hand, another attendee shared the following:
“LOVED the topic, speaker's presentation & especially the interaction part of this session! The woman next to me was on opposite political side of myself—as well as age. We both struggled, and found common ground in all three of our conversations. [I] know we both left this forum enlightened from being able to discuss, respectfully, the recent presidential election. HUGE!”
The latter comment was the kind of bridge-building I was hoping for,2 made far easier in person sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in that 2016 airplane hanger, than across the 2024 digital divide where it’s now easier than ever to sling barbs from behind social media-dominated screens.
I don’t have a single photo of myself from that day—just a few looking out at the sea of faces, capturing my fear and heart-palpitating anticipation. I only remember how vulnerable I felt standing on that stage, trying to semi-gracefully straddle a microcosm of the country’s emotions without offending anyone (Hah! Hello, impossible).