November 6, 2024 | What A Day Newsletter

What A Day: Emergency Cake Slices!

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, stand on stage at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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LAST CALL

We asked, you answered: A lot of you guys are getting drunk tonight for the election.

We here at What A Day would never recommend whiskey, beer or a Pimm’s cup as a remedy for political stress (though we’d be lying if we claimed they’ve never worked for us!). But we believe in democracy, and the readers have voted… to get smashed. Yes, after we put out a call to see how you’re planning to spend this agonizing evening, quite a few of you wrote in to say you plan to raid the liquor cabinet. But many of you are also volunteering, seeing friends, walking dogs, or making soup — and at least one of you is going to be sitting around a campfire on a beach with friends. We received a ton of amazing responses about taking the edge off Election Day. Here are just a few.

Wendy explained that she became an election worker in 2020, inspired by feeling down after the previous election. Now, she’s a judge for a polling place, which helps take her mind off politics until late at night, when the results actually start rolling in. “Today I purchased Emergency Cake Slices, I made a huge pot of potato soup, and I hit my favorite local liquor store to stock up on Pimm’s so I can kick back with a Pimm’s cup once I am finally done closing down my polling site and delivering our ballots to the county!” Wendy wrote. I didn’t know that I needed Emergency Cake Slices (ECS) in my life, but I do now.

Judy is also making vegetable soup today while her husband starts a cozy fire — after she spends the day driving Democrats in Wisconsin to the polls through the rideshare2vote program. “We will eat dinner, get stoned, watch the fire, and peek at Steve Kornacki around 10pm — but just for 10 minutes, 15 max — then we will go to bed knowing we’ve done everything we can and get a good night’s sleep during which we will dream about Kamala’s inauguration,” Judy wrote. This is the American Dream, I think? Send the recipe!

Lots of you are doing your part to keep democracy alive and well, and we couldn’t be more proud. Lori finished a poll greeting shift early this morning before canvassing — her 18th (!!!) canvassing shift of the season in North Carolina. Kathlene has been working as a voter assistance clerk at a polling station in Washington, D.C. Jen is spending the day with her county registrar’s office as a rover, someone who picks up the locked boxes of ballots and brings them to the location where they are opened and counted. “It’s not exciting, but it is emotionally rewarding to meet, however fleeting, many people who are working to get every vote counted. Every single person is dedicated to doing whatever their job is, with a smile and warm words of thanks to us. As we say thank you right back! It gives me hope,” Jen writes.

Many of you plan on spending the night with friends or family, which is undoubtedly the healthiest way to spend it. Hear that, Ron? I do understand “thinking about putting my head under the covers for 35 hours”! But I hope you get some fresh air!

Margaret’s group of friends does a monthly polar plunge, meeting at a harbor in Maine to jump in the ocean. Tonight, they will read poetry, play some tunes on the beach “that inspire thoughts of victory,” and then gather for hot soup and whiskey while trying to keep one another calm. Jacob has another method for fending off the anxiety: He’s making a playlist with some of his favorite comfort songs. These are bands that I also love — Japanese Breakfast, The National, Cocteau Twins — so here’s a very similarly chill, hopeful album from a Harris campaign surrogate you can vibe out to. “No matter the result, I’ll have the perfect soundtrack to my tears (preferably of joy),” Jacob wrote. Relatable.

Monty lives in Hawaii, so he’s lucky to have the day off of work and plans to be comfortably tipsy by the time results start coming in. Others wrote in from the U.K., Japan, and Singapore. Susan is (rightfully) keeping her expectations for knowing results by the end of the night low, but will be consuming a “gummy” at some point. Tanya will be watching “Star Wars” reruns — but only the ones where the good guys win. Today is Steph’s 31st birthday! She’s “pretending to be fancier than we actually are with filet mignon and red wine from my husband” before taking their lab on a nice long walk. I wish we could all go on a walk together with your lab.

You may be feeling stressed, but imagine how Democratic lawmakers up for re-election are feeling! Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) joined the What A Day podcast today to talk about the stakes of the race… and how she’s managing to chill out amid the chaos. “My husband will make me a great breakfast to keep me calm” until the election results come in, she said. And as you can imagine, Crooked’s HQ is doing everything it can do to cope — even putting together a shrine in the office fit with candles, a bobblehead of Special Counsel Jack Smith, Iowa pollster Ann Selzer (who recently declared Vice President Kamala Harris ahead in the Hawkeye State), and liquor emblazoned with the veep’s image (Where the hell did we get that?).

Yours truly, Matt (along with Greg, my editor who misplaces commas and told me to to note for the record that he personally mixed up “sow” and “sew” in a recent edition), will be breathing into paper bags at Kamala Harris’s watch party at Howard University tonight. Follow along with us on the Crooked News Instagram.

WHITE HOUSE VS. BIG HOUSE

Former President Donald Trump faces what has got to be the most dramatic set of personal stakes for any presidential candidate in American history: If he wins, he becomes president; if he loses, he faces intense legal jeopardy from his four outstanding criminal cases.

In other words, he’ll either be put in charge of overseeing America’s criminal justice system — or else placed at its mercy. Never before has an American presidential nominee faced either the White House… or the Big House.

Scenario 1: Trump wins. He’ll be able to make his two federal cases disappear by firing Special Counsel Jack Smith, a step he’s vowed to take immediately upon taking office. His state-level cases in Georgia and Manhattan wouldn’t technically be under his jurisdiction, but most legal experts say they’re very unlikely to proceed while he’s in office.

This dynamic means Trump is literally running for his freedom. “He’s realizing that he could lose the election, go to prison, and maybe die there,” a Republican operative told The Independent.

What’s more, the Supreme Court has also given the president additional protections, ruling he can’t be charged with crimes for anything that can be construed as his core responsibilities, in a decision that critics condemned as going way too far.

Scenario 2: Trump loses. If Trump doesn’t make it back to the Oval Office, he could be in big trouble very soon.

Trump is due to be sentenced on November 26 by a New York City judge, after his conviction on fraud charges relating to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. After that, he’d also face a sweeping racketeering case in Georgia, and federal charges in Washington D.C. over his attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat. Prosecutors are also appealing a decision to toss out his Florida documents case. Any one of these could theoretically land him behind bars — or, potentially, all of them could.

The felon’s allies are already coming to his defense, should that hypothetical become reality: British parliament member Nigel Farage said Harris should pardon Trump to “dampen down potential tensions.” I’m not sure that would help!

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It feels like the whole country is waiting to get the results of a biopsy.” — Jimmy Kimmel, quoted in The Guardian.

NEWS NEWS NEWS

For all the nerds out there: Kamala Harris has a few ways to win. But one seems most likely: Sweeping the Rust Belt. She would need Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — states where she has seen relatively strong polls. Yet there are other possibilities, like losing one or more of those so-called “Blue Wall” states, and making up for it with some combo of Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona or Nevada. (Or… maybe even Iowa??? Looking at you, Ann Selzer!)

Trump’s most likely path to victory runs through Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Other ways: He could win the Sun Belt and one Rust Belt state, or crack the “blue wall” again and win the same states he did in 2016. [Smoking 10,000 cigarettes] haha but we’re not worried. Nope. Not us.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R-GA) blamed Russia for non-credible bomb threats at Georgia polling stations today. He also told reporters that he expects Georgia to have its election results by the end of the night.

Podcaster Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump for president after a 2.5 hour-long conversation with billionaire conspiracist Elon Musk. What’s that meme, again?

Trump would be beating President Biden by 7 points if he were still running, according to a recent poll. There’s no way to know exactly how a Trump-Biden rematch would’ve gone, but this poll, at least, suggests that Biden made the right call when he bowed out in favor of Harris in July.

Trump crony Rudy Guliani moved his valuable possessions out of his New York City penthouse after a judge ordered them to be turned over to former election workers who he defamed, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, the disgraced former New York City mayor was seen driving around in Lauren Bacall’s Benz, which he is supposed to hand over.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant today. Analysts believe Netanyahu fired him on U.S. Election Day to bury the news, since Gallant had criticized the prime minister’s approach to the war in Gaza.

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