It is 3:19 PM EST on November 7, 2020. I just returned from a therapeutic dispensary (curbside pick-up while masked), where I retrieved a self-prescribed package of medicinal-grade cannabis. It has been over a week since I last took my prescription. I take it for anxiety.
As the man said, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.”
But now it is Saturday, and I have returned from the therapeutic dispensary, and the people of planet Earth have been introduced to President-Elect Joseph Biden and Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris.
My very first thought upon hearing the news was, “C’mon, Georgia.” See, when you have an anxiety disorder, you don’t get to experience the same level of relief and enjoyment as everyone else; instead, your anxiety leaps to the next closest obstacle.
You might think I’d be anxious about the Supreme Court. After all, President Trump and the Republicans out-shamed themselves to rush Associate Justice Barrett onto the bench for just this purpose: to side with the Republican Party if and when the validity of the Presidential Election come before the Court. While the Republicans already had a majority on the Court, Chief Justice Roberts’ decisions have raised some valid concerns about his willingness to rule from a place of naked partisanship, so they appointed and confirmed Justice Barrett to the Court to ensure the Republicans a favorable outcome.
Justice Barrett’s decision to recuse herself from the pre-election case in Pennsylvania gave me hope that the Republican leadership misread the strength of her character, although I am not delusional enough to imagine her loyalty to the Constitution will override her loyalty to the Party if a particular case provides her with the moral wiggle room to avoid her Catholic guilt.
While the Republicans on the Supreme Court could still reveal the partisan horrorshow beneath their dignified black robes, even my anxiety has too much faith in democratic institutions to fall into that abyss.
Our democratic institutions, unfortunately, also include the United States Senate, which has been controlled since 2015 by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Senator McConnell famously led The Party of No during the Obama Administration, which was a “daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance” to the Democratic majority’s agenda. He is also the first Senate Majority Leader since the Civil War era to deny a president the right to fill an open seat on the Supreme Court.
As it stands, experts predict the Republican Party to retain control of the Senate for the 117th United States Congress, but their prediction rests on the likelihood of the two special elections in Georgia resulting in two more Republican members being added to the Senate in January. With Alaska and North Carolina almost guaranteed to send two Republican members as well, the outcome of the Georgian special elections will determine which political party controls the Senate.
I find hope against that happening in the surprising results of the presidential election in Georgia, where the Democratic candidate defeated the Republican candidate by (as of the afternoon of November 7th) roughly 12,000 votes.
I also find hope in Stacey Abrams, a Georgian who parleyed her gubernatorial defeat in 2018 into a powerful force for fair elections and who deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the surprising results in Georgia.
Political strategists expect the two parties to spend upwards of $200 million on the two special elections. I don’t know anything about the four candidates who will be facing off, but each race has a Republican running against a Democrat, and I don’t want Senator McConnell and the Republican party to continue their stranglehold on progress.
So yes, it is a Saturday night, President Trump has been defeated at the ballot box, my self-prescribed anxiety-soothing herb is back in the house, and I’m about to leave to celebrate the nation’s victory around a campfire with my family, friends, and neighbors, but still, the anxious voice in my head won’t stop repeating the phrase, “C’mon, Georgia.”