The Election Is Almost Over. That Doesn’t Mean Democrats Are Relaxed. – The New York Times

The day after the election, Isabelle Anderson, 33, went to a get-to-know-your-colleagues happy hour for staff members of the Bay Area middle school where she worked as a psychologist. Many of their students were undocumented immigrants.

Oct. 27, 2020, 9:49 p.m. ET

It was the unhappiest of gatherings.

Everyone just sat there, feeling so lethargic, said Ms. Anderson, who now lives in St. Louis. Some people were crying. We were wondering what was going to happen to our students, to the parents. The wake-like atmosphere became so oppressive that everyone finally just went home.

In Woodstock, N.Y., Abbe Aronson is still haunted by the wrenching experience of her 2016 election party, which began as a celebration and ended with a group of zombified adults weeping in the living room.

Ms. Aronson, a publicist, has not organized anything this year. She is battling pre-election stress with an arsenal of diversionary activities: baking, volunteering, doing crossword puzzles, potting plants, posting innocuous feel-good images on social media, taking sanity walks in the woods with a tiny pod of friends.

The walk lasts until everybody is feeling better or at least not crying, she said.

But anything can set her off. Recently, her longtime mail carrier, an older man who brings biscuits for her dog and to whom she gives a Christmas present every year, mentioned that he had started listening to this really funny guy named Rush Limbaugh on the radio. Do you know what a feminazi is? he asked.

I told him, Ernie, I am one, she said.

They have not spoken since. She is sleeping between two and five hours a night. Im talking to you and my neck is throbbing and Im having a visceral response, she said. I have a recurring pain in my left shoulder and my left neck, from being middle-aged and furious.

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The Election Is Almost Over. That Doesn't Mean Democrats Are Relaxed. - The New York Times