Week eight
The game: Patriots at Bills
The beer: North Coast Old Stock Ale
The result: Loss, 24–21

Week nine
The game: Patriots at Jets
The beer: Oak & Iron Wacko Jacko Dark Pumpkin Ale
The result: Win, 30–27

Week ten
The game: Ravens at Patriots
The beer: Liars Bench Cut-Off Schwartz Dark Lager
The result: Win, 23–17

Week eleven
The game: Patriots at Texans
The beer: True North Five Leaves Left Lager
The result: Loss, 27–20

Week twelve
The game: Cardinals at Patriots
The beer: Newburyport Pale Ale
The result: Win, 20–17

The election
The electoral college: Biden wins, 306–232
The popular vote (millions): Biden wins, 81–74

The commentary: Last month, the country I call home eventually decided against re-electing as its president a man who colored recent history with the following on-the-record remarks:

“China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

“It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu. This is deadly stuff.”

“I think the virus is going to be– it’s going to be fine.”

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

“The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… stock market starting to look very good to me!”

“CDC and my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling coronavirus.”

“I think it’s a problem that’s going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

“This is a flu. This is like a flu.”

“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

“The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”

“I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”

“You have to be calm. It’ll go away.”

“I like this [medical] stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

“I don’t take responsibility at all.”

“I’d rate [my coronavirus response] a ten.”

“The only thing we haven’t done well is get good press.”

“I wanted to always play [the danger] down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”

“I’m also hopeful to have Americans working again by Easter—that beautiful Easter day.”

“I want them to be appreciative. We’ve done a great job.”

“Unfortunately the enemy is death. It’s death. A lot of people are dying. So it’s very unpleasant.”

“Stay calm, it will go away. You know it– you know it is going away, and it will go away, and we’re going to have a great victory.”

“It’s not the flu. It’s vicious.”

“LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!”

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous… uh, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re gonna test it. And then I said, ‘Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or… uh, in some other way.’”

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that? By injection inside or almost a cleaning. Cuz you see, it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that.”

“It’s gonna go away, this is going to go away.”

“We have met the moment and we have prevailed.”

“Don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world. But why? Because we do more testing.”

“Testing is a double-edged sword. When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases, so I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’”

“I think we are in a good place.”

“They are dying. That’s true. And you– it is what it is.”

“Right now I think it’s under control.”

“We’ve done a great job in COVID but we don’t get the credit.”

“[We’ll have a vaccine] before the end of the year and maybe even before November 1. I think we can probably have it sometime in October.”

“We have rounded the final turn.”

“If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.”

“I think we’re rounding the turn very much.”

“I don’t wear a mask like [Biden]. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking two hundred feet away from him and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

“But it’s going to disappear. It is disappearing.”

“I went through it. Now they say I’m immune. I can feel– I feel so powerful.”

“They’re tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.”

“They are getting tired of the pandemic, aren’t they? You turn on CNN, that’s all they cover. People aren’t buying it, CNN, you dumb bastards.”

“We are rounding the turn. We are rounding the corner.”

“By the way, on November 4, you won’t hear about it anymore.”

“I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!”

“You wouldn’t have a vaccine, if it weren’t for me, for another four years.”

“Look at that beautiful, beautiful bird. Oh so lucky. That is a lucky bird… what a bird.” (The one—one—recurring thing I enjoyed about the man was his turkey pardons.)

The stop-the-steal controversy is too sprawling to parse so, in fairness, I’ll just quote’s Trump latest Tweet:

“This claim about election fraud is disputed.”

My election-coverage rollercoaster rode like this:

November 2 and earlier
Polls, mainstream media (CNN, Washington Post, etc.) and politicos like James Carville and Steve Schmidt had me thinking landslide win for Biden, but the piece of me that refused to disregard my similar 2016 certainty—“You’re helping me elect the first female president… isn’t that cool?”—was posting screenshots to Facebook of Five Thirty Eight’s final projection of a seventy-one-percent chance of Clinton winning then. I was confident but anxious and I just wanted the election to come, go and inform whether or not I was moving abroad.

Somewhere in there, though, I heard Bill Withers predict the future on a live “Hope She’ll Be Happier” from 1972:

Maybe the lateness of the hour
Makes me seem bluer than I am.

November 3 (Election Day)
Anxious confidence or confident anxiety? You make the call! CNN’s nine o’clock coverage was too similar to that of November 8, 2016—we haven’t rearranged the living-room furniture at all since then and the flashbacks stung. A. couldn’t take it and went upstairs despite my echoes of “It’s way too early to worry” and hers was the right move. John King—mocker of iPads—was my rock, reminding me what I knew all along about how the real results wouldn’t be known for days, but it was hard, Ringo, to ignore what my eyes were seeing. Florida… Ohio… Twitter… I went to bed at eleven and felt like shit. Intense.

November 4
I stirred around four in the morning and couldn’t help myself. Twitter rewarded with good news I don’t even remember, probably something about Pennsylvania. Philadelphia! Do you feel alright! “You have to at least… give me…” a reason to look my daughter in the eye. I felt well enough to fall back asleep and was rewarded upon waking for good—at, what eight? G’s Thursday/Friday in-school cohort is another blessing—with more reason for optimism. I even wrote my own goddamn poll:

Do you trust polls?
☐ Yes, I’m a quarter Polish on my mother’s side.
☐ Yes, penguins and polar bears are fascinating creatures.
☐ Yes, a ball that hits the foul pole is a fair ball.
☐ Yes, “Coca-Cola” sounds like Chinese for “bite the wax tadpole.”
☐ Yes, I have an above-ground pool.
☐ Har! Har!

Irony is dead and the message—now four years old—will surely be forgotten ahead of 2024. Drag. Regardless, that evening I returned to Facebook with my own brand of Trump’s furious madness: “I declare that I won the 1987 best-supporting-actor Oscar for my portrayal of Linus in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Sorry, Sean Connery.” Too soon?

November 5–6
I really couldn’t tell you. Lots of CNN and Twitter. Georgia puns. Too much.

November 7
We slept in Saturday morning, feeling good: electricity, anticipation, MAGA death watch. During the week I made plans to meet an apolitical Ivan at Oak & Iron again and I’d better get moving if I wanted to be on time. Nothing definitive on CNN anyway—“Are we live? Let’s make sure we’re live.” We were not live—easy fix. We were now live. And not five minutes later, Wolf Blitzer threw us another projection, all of which are treated with the same grave tension whether it’s Michigan or Utah. We missed the buildup due to being rewound/delayed and it hit us like a swarm: Biden won. Pennsylvania. The whole thing. “Pop” goes the cork. “OK!” goes the daughter, understanding the importance but having no patience for the relief. Soon, Van Jones brought the house down:

Anderson Cooper: “Van, what are your thoughts?”

Jones: [Clears throat.] “It’s, um…” [Pauses for five seconds.]

Cooper: [Nothing. Cooper said nothing during the extended silence. He did not attempt to fill the air or prompt Jones to get on with it. Instead, he let his colleague collect himself and speak from his heart.]

Jones: “Well, it’s easier to be a parent this morning. It’s easier to be a dad. It’s easier to– it’s easier to tell your kids character matters. It matters! Telling the truth matters! Being a good person matters!”

You’re goddamn right.

Since November 8
What’s anyone been doing? Staying put. Waiting. Eating cheeseburgers on Thanksgiving. Witnessing your favorite football team redefine the ups and downs of mediocrity. Expecting more from a Hallmark movie called USS Christmas. Being pleasantly surprised by your father emailing “With all of the damage Trump has done in just four years, I don’t understand how any sane person could vote for him.” Fulfilling your own vow “to write more regularly and avoid posts discussing up to nine—nine!—games at once” by discussing, you know, five. Enjoying time spent watching The Mandalorian with your daughter even as you recognize that the main storyline hasn’t progressed all season and the show’s theme is a mashup of “Gonna Fly Now” and “Atom Heart Mother.” Admiring a Politico writer’s forced metaphor that serves only to let you know he read Keith Richards’s Life. Finishing Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 and wondering what is the opposite of “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”

Lame duck gets the last word: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”

Up next: It’s easier to be a parent this month. Cheers!