Poi Dog Pondering – Rise Up and Walk

My Election Day playlist is nearly ready. I’ve been testing it out on the commute and I’m pretty happy with it but it might need one more song.

Since there isn’t a video for this song, I really hope you have Spotify and are logged in when you press play because it’s important to hear the song from the beginning, and stick with it to the end, even if it doesn’t feel like your jam. It really sets the tone for the rest of the playlist.

It also reflects my saving grace of this past week. I was added to a secret Facebook group on Wednesday last week and quickly became addicted to it. I stopped checking Twitter, I didn’t bother to read the onslaught of articles my friends posted on their accounts because I couldn’t take any more bad news. Enter Pantsuit Nation.

Even someone like me, a former Bernie voter, couldn’t help but get swept up in how incredibly good it felt to read all of these positive feelings about voting for Hillary and celebrating nasty women and bad hombres. It was contagious. Because the group is secret, people felt free to unburden themselves with their enthusiasm for Hillary. I remember during the primaries a few women friends of mine said they’d voted for Hillary but said so defensively and hadn’t wanted to be very public about it. You opened yourself up to a heaping of shit from the other side if you did. To be fair, you could get it from the left too. But in Pantsuit Nation, people know they are among friends and post story after story about why they are”with her” without worrying they’ll be shouted down.

When I was added I think there were about 80,000 members. Soon it had ballooned to 400,000, then 750,000. The growth was explosive and over the weekend it hit 1,000,000, then yesterday 1.5 million. Today it hit 2 million members all of whom had been added by friends so there are no trolls. The closest thing I’ve encountered to it is the Humans of New York on Facebook.

It has been the most refreshing thing after the trauma that has been this election season. It’s people of every stripe; life-long Republicans who won’t dare say they’re voting for her but who are actually relieved to have a candidate who is smart and experienced that they can vote for. Women in their 90s and even a couple over 100 who have proudly gone to the polls to cast a vote for a woman, which they never thought they’d live to see. Every category of person that Trump has insulted is represented and they are enthusiastically behind Hillary. No lesser of two evils, no vote against Trump, all firmly FOR Hillary. In the process of just finally being able to say why they’re happy to choose Hillary, they have also rounded out a picture of who she is for those of us who only got the soundbites.

My playlist reflects my mood thanks to Pantsuit Nation. It’s a party guaranteed to get your grandma out on the dance floor. I may be living in a blue bubble and I may have my head in the sand along with two million of my newest close friends, but it’s beautiful here and I’m ready for Election Day.