The Day After the Election: Wednesday, November 8, 2028

It is Wednesday, November 8, 2028. Crispy cold weather blanketed most of the United States, from the hills of West Virginia to the valleys of Southern California. In Miami and Houston, it was like someone poured ice-cold water on the ever-bubbling sunshine cities. The wind was demure, rivers sedated, and even the birds chirped with all modesty.

Yesterday’s presidential election results were the first in over ten years that either party contested. At midnight, just as polls closed on the West Coast and the Associated Press made their projections, the winner called the loser and sent a congratulatory message. All TV cameras, podcasts, and radio stations focused on that moment as if the nation’s fate depended on it. In the quiet streets of Alabama, in the chilly streets of New York, exhausted men and women returning from their evening shift listened to the exchange of phone calls between the candidates. The collective exhale for a moment warmed up the surface of the Niagara Falls.

America paused. Conservative and liberal news anchors all breathed a sigh of relief as they reported, each in their own subtle manner, the words that spelled the end of the great American nightmare. Nothing said on any television screen showed whether the station was in a blue state or red state. No commentator cared whether the election result was a…