In 2015, my friends and I watched the Republican primary with particular interest. Obama’s second term was coming to an end, so there would be a new Democrat and a new Republican competing for the presidency, and we were curious who would ultimately represent either party. We were especially interested in the Republican primary because the party as a whole had been more racist, obstructionist, and blatantly evil than we’d ever seen before during Obama’s presidency. They openly mocked him, encouraged racist conspiracy theories, and openly vowed to impede anything he attempted to do. The party was tarnished, and it would take a lot of work to come back to anything resembling a normal party — although you could rightly argue they hadn’t been a respectable party since at least Nixon’s Southern Strategy, but all that subtext turned to text really fast when a black guy was in charge.

Candidates of note included Jeb Bush, brother to George W., who would make the third Bush in office; Mitt Romney, who’d failed to defeat Obama on 2012; and Donald Trump, a reality show host and sort-of real estate mogul who’d always been known for being loud and rude, but who had really entered a new realm of racist and crazy when he became the person at the head of the conspiracy that Obama was born in Kenya.

As the Republicans slowly ate each other, we were shocked that Trump kept hanging on. It had started out hilarious, and Jon Stewart had a blast mocking his descent from his golden escalator down to his people. But as we entered 2016, we watched Trump continue to hang on, and we grew increasingly bemused. The Republicans, already a clown car of obstructionist, racist buffoons, might end up accidentally making their nominee someone who was so buffoonish and so clownish that he was almost a parody of their own selves — like Sarah Palin on steroids.

When he did get the nomination, we were flabbergasted, but decided that was great. Hillary received the Democratic nomination, and we realized it was an easy win. Hillary may not have been our favorite politician, but she’d had experience in Washington and in the White House. She’d practically been made in a lab for president, and Donald Trump was parodied in Epic Movie cutting Spider-Man’s webbing while saying, “You’re fired.” That’s great! Four more years of the Democrats in the White House, and we’d have our first woman president! How amazing would that be!

The night of the election came. We were buzzing with excitement and decided to have a party to watch the results. We made tacos — because Trump had said that if the Democrats won there’d be “taco trucks on every corner.” We wore our red-white-and-blue and star-spangled attire and party hats. We had pink bubblegum cigars and pink balloons that said “It’s a girl” to celebrate the first woman president of the United States. We played board games and drank — it was a great night!

And then the results started rolling in. And things started to turn sour. My friend and I kept getting disgusted and going outside to drink. Our wives poured over scraps of paper, trying to figure out how, mathmatically, it would be possible for Hillary to win enough states to beat Trump.

This was just not possible! my friend and I said to each other. The guy was an idiot! He was going to be a national embarrassment. Even worse, if he actually did win, he’d said a lot of really scary, dictator-y things that we hadn’t really taken too seriously before. He’d talked about creating a Muslim registry, banning travel from Muslim countries, building a wall along the Mexico border…there was a lot of really horrible things he’d talked about. He’d encouraged violence at his rallies. His supporters were fanatic, but surely there couldn’t be that many people that supported him? Surely those were a crazy fringe?

The next day, I literally felt the same way that I did in the wake of 9/11. I was shell-shocked. I knew the United States was racist — I’d talked about it on this blog plenty of times. But…to elect someone so blatantly racist and hateful…how could they? How could half of the country elect this monster?

The situation was made all the worse because, after all, the United States does not elect the person with the most votes as the President. The United States elects the person that gains the most Electoral College points — which are votes allocated to each state meant to be representative of the state’s population, but weighing the smaller more heavily to prevent more populous states with large cities from simply outvoting the rural states. This mean that although Hillary actually received THREE MILLION more votes overall, Donald Trump became president because he won the majority in more states.

The next four years will be written about in textbooks for a long time. They’ve been disastrous for us as a country. His presidency left hundreds of thousands dead, ruined our good name in the international community, and left our political institutions direly wounded. Every day was a barrage of horrors and lies and stupidity. Donald Trump was as corrupt as I feared and worse, implementing hateful policy after hateful policy and blatantly breaking laws in the open. We watched as the Democrats did virtually nothing, occasionally scoring some public favor by passively insulting Trump or mocking him, but never actually standing up to him or holding him accountable.

Even worse than that, we watched as the Republicans, who we already knew to be racist sacks of garbage, sidled up to the fascism banquet, donned their bibs, and dug in. They weren’t just complicit, they actively encouraged him. He became a useful idiot, their cudgel to ram through as many of their dream policies as they could.

Four years later, the Coronavirus has devastated our country. Hundreds of thousands are dead, the number of cases is reaching record highs, and it’s dangerous to go out in public for more than the most dire needs. My friends and I hadn’t seen each other in person more than twice in months, but we occasionally talked about the upcoming election. We were worried, but trying to remain hopeful. I was probably the most cynical among us — if we were a country that elected W. twice after he lied to get us into a war so that we could steal their oil, I didn’t see how we couldn’t be stupid and racist enough to elect a fascist again and let him set himself up permanently. Sure. Why not, at this point?

The election was as much of a nightmare as you’d expect. Joe Biden became the Democrat nominee, and he was none of our favorites, yet again. This time, we had a pretty bland old man who wouldn’t even have the novelty of being the first woman president. He’d be just another old white guy — in fact one of the oldest in our history. What was there to be excited about? He didn’t have a bold budget for social programs like Warren, or a daring healthcare plan like Bernie. But, when he became the nominee, we knew what we were going to do. No way were we going to stand by and let Trump install himself as Dictator-For-Life.

There was the fear that it wouldn’t matter. After all, in spite of a record number of people requesting mail-in ballots to avoid voting in person due to the Coronavirus, Trump constantly claimed that mail-in ballots were a scam, installed a crony to defund the postal service, close down mail boxes, and enforce a slowdown in processing of mail, creating delays everywhere. We weren’t sure if you voted by mail that it would actually be delivered, so we decided to vote in person. We are white and live in an overwhelmingly white area, so we only had to wait about 20 minutes to vote, and we did it a couple weeks early as our state allows.

The days leading up to the election, I was a bundle of nerves. I could barely think. I eventually started outlining a novel because it let me focus on something else. But come election evening, my wife, my brother, and I were glued to the TV. Thankful we had each other so we weren’t dealing with this alone, we watched in glum horror as state results slowly came in and turned red. A lot of them weren’t called, but the vote was overwhelmingly for Trump. However, as the night went on, we had a little bit of hope. Texas’s vote was actually really close, and there were states like Wisconsin and Minnesota that seemed to be favoring Biden.

I wouldn’t say we had hope — or at least, I didn’t. But by the time we went to bed that night, we had perhaps the first teeny signs of light after years of dark clouds. I was awake as most of the blue wall flipped over, and was cheered when CNN mentioned that most of the mail-in vote hadn’t been counted yet and they expected it to be overwhelmingly pro-Biden.

The stark difference in the two nights can’t be overstated. I can’t describe the sensation of watching as my country slowly turned on itself and installed a truly hateful man backed by a truly hateful party. I also can’t describe the sensation, after four years of horror, of seeing the first glimmer of hope.

Joe Biden was announced Saturday as the President-Elect of the United State of America. This means that, as of this writing, Donald Trump will be a one-term president.

When we finally heard MSNBC announce that they’d called the election, I literally broke down in tears. Not quiet streaming dignified tears. It was an exhausted, relieved sobbing, the kind of thing you let out after just barely surviving some catastrophic accident. We sat for probably an hour and a half, stunned, each trading off crying to the other as we watched the news.

People in cities all over the country flooded the streets, cheering and screaming and partying. We broke out champagne. I got drunk.

I’m not sure I’m able to express in words the sheer scope of that relief. The relief was overwhelming, like a tidal wave. I told my wife that it was like my body was a balled up fist that I’d been clenching the last four years, and yesterday I finally relaxed my grip. I still find myself realizing that we defeated a dictator and crying all over again.

And I’ve got to be honest, I watched Kamala Harris’s and Joe Biden’s acceptance speeches, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this relieved to see an adult on stage. I cried during both of their speeches. Hell, I even cheered. Joe Biden talked about containing the coronavirus. He talked about creating a place that’s welcoming to people of color, queer folks, even disabled folks, which is a group that so frequently is left out of political discussions.

Biden wasn’t my preferred candidate. And there are policies he proposes that I disagree with. He has discussed adding Republicans to his cabinet, which I disagree with to my very core. He’d discussed putting aside our bitter words and trying to unite. I’m not sure that can be done so easily. Only slightly less than half the country voted for treason, for fascism, for the end of our country and our democracy.

Biden has some surprisingly progressive policies proposed for his first 100 days — student debt forgiveness, a coronavirus task force, rejoining the Paris agreement, reversing Trump’s immigration laws, creating a cabinet to promote union organizing, and passing anti-discrimination laws for sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. But there are things we can push him on — reparations, eliminating the Electoral College, push for a gun buy back and ban, push for Medicare for All, for the decriminalization of marijuana, and lots more.

I wish Biden already had these things on his plan, but at least I know that Biden isn’t actively trying to kill me or my friends, family, and fellow citizens. I know he’s not installing himself as a dictator. I know he’s at least willing to listen, which is more than anyone on the right would do.

The fight is far from over. Returning to the status quo isn’t an option because there’s far too many that still need justice. Black folks are still being disenfranchised and killed. Native folks are still having their land and lives being ripped away. There’s still a massive income gap and wildly inadequate healthcare systems.

But the relief in waking up and knowing that Trump’s days in the White House are numbered, that just this once, we managed to stop a dictator in his tracks…it’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced. I’m so incredibly grateful to feel hope again.