Apparently, I need to make two things clear and I don’t think I’m too far off to say that I speak for a large majority of liberals. First, I didn’t think this election was going to be a landslide for Joe Biden. Second, I never disputed the results of the 2016 election. I hated the results of the 2016 election. I was devastated by the results of the 2016 election. But I never disputed the results of the 2016 election. In my recollection, the only person that did dispute the results and claim fraud was Donald Trump, the guy who won.

Why do I feel the need to make these things clear? Because I keep seeing assertions to the contrary from right leaning sources.

Let me explain.

I’ve been checking Fox News for the electoral vote count because if they report a Biden victory, it has to be legit. But in checking their electoral map, I’ve also been scanning their page and reading their op-eds.

As a liberal, I’m obviously biased but their attempt to save face in light of the election results seems both transparent and pathetic. The main thing they seem to be saying is that the pollsters were wrong. They seem to take great pride in that. Haha! Gotcha, mainstream media! You said it was going to be a landslide and it wasn’t! There was no blue wave! America rejected your woke politics.

Can you really gloat over something every liberal in this country already knew?

The mainstream media predicted a landslide in 2016 and look how that turned out. There has never been a significant blue wave in any midterm election. We’ve made some gains but we’ve been beaten into submission by this administration. We listen in disbelief to the downright silly lies that come out of Trump’s mouth on a daily basis (and yeah “all politicians lie” but the sheer volume and audacity of Trump’s are breathtaking). We watched the Republican House members echo the exact words Trump put in their mouths at his impeachment hearing. Then we watched the U.S. senate not allow witnesses at the subsequent trial. We watched Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham commit the most blatant hypocrisy that I have seen in my lifetime by pushing a justice onto the supreme court the week before an election as we stand by powerless to do anything. Trust me, for the past four years, we are not ones to believe hopeful news.

So, the pollsters were wrong? Yeah, Greg Gutfeld, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Brian Kilmeade, and Adam Carolla (good God, Adam Carolla? Jimmy Kimmel, you need to clean up that mess, you gave an illiterate boxing coach a career, kindly take it back) we already knew that.

But I want to talk more about the second statement, that I never disputed the results of the 2016 election. I don’t say that simply to cast myself as more rational than the Trump supporters baselessly claiming fraud this very moment (though, that’s part of it). It apparently needs to be said because it’s such a consistent theme from the right. “This is about Democrats who can’t accept the election.” Rick Santorum even brought it up on CNN.

I even read in a CNN op-ed a conservative saying that liberals simply think, “orange man bad.” (I can’t seem to locate it at the moment but even without the reference, I stand by the sentiment.)

I can’t tell if they’re being disingenuous or not but there has always been this idea from the right that we simply don’t like him. Like it’s a petty squabble. Like it’s clear to them that this is a strong leader who is doing great things for the country and “draining the swamp” and we just decided not to like him.

Now, let me be clear, I don’t like him. That’s true. I hate him. I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anything in my life. I’m not exaggerating. But to hear certain Republicans tell it, we liberal elites don’t like him the way that we don’t like licorice and Matchbox 20, so we have it out for him.

In reality, it’s that we don’t like him the way we don’t like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, the KKK, cancer, and global warming. We don’t like him the way we don’t like a legitimate threat to our lives that we need to take care of.

We’ve watched him dismantle confidence in institutions and buck perfectly reasonable unwritten rules of the presidency: release your tax returns and divest from your business interests and, if at all possible, don’t use election funds to pay of a porn star you had an affair with when your wife was pregnant. And when we bring it up to his supporters all you get is “fake news” or “oh yeah? What about Hillary?” Supporters who see a successful business man. Supporters who listen to him call African countries “shithole countries” and tell four American Congresswomen of color to go back where they came from and justify it by saying, “he didn’t mean that” and “don’t listen to him and take him literally.”

And his speech patterns. My God, I just can’t stand it. “Look, a lot of people, believe me, a lot of people are saying X and no one ever talks about that, okay? Believe me. No one ever talks about X but we’re finding out many things, many things about X. The fake news media never talks about X because they’re fake but a lot of people… Look, people tell me, all the time, okay? They tell me all the time ‘you know more about X than anyone,’ okay? they say, ‘how did you get so smart about X?’ but no one gives me the credit, okay? No one gives me the credit…”

He whines and complains and says people are being “nasty” to him. Nasty? No one is being fair to him. Fair? “No president has been treated as unfairly as I have.” You hear that McKinely Lincoln, and Kennedy?

All of that? That’s not “Orange Man Bad,” That’s “Jesus Fucking Christ, is this really happening?”

This election isn’t rigged. It isn’t the petty payback of 72 million elites (I mean if we number in the millions, can we, by definition, be elite?) who are sick of seeing a brilliant leader “drain the swamp.” Man, over the past four years, the swamp got a whole lot fuckin’ thicker. This election is calmer and, let’s be honest, smarter heads prevailing.

I want to see the spell wear off of his supporters the way it does when people come out of a trance in movies. I want people to feel embarrassed that they went all in on a guy who’s just a reality television host. I want them to see that there are plenty of small government, pro business, pro life, good solid American politicians out there to support who aren’t peddling a distorted version of reality unchecked.

Some say that he’s already gearing up for 2024. Naw, son. Orange man done.