By Stephen Macaulay

So the question is what to watch for on Election Night. Maybe the rather elaborate sets the various outlets have built. Perhaps the branding for Microsoft or Google or whatever else that will be providing data resources. Possibly the dynamic between the “balanced” spokespeople that are sitting at a long table. Conceivably “The Mandalorian” and nothing election-related.

During the 2016 election I was on a business trip in California. Several of us who were in a meeting being held in Monterey, down the street from John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, all met in a hotel room and watched. No one knew the politics of one another at the start of the results rolling in. And as the results came in, not only were there multiple TV sets engaged, but people were checking their phones, tapping at the screens hoping things would update more quickly. At the end, there was no one who didn’t know where the rest stood.

That’s not going to happen again.

In 1990 I was in a hotel room in Tokyo. I had CNN International playing as I was preparing to attend meetings. I’d been there for a few days but was still jet-blurred, the state that follows jet lag. When I left Michigan, James Blanchard was a shoe-in for his third term as governor. When I glanced at the scroll on the bottom of the screen, I saw that John Engler had been elected.

I thought it had to be an error. It wasn’t.

This year? 

Home.

Maybe a book.

Macaulay is a cultural commentator based in Detroit.

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