Conspiracy Theories

And Other Coping Mechanisms for People to Get By

I was sitting on my couch the night of November 8th, 2016, watching election results filter in throughout the country. The wine glass I was sipping from throughout the night cracked in my hand somewhere between Ohio and Florida being called and I was on edge to the very end.

A lot was riding on that election. At the time, I was working for Media DC, where I was highly unpopular, to say the least. My co-workers included a laundry list of Never Trumpers, like Bill Kristol, who thought I was naive in believing that Trump could win the nomination and the presidency. Nevertheless, I was willing to suspend my belief in polls and political experts because of a feeling I had from people I spoke to on the ground. Needless to say, I was right.

Quickly after Hillary Clinton’s loss, the book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign was released by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, detailing the series of seismic mistakes made by Clinton. Yet rather than Democrats and liberals having a postmortem about what their failed candidate did wrong, a different narrative emerged: the election was stolen by Russia.