The wine didn’t exactly flow at the start. I queued for a glass at quarter past seven, as people were only starting to come in, and was politely but coldly handed what amounted to one large sip, maybe two. It felt especially stingy given that tickets to the event had cost the equivalent of £50.
We were also in a private members’ club on the Upper East Side, the most affluent neighbourhood in New York City – couldn’t they afford to fill my plastic cup at least half to the brim?
As it turned out, I only needed to wait for the results to start dropping. By 9pm, the Metropolitan Republican Club’s makeshift bartender was practically serving Pinot Grigio by the barrel. At 9.30pm, when I asked for one last quick top-up, I was instead handed a cup so full that I couldn’t comfortably walk away without downing some of it first. “We’ve got to drown our sorrows, right?” the guy told me, and obviously I had to nod and agree.
I was, after all, at an election watch party deep inside the heart of the GOP’s universe. They weren’t having a good time.
At the very beginning, there’d been whispers that the polls had probably been wrong, and things would turn out okay, but it became very clear, very quickly, that they would not. A blue wave took over the country on Tuesday night, and these guys were the losers.
They stood in a large room that probably was resplendent once but now seemed quite shabby. Several of them mentioned the paint quite dramatically peeling off the ceiling, in what never failed to feel like an overly obvious metaphor. The club has, since its inception over a century ago, welcomed Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller as members, but those days felt pretty far away now.
The townhouse on East 83rd St has become solid MAGA territory, and is run by the Catsimatidis family, personal friends of the Trumps. The daughter, Andrea, is the chair of what is described as “New York City’s pre-eminent membership organization for conservatives of all stripes.”
According to her Instagram, Andrea attended the UFC fight at the White House in June, and the Enhanced Games a month before that. She also enjoys posing online in tiny stars-and-stripes bikinis, which may explain some of the decoration choices inside the building she helps to run.
There were, in the women’s bathrooms, piles of napkins adorned with the US flag. The idea probably felt nice and patriotic to whoever had it in the first place, but the real-life result was an unfortunate one, as anyone wishing to powder their nose was faced with a bin overflowing with dirty, crumpled, discarded star-spangled banners.
No-one mentioned them though, just like no-one really mentioned any of the results as they rolled in. There was an obnoxiously large television in the main room and it played Fox News, but not quite loudly enough for most people to hear what was going on. Instead, they had to content themselves with a never-ending stream of overly Botoxed anchors – men and women looking like they were born inside an Instagram filter – doing their best to smile through the disaster.
Still, James Talarico’s win proved to be too much for some. As the channel announced his victory, the woman in front of me turned around, panicked, and screeched: “We lost Texas? We have to do something!” It wasn’t entirely clear who the “we” was in this situation, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask her what she wanted that “something” to be.
In any case, many of the attendees said they were mostly here for Caroline Shinkle, the local Republican candidate for the club’s congressional district. She turned up eventually and spoke at around 8.30pm, walking up to the lectern as people chanted her name.
“This is history in the making”, she told the cheering crowd. “Regardless of the numbers, I want us to stay energised”. Her speech wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was awkward that she gave it in front of the screen. American television is known for its constant ad breaks and, ideally, no politician should want to proudly stand in front of an ad for supplements asking, in broad and bright letters: “what about your brain?”
Suggested Reading
The fall of Trump’s empire of madness
As we found out a little while later, Shinkle did manage to increase her predecessor’s margin in the seat – getting the blue vote up from 19.5% to 20%. Luckily, this didn’t manage to put off the crowd too much, as they merrily tucked into their 9pm sushi platter. This is, after all, one of the districts with the highest per capita income in the country.
You didn’t have to dig too deep to see that things weren’t going swimmingly, though. A few yards away from the avocado maki were a series of items put up for auction, as a means to fundraise. They included, among other things, a framed cover of the Washington Post on the day of Trump’s assassination attempt; a custom-framed photo display of Ronald Reagan, and a signed photo of Rudy Giuliani. By 10.15pm, some time after the event’s official end, three of the lots had received one bid each. Six had received none.
The main room had noticeably emptied out by then. Most people had left altogether, and many of the ones who’d stuck around were standing in corridors and outside the townhouse, bleakly talking to one another in low voices. Clearly there was nothing to be done, and no silver linings for them to try and hold onto.
The half-dozen pairs of novelty stars and stripes glasses that’d optimistically been left on various tables were all still there, lying untouched. What a beautiful sight they were.
Most popular
If Burnham held a snap election, he’d win – but there’s a catch
Yes, there must be another EU referendum. So let’s win it
What happens to Trump if he loses the midterms?
The frontline of our war with Putin is the phone in your pocket
