Did 2020 Kill the Washington, D.C. Election Night Party?
As the world watches Tuesday night to see who’s named the winner in the presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden—an announcement that some worry might take weeks to arrive—Washingtonians of a certain stripe are facing another more localized dilemma. In a town known for parties packed with insiders from both sides of the aisle, journalists, diplomats, spies, and wonks, le tout D.C. seems to be coming to grips with the idea that this year election night might be most responsibly enjoyed from home.
“I haven’t heard of anybody who’s throwing any election night parties, and if they are, I don’t know who would go,” says Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee Chair, MSNBC contributor, and man-about-town. “In a different environment, you would have had a lot of parties because of the nature of this election.” Instead, he says, “I’ll be doing what I’ve been doing for the last eight months: sitting at my desk in front of a Zoom camera.”
Juleanna Glover, the Washington consultant whose Kalorama parties are always brimming with boldfaced names, echoes the sentiment. “I’ll probably just be home,” she says, “constantly hitting refresh on my Twitter app,”
“I haven’t even made plans yet,” says Sally Quinn, the journalist and Georgetown doyenne. “It’s too hard to think about election night.”
Election night is always fraught in Washington. Many members belonging to the two centripetal tribes that make D.C. whir — politicians and the press — have to work into the wee hours. The campaigns are headquartered elsewhere, so the real action is never here. In 2008, the Obama people were in Chicago; in 2016, Donald and Hillary were in Midtown Manhattan; this year the Democrats would have been uncorking in Philadelphia.
During an average election cycle, even with the reporters working and the major players out of town, the rest of Washington’s ecosystem can count on finding a champagne-soaked port in the storm. This year, however, there’ll be no such luck.
Not everyone’s torn up about it. “I’ve never attended an election night victory party,” says Douglas Heye, the Republican comms czar turned CNN contributor. “They are the worst and should be avoided at all costs. Everyone there is, quite obviously, there to see their team win. So, it’s hard to get a clear distillation of what’s actually happening. They cheer results that have them ahead, boo those that have them down, but if you’re in the ballroom, you don’t know where those votes are coming from or what it actually means,” he says.
Quinn was in concurrence. “I’ve never had an election night party,” she says. “It’s not worth it to have one, people wander in and they wander out and the TV is on and nobody’s really watching. There’s no cohesion at an election night party, so it’s never fun. Even if your candidate is winning, it’s always slightly chaotic.”
OK, so it’s not Inauguration Day, but still this one is shaping up to be uniquely drab.
The night of the 2016 election, bars in D.C. were packed, slinging cocktail specials for drinks named “Trump Tower” and “Hillary’s Inbox.” This year, many are closed. Media outlets like The Washington Post and Politico usually have parties for friends, sources, advertisers, and the like, but the coronavirus pandemic has put the kibosh on all that.
Since the moment Trump arrived in Washington, he’s been accused by his detractors of treating the town like his personal playground. He has bulldozed institutions, kicked dirt in the face of federal agencies, and backhanded the bureaucracy. He festooned Rush Limbaugh with a Medal of Freedom. The big shots who run this little town want him out of their sandbox, badly. If the Biden landslide predicted by some pollsters comes to be, Tuesday night will be tantamount to an exorcism on the Potomac. But it will hardly be Dionysian.
“I had great plans,” says Francesca Craig, Director of Special Projects for the Motion Picture Association, which opened a new headquarters downtown earlier this year. Craig says MPA’s watch party “would have been on the roof, overlooking Black Lives Matter Plaza and the White House. Instead I’ll be in Rhode Island.”
Susanna Quinn, the entrepreneur and D.C. hostess, says her election night won’t look anything like 2016, when she hosted a sizeable soiree at home. “We have pods of people who we know are really careful and staying safe, so we’ll probably have a few people over to watch the election returns,” she says. “I can see myself making chili, and I’ll order plenty of vodka.”
Quinn adds, “I’ve had a couple of people say, ‘I can’t come over, I’m too nervous, I need to be home alone.’ They’re nervous about the returns, not the coronavirus, and they just can’t bring themselves to be social.”
In some ways, Washington has really never recovered from the hangover of 2016. Sally Quinn recalls how she spent that night, at the Post party held by publisher Fred Ryan. “I was standing with the British ambassador and the German ambassador and everybody was in horror as it became clear Trump was going to win,” she says. “The two ambassadors are no longer here, for Trump reasons, and the German ambassador’s wife said then, ‘That’s it, I don’t want to be here anymore.’ And they were planning to retire here!”
The mood in the Capital has been sour ever since. “It’s not fun in D.C. anymore, everything is tense,” says Steele. “It’s particularly galling for me since I was born and raised here and I look at all these people as interlopers,” he says, referring to Trump appointees. “You’re in my town. You’re fuckin’ up the vibe!”
There is one place that was planning on throwing a shindig: The Trump Hotel. Donald Trump Jr. blasted out fundraising emails recently advertising a planned party at the hotel as “EPIC” and “ELECTRIC.” But The New York Times reported Friday morning that the president canceled plans for an election night party at his hotel. His son, Eric, then appeared on Fox & Friends and said, "We're thinking about moving it, actually, over to the White House. we are looking at that right now. it's going to be a great night."
If there is any action on Tuesday night, it will be where all of 2020’s best parties have been — the streets. No matter what happens on Election night, you can bet crowds will gather in front of the White House. But will Americans will be there to party, or to protest?
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