The Election Night playbook has already been written

An entirely unscientific look at things that are guaranteed to happen on Election Night, if recent history is an accurate indicator:

• Donald Trump will accuse the media of deliberately failing to report something it has been reporting nonstop for nine consecutive hours.

• At least one of Trumps’s Truth Social posts will contain more capital letters than a Times Square billboard.

• Whenever a Republican candidate is projected to lose a race early in the evening, Trump will blame the “millions of mail-in ballots that mysteriously appeared in the mail. Nobody knows where they came from.”

• When a Republican candidate is projected to lose just after the polls close in the East, Trump will accuse Democratic cities of manufacturing votes. He will write over Truth Social, “Philadelphia. Detroit. Atlanta. Amazing how all of these noncitizens keep figuring out a way to vote there.”

• When a Republican candidate is projected to lose late in the evening, Trump will demand an investigation. “We were winning at 9 p.m. Then they started counting more votes. Very suspicious.”

• Throughout the night, Trump will insist on Truth Social that all losing Republicans were victims of fraud while all winning ones were elected fairly. “Same state. Same machine. Same election. Totally different levels of honesty.”

• Early the following morning, Trump will declare the election both hopelessly rigged and an historic triumph, writing, “The Democrats stole the election, but we actually won by a landslide. No one has ever seen a bigger victory in a stolen election. It’s incredible.”

• Democrats will spend the first two hours of the night convinced that everything is going horribly. If the results improve, they’ll worry that the improvement is coming too quickly.

• No matter how well things are going, a Democratic strategist will announce that the party must immediately begin worrying about 2028.

• At least one Democratic tactician will announce that he is “cautiously optimistic,” which in party terminology means they have briefly stopped hyperventilating.

• Someone will warn Democrats that celebrating a victory could be interpreted as arrogance.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will suggest that the real threat to American democracy is seed oils.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson will invoke God’s will, leaving theologians to explain why the Almighty is apparently so interested in congressional redistricting.

• Elon Musk will post on X something incomprehensible, followed by a rocket emoji and the word “interesting.”

• At least one Trump loyalist will insist over Fox News that a disappointing election result is actually a brilliant strategic victory nobody else is smart enough to understand.

• A Fox News guest will claim that the mainstream media is hiding the truth while broadcasting that claim to several million viewers.

• At least one Fox News anchor will remind viewers that California is still counting ballots, as though the state were doing so out of personal spite.

• Rachel Maddow will deliver a historical explanation of the election over MS NOW that’s so detailed it begins with the Treaty of Versailles.

• Someone else on MSNOW will caution that a favorable result could actually be a trap.

• Someone else will warn that a disappointing result could actually be an opportunity.

• A CNN analyst will explain why a county containing 2,700 voters could determine the future of Western Civilization.

• Someone on CNN will describe a result as “fascinating” when they actually mean “incomprehensible.”

• A political commentator will reveal that the country is “deeply divided,” confirming what approximately 340 million Americans already understood.

• Someone will insist that the election represents a fundamental realignment of American politics based on the results from three suburban precincts.

• Someone will accuse Democrats of harvesting ballots, as though they were growing absentee voters in a greenhouse.

• A Republican strategist will announce that the party must improve its appeal to women while appearing on television with 11 other men.

• Someone will blame Taylor Swift simply for existing.

• Someone else will blame George Soros for masterminding the most diabolical election theft in American history.

• Someone will deliver a victory speech in front of a crowd of approximately 14 people who have been instructed to cheer as though they just won the Super Bowl.

• At least one TV journalist will stand outside an empty campaign headquarters and describe the mood inside as “tense.”

• Someone will announce that a race is “too close to call” and then spend the next 45 minutes calling it anyway.

• At least one television anchor will describe a perfectly ordinary electoral development as “absolutely unprecedented.”

• The words “breaking news” will continue to be applied to information that broke several hours earlier.

• A Republican strategist will announce that the party needs to connect with ordinary Americans, preferably from the first-class cabin of a flight to a donor retreat.

• Fox News will explain why the election wasn’t nearly as consequential as Democrats claim.

• MSNOW will explain why the election was even more significant than Democrats realize.

• CNN will assemble 16 analysts to determine whether or not the election really mattered all that much, with results expected sometime in December.

• During a 93-post rant taking up several hours, Trump will variously blame the media, the Democrats, the courts, the pollsters, the Federal Reserve, California, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell for the blue wave that washed over his party.

• Trump will also, however, claim credit for every Republican victory, including those in districts where the candidate begged him not to visit.

• A Democratic campaign headquarters will run out of champagne, while a Republican campaign headquarters will insist that champagne is a coastal elitist beverage.

• Stephen Miller will appear on Fox News looking as though somebody just told him the Statue of Liberty has renewed her visa.

• By sunrise, political consultants will have produced 47 contradictory explanations for what happened, each accompanied by a fundraising link.

• Fox News will decline to cover any dancing in the streets, opting instead to report on the migrant caravan that had been spotted 1,700 miles from the U.S. border and the transgender athlete who finished third in a high school track meet.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)