Just a month after the U.S. presidential election punctured their hopes and pummeled their expectations, Democrats Abroad members and friends gathered in Ajijic Monday for a holiday party, some of them fighting back tears as they hugged people they hadn’t seen since working together on voter registration in October.
“I’m afraid I’m going to cry when I see Larry,” said Jude Wallesen, a DA organizer in Guadalajara as she entered La Bodega restaurant for the party, referring to Ajijic-based DA leader Larry Pihl.
“Hello everybody,” Pihl intoned into a microphone a few minutes later, wearing a dazzling red print shirt and perky Santa Claus hat and greeting the approximately 60 partygoers. “We’re going to have a good time. We’re going to talk about positive things.”
Later he confided: “I don’t know how political I want to get today. I just want us to enjoy ourselves. We need it.” He added that on the political front, Democrats Abroad had started a worldwide phone effort calling for reform.
Despite Pihl’s invocation, there was no shortage of regrets expressed in lively exchanges at individual tables.
“If it weren’t for Hillary Clinton, we could be sitting here anticipating the inauguration of Bernie Sanders,” declared Tom VandenBosch of Guadalajara. “The primaries were corrupt to the core. Anyone with a disapproval rate in the 60th percentile shouldn’t have been running for office.”
Other partygoers echoed these sentiments and shot barbs at president-elect Donald Trump and his cabinet picks.
“One day Al Gore says he has a great conversation with Trump and a few days later Trump announces who he’s nominating for the Environmental Protection Agency — someone who could end up doing away with the EPA,” lamented Dan Turnquist of Guadalajara.
One Democrat who didn’t attend the party, except to meet friends after its conclusion, explained that he feared the festivities wouldn’t be very festive, considering the realities of the president elect. “When truth and decency are gone from political discourse, what else is there to talk about but that truth and decency are gone? That’s about as sad a political experience as any of us will ever live through,” said Ajijic Democrat Ed Tasca.
But when pressed to find something positive in the situation, many partygoers were compliant.
“There’s one nominee I like,” said Guadalajara resident Bill Olson. “And only one. That’s James Mattis for secretary of defense. He has lots of experience.”
“They call him ‘Mad Dog,’” a grinch put in.
“Looking for the good in a bad situation,” Wallesen, a Clinton supporter, mused. “Maybe that’s finding the cosmic significance, as Deepak Chopra would say. Or Mindell, in process oriented psychology, with its positive view of conflict, would ask what’s right about this situation, where are the opportunities for growth.
“So now we’re seeing a conversation on racial issues that we haven’t seen since the 1960s,” she offered. “It’s uncomfortable but needed. And it wouldn’t have happened if Hillary Clinton had won.”