Remember all those hilarious 2016 election night videos? Well, the good news is that a couple of the best scenes of liberal desolation that night have remained unseen...until now. They come to us by way of "The Final Year" documentary which was intended to celebrate the Obama adminstration foreign policy team in its last year of office. The featured players are former Secretary of State John Kerry, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, former United Nations ambassador Samantha Power, and former creative writing graduate and deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.
Most of the documentary is just boring propaganda with the theme of "look at how wonderful we are." However, at about the 1 hour and 16 minute mark the real fun begins when Samantha Power throws a Hillary Clinton victory party on Election Night 2016 featuring several dozen fellow female UN ambassadors and celebrity friends such as Gloria Steinem and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright. The party starts out in a jubilant mood and, as the election returns come in, ends up in an atmosphere of total depression reflected in Power's dejected face. Even better is the following scene of Ben Rhodes that night who falls into such a pit of despair that he is actually struck dumb. He can barely get a few words out.
So pull out the popcorn and beer and check out the schandenfreude entertainment!
Samantha power relived the horror (for her) of that night in a January 15 Politico interview with Susan Glasser:
SUSAN GLASSER: We’re having this conversation here in Washington, not quite exactly one year after the inauguration of President Trump. The movie ends with the inauguration of President Trump. I won’t spoil the ending for those of you who—
SAMANTHA POWER: He wins.
GLASSER: Well, yes, actually, okay. So, Samantha, we might as well start with that, then, probably the most memorable scene to some people certainly—this incredible moment of election night in your big apartment in New York City, where you’re the ambassador to the United Nations. Tell us about that scene.
POWER: Well, I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my life, but none as immortalized as this one. I decided on election night to invite the 37 women ambassadors to the U.N., many of whom face struggles in their own foreign service, or at the U.N. of a kind that, as an American, I never did. And I thought what an amazing night for them. I mean, that’s what America represents to the world, when a glass ceiling is shattered in our country, it creates a whole new sense of possibility for people everywhere.
And so, I invited them. Most of them came, and we gathered with Madeleine Albright, our first woman secretary of state; Gloria Steinem, who is not only an icon here, of course, but all around the world, and we went through the same process, if you want to call it that, that so many people did at their election parties. As the host, I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be quite the blowout that it was anticipated to be, because I wanted to make sure that people had a chance to interact with Gloria Steinem, and one of—
GLASSER: So, your concern was that actually that the evening was going to be over early.
POWER: Too soon. I wanted to milk the soft power dividend of this moment, and instead, and HBO was there, I guess unfortunately or fortunately, to capture it all, but instead, you really see what so many people went through, which was all of that sense of promise and excitement, and frankly, a dose of complacency. And then, it slowly dawning on us that not only was this going to be much closer than anybody anticipated, but that it was not going to end well.
And for me, every time I see that, I am haunted most, actually, by the images of my children, who were running around the apartment for much of the night, but when the election is called, my daughter, who at that time is four, is just lying in my lap, kind of like this pale, Irish statue, and there’s something about the way she’s lying, I don’t know, that just makes her look like she’s the one who’s going to inherit—
Thank you, Samantha Power and Ben Rhodes, for letting us in to milk the hard laughs at the expense of your election night despair that hit you on the heels of your insufferable smugness.
