If you work in and around politics long enough, you stop measuring time in months and years and start measuring time in election cycles, possibly in a way that’s not always healthy.
You may see “2018″ and “2020.” I see a midterm election and a presidential year.
When I found out the due date for my twins several years ago, my first emotion was joy, of course, but the next was panic, since it struck me immediately that their birthday would nearly always coincide with a November Election Day. How could I throw a birthday party and cover a presidential event in the same weekend?
Happily, we’ve managed. This year was hibachi and a Hawks game, sandwiched between Saturday visits from President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
But the longer I’ve worked around politics and campaigns, the longer the election cycles have gotten. No sooner have the votes been counted for the last election than the next one begins.
It’s a seminecessary evil, especially for the candidates who weren’t born with money or didn’t spend years in the private sector building wealth.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is one of the ones without a trust fund or enough money to write his campaign a fat check, since he’s worked much of career in some form of government or elected office. So he announced his 2026 campaign for governor this week, literally while votes for the 2024 election are still being counted, in large part to get ahead of the money game for a campaign that will cost millions just to compete.
You could practically hear the collective groans inside Georgia Republican offices, not because they don’t like Chris Carr, but because his announcement means the next election cycle has begun.
The game of thrones has no end.
That’s where Elvis comes in.
Elvis, whose proper name is “Graceland,” is a 16-hand horse the color of a chestnut who joined our family the week after the election. Along with being a tall drink of water, Elvis is handsome, wide-eyed and likes to lick your hand like a puppy. He’s also the realization of a childhood dream who came with an unvarnished suggestion from my husband: “It’s time to start living life again.”
He was right.
The years after the 2020 election in Georgia have felt like the election never ended. The count turned into a recount, which turned into the “Stop the Steal” effort and the chaos that followed. A grand jury was convened, then charges were filed.
The 2022 midterm elections in Georgia were based largely on what happened in 2020. Were you with Trump or against him? The 2024 contest was just a repeat of 2020, until it wasn’t.
In the end, the biggest victory — for everyone in the country — was that it was over when it was over.
But somewhere along the way in America, voting for a candidate or party morphed from something we do every four years into who we are as individuals. Even for people who weren’t working on campaigns, politics became their entertainment, then their purpose and then their identities.
It’s why election workers told me this year they think there were so many threats of violence and angry outbursts at polling places. It’s also the reason why I have friends I worry may never speak again after one voted for Trump and the other for Harris. Neither can understand the other’s devotion to their candidates.
When election cycles stretch across years, campaigns need voters and donors to be with them, always. That’s the business model of politics now, but it’s easy to see the damage it’s done.
There’s a good reason why the old saying, “There’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse,” is usually attributed to a politician — either Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan, who were both great animal lovers.
They would have known better than anyone that politics is a means to an end, but it’s never the end itself. It may be part of life, but it’s not a substitute for it.
That’s a lesson that veteran political professionals know well. But it’s time for everyone else to understand it, too.
I’ve never had a horse of my own before, but I have always been a rider. And the friends I met through horses have been some of the most enduring, especially in Washington, D.C.
In the weeks and months after I’d lost a job on Capitol Hill because of an election defeat, I noticed immediately that my professional emails dried up to almost nothing. The phone stopped ringing. The invitations to events all but vanished.
But my horse friends, who were both Democrats and Republicans, didn’t care which powerful politician I did or didn’t work for — and neither did the horses.
Happily, the horses also didn’t care who controlled Congress. Or who was in the White House. Or what my excuse was for being late to the barn.
Just that I showed up, hopefully with apples for them to eat.
I’ve spoken with too many Democrats to count since the election who are totally despondent about the results, which they had not expected. My advice to them is the same I gave to Republicans who lost the last time around — go for a walk or call a friend or pet your dog, maybe even ride a horse. You’ll be a better candidate or staffer — or just plain happier person because of it.
The election is over. It’s time to start living life again.
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