Hillary's Coffee Ladies share memories of election night defeat one year later

A year ago, I left five women sitting shell-shocked on the floor of a Wyoming home after their election night party went horribly wrong.

It was well past midnight and I remember them still staring at the television screen, trying to understand how Donald Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton to become president of the United States.

I had spent hours with these women over the years and my stories had made them famous. They were known nationally as the Hillary’s Coffees Ladies – a group of ordinary Ohio women who had met at a College Hill coffee shop every single Friday for eight years after meeting as volunteers during Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid.

“We have very little memory of that night. I have no memory of driving home,” admitted Joyce Shrimplin, when I met her and the other ladies for a Friday coffee a few weeks ago.

A year had passed and here we were again, inside the same home as on election night, passing plates of homemade Danish and drinking coffee, while they shared their fragmented memories.

“I don’t remember any of it,” said Francie Pepper, who couldn’t even recall which casserole she had served at the potluck dinner that night.

I remember the crying teenage Clinton campaign workers who buried their faces in the laps of these older women.

I remember the champagne glasses lined up so nicely on the basement bar, and unopened bottles in coolers on the floor. Not one was popped that night.

I remember the words of now 90-year-old Ena Wilson, when she told me early in the evening with hesitant excitement, “I never thought I would ever live to see a woman as president.”

Michele Mueller was the only member of the coffee group who was absent that night. Her work with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America had earned her an invitation to Clinton’s presumed victory party at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.

“We sat there for hours, and one of the reporters finally said ‘There are not enough votes left in Florida to give her Florida,’ and we knew it was over,” Mueller said. “It was just total silence in that room. I remember putting my hands on the stage and I said … I guess its time to go. It’s over.”

She still carries a piece of white confetti that was supposed to have dropped from the ceiling that night to celebrate Clinton’s win.

“Because it’s deeper," Shrimplin said. "I don’t know how to explain it.”

The women don’t just miss Clinton, they miss the social life and the deep bonding that her campaign gave to them -- not once, but twice.

In September the six women decided to drive to Buffalo to see Clinton at a book signing for her new memoir, ‘What Happened.’

“It was like being at her campaign events again, everybody waiting in line and talking,” Mueller said. “It was like being with friends again, all your friends, waiting for an event.”

Reporters interviewed them. Clinton recognized them and said, “You came all the way from Cincinnati,” and when she took a photo with them, the crowd cheered.

Mueller took the chance to thank Clinton for using her campaign to highlight gun violence prevention.

“She looked at me and said, ‘It’s important work. Don’t stop this work,'” Mueller said.

So the Hillary’s Coffees Ladies still meet every Friday morning, closing in on their 500th coffee next year. But now public service -- not just Clinton -- is their bond.

All of them are collecting signatures on petitions against gerrymandering in Ohio.

Florence McGraw, who is 86, still makes her daily call to Sen. Rob Portman’s office.

And all of them will be paying attention to upcoming local races – the Ohio governor’s race and U.S. Senate race in 2018, as well as congressional races.

“I think once we get submerged in future campaigns … that’s going to help us go through the process of redirecting our energy and our sadness,” Mueller said.

“She lost. We have to deal with it and move on to do what needs to be done,” Shrimplin said.

A week after that Buffalo trip, Shrimplin finally removed the life-size Clinton cardboard figure that had been in her office since the campaign and tucked it into a storage room.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the election and I don’t know that I want to, because I want to have something to keep driving me,” McGraw said.

“There is a 2018 election coming and I’m looking forward to it," McGraw continued. "I want to elect people who will go to Washington and work for the American people, all of us: Republicans, Democrats and Independents. But we’re not getting that now and its got to stop. This country is too important to all of us, if we’re going to make it.”

"I worked as a school bus driver in 2004 and took a group of kids on a field trip the day after the election. ... teachers were practically crying over Kerry’s loss ..."

Oh, Schadenfreude! Oh, Schadenfreude! (to tune of O Tannenbaum)

I well remember Nov '04 too. You'll recall the network exit polls all that day promised Dems an easy Kerry win. So they prematurely celebrated victory, and - just like last Nov - it made the Shock & Aww (wahhh!) all the more spectacular when reality hit.

That's when I discovered the delightful listening experience of the short-lived Air America radio network, with its only CO affiliate (in Boulder, natch) beaming me the Randi Rhodes show each evening on my way home.

What a roller coaster ride of emotions for them!!

First there was the giddy celebrating that the much-detested "Shrub" was about to be tossed out to the White House curb on his ear.

Then the Weeping & Gnashing of Teeth, the tearing out of the hair, the convulsive sobbing, etc.

Then the anger and the call to arms: This isn't possible! Somebody FIXED the election! It's our job to find out who and how! Conspiracy Theories abounded, and as the bar was continuously lowered as to which new ludicrous C.T. could be discussed on-air with a straight face, the laughability meter went off the scale for me.

Remember Diebold? Yale Skull & Bones? Secret plan by Kerry to "throw" the election?

But the best was yet to come: A woman called in to inform Randi that her organization was going to overturn the election. They were filing a lawsuit w/ the Ohio State Supreme Court to withhold the electoral votes, based on various irregularities - Diebold, polls closing too early, some new ones they couldn't discuss, etc - and they badly needed cash to do this.

So Rhodes was giddy with hope once again. And to think that the beginning of the end for Dubya was starting right there that very night on her very show! She would go down in history! So she urged her listeners to send in everything they could spare to this woman's organization.

But that phase also ended with a crash. It turned out the pet cause(s) of that woman caller's leftist advocacy group had nothing to do with Ohio or elections. For the next several nights Rhodes profusely apologized to her listeners for leading them astray. Schadenfreude Redux!

No donations were returned, AFAIK. And why should they? As every good Alinsky-ite knows, the Ends *always* justify the Means. "So what?" if a Little White Lie told to her fellow leftists resulted in a windfall to fund the fight against her pet grievance? It worked, didn't it? And it was for a noble cause, wasn't it?

Too much fun! I was sad to hear this past election day that Air America was no longer around to provide this kind of post-election entertainment.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.