They warned us. They said it would not be over right away. They said it could take days for all the votes to be counted. They told us to wait for the slow gears of democracy to grind toward a conclusion.
Or, as Ian Dunt, a British political journalist, said on Twitter: “There’s not enough booze in all the world for sitting through the American election results.”
As Tuesday night wore on and it became clear that what each side had hoped for — a definitive win that would end this election for good — was unlikely to materialize, it was important to remember what Jim Kenney, the mayor of Philadelphia, had asked of his city before Election Day began: “Patience.”