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A little before one in the morning, I called up Slate contributor David Ferris.

And before we get into the election returns, I asked him if he'd had a fantasy for how last night was going to go down.

A plan. Of course he did.

It would have been an early night and we'd be having a much different conversation right now.

I'd have a much different group text with my friends.

What's the group text looking like right now?

It's grim, you know?

There's a lot of people wondering where we go from here.

Is there any hope left of Harris pulling this out?

And I'm kind of trying to shut that down.

You don't think she's going to pull it out.

I don't think she's going to pull it out.

When we spoke, no one had yet called the race for Donald Trump.

But it was clear. They were about to.

And pretty soon, Trump himself was taking the stage.

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