Last night’s solid Jonah Hill-hosted Saturday Night Live was peppered with Vote Blue sentiments on the weekend before what some are calling the most important midterm elections ever. On Weekend Update, Pete Davidson took time away from (rather touchingly) addressing his breakup with Ariana Grande to urge young people to the polls, while Kate McKinnon’s beady-eyed Fox News propagandist Laura Ingraham did the opposite in the cold open, providing terrible advice designed to keep non-whites from voting. Even musical guest Maggie Rogers came out for the goodbyes in a voting-specific tee. But SNL truly summed up the national mood among those hoping for the restoration of checks and balances against a white supremacist sociopath and his cabal of GOP enablers in a commercial parody where anxious Democrats attempt to keep up their beleaguered optimism in the face of Tuesday’s looming Election Day.
“There’s a blue wave on the horizon,” begins grinning suburban mom Heidi Gardner, before her voice begins to tremble as she forces up her thumb to punctuate her shaky pronouncement, “I have never felt more confident!” Both businessman Beck Bennett and florist Kate McKinnon have trouble downing their chosen beverages (coffee and a bottle of hooch, respectively) as they grimacingly assure the camera (and themselves) that “We’re finally gonna put this administration in check.” Even Leslie Jones’ eye-rolling kitten isn’t buying Jones’ desperate promise that “white women are gonna do the right thing this time.” And host Hill’s doctor can’t keep himself from sucking down a faceful of anesthetic at the shaky promise of a Democratic victory, even though “Nancy Pelosi just said so on Colbert.”
Sweat stains, frozen smiles, a sharp slap from mom Aidy Bryant at son Pete Davidson’s joke about forgetting when Election Day is (it’s Tuesday), and Gardner interrupting her well-intentioned speech about the long road ahead by frantically screaming at her small children, “Kids! Go inside! Mommy told you—stay inside ’til Tuesday!” All the hallmarks of a confident electorate not all all worried that Republican voter suppression, gerrymandering, fear-mongering, race-baiting, and possible foreign collusion are going to destroy everything American is supposed to represent. No siree.
Vote.