MICHAEL: Are you writing more postcards to voters?

ALEXANDRA: No, I’m matching our budget to our bank accounts to see if I can find money to spare for the McGrath campaign. That six-month emergency fund of our ours is looking pretty weak here in month seven. But we’re about to save some money on food while we fast for Yom Kippur.

MICHAEL: OK, I’ll play along and pretend like I didn’t spend a fortune on Ben & Jerry’s this week thanks to radical self-care after not celebrating the New Year with Bubbe and in anticipation of self-deprivation this weekend. I’m sure that not eating the leftover takeout sitting in the fridge before it goes bad will “save” us enough to overthrow an empire.

ALEXANDRA: Every dollar helps, Michael. All the pundits say that outside of voting, donating money is the most effective way of helping your candidate.

MICHAEL: You know she can’t win, right?

ALEXANDRA: Allow me to speak for all women and say WE ARE SO FUCKING TIRED OF THAT FUCKING PHRASE. You can bet your Peloton-peddling ass that Ruth never paid mind to those words. If she had, she would never have been the first female tenured professor at Columbia. Nor the first woman member of the Harvard Law Review. First in her class. First in our hearts. GODDAMMIT RUTH. No more firsts for the most badass of Brooklyn broads. Our sweet, diminutive warrior. Gone. I wonder if 45 will write her out of the history curriculum, too.

MICHAEL: She gets one more first… she’ll be the first woman to lie in state at the Capital.

ALEXANDRA: Not in the rotunda, though. In some smaller room. My money says Mitch orchestrated one more snub to feed his bitter, selfish soul. I wouldn’t be surprised if Romney and Collins helped him.

MICHAEL: I know you hate Mitch, but according to the pundits, our money, regardless of what it is or isn’t saying, is better spent on more winnable senate campaigns – Maine, Arizona, South Carolina, Colorado…

ALEXANDRA: BUT MITCH IS WHO I WANT TO HURT RIGHT NOW. I want him to hurt like I hurt. I want him to weep like I wept when the rabbi at Ruth’s memorial yesterday began singing the psalm. I am so tired of hurting. Of watching my loved ones hurt. Of watching humanity hurt. I read this morning that for every person that dies from COVID, an average of 19 people are left mourning that person. With 200,000 dead, that’s almost 4 million people who’ve lost someone they love this year.

MICHAEL: Would it help if I told you the fund I’m thinking of is called Ditch Mitch or Die Trying?

ALEXANDRA: That’s just a meme, Michael. This is me making the “Girl, Same” face in response.

MICHAEL: No, it’s a real thing! It’s part of Vote Save America. They take your donations and funnel them across the 14 senate campaigns that we have a real opportunity to flip. Even if he doesn’t get voted out, he loses his power if he loses the majority.

ALEXANDRA: Is McGrath one of those 14?

MICHAEL: Did you see Regina King’s Emmy Award acceptance speech?

ALEXANDRA: I’ll take that as a “no.” And if one more person holds up that 12 million-dollar settlement as a testament to justice for Breonna while her murderers walk free, my rage will reap more destruction than a gender reveal-themed pyrotechnic device.

MICHAEL: Would a hot flash joke be appropriate right now?

ALEXANDRA: Appropriate is another one of those words that’s meaning seems relative in 2020. Like “presidential” or “unprecedented” or “good.” “How are you, Sally? Well, Joe, my home isn’t on fire, I have my health, food to eat, and no one in my family has been shot by police or charged with sedition this week, so all is good in this anarchist jurisdiction!

MICHAEL: My turn to take that as a “no.”

ALEXANDRA: That was rude, Michael. I’m sorry. I’m just so tired. I’m Dr.-Fauci-finding-out-that-one-of-his-employees-is-a-RedState.com-propagandist-while-Trump-loyalists-rewrite-the-CDC-website level of tired.

MICHAEL: I know. And it’s pretty daunting to think about all the work that lies ahead of us, regardless of how this election turns out. That what we’re fighting for is the opportunity to be even more exhausted and start the REALLY hard work of change.

ALEXANDRA: Can we just watch Umbrella Academy a third time and snuggle? Then we’ll cancel our Netflix subscription and send that money to the Ditch Mitch fund. Then I’ll have the strength to read that Atlantic article that has even Dan “Steady” Rather flustered, I promise. Just give me the rest of this week to rally.

MICHAEL: We’re out of popcorn, but I bought you an extra pint of Tonight Dough.

ALEXANDRA: I’ll take that as a “yes.”