--- ---  # Why _Succession_'s Election Night Episode Triggered D.C. So Hard  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent May 15, 2023 9:28 PM UTC  Adam Godley as Darwin Perry and Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy in season 4, episode 8 of Succession. Adam Godley as Darwin Perry and Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy in season 4, episode 8 of Succession.HBO  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent May 15, 2023 9:28 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ **Spoiler alert: This article discusses details of Succession season 4, episode 8.** There are moments when it’s not clear where the truth ends and pop culture begins. Such was the case with Gerald Ford’s struggles with stairs that gave way to _Saturday Night Live_’s merciless [mockery](https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1880208%5F1880218%5F1880225,00.html) of him as a klutz, the same show’s devastating [derision](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/arts/snl-tina-fey-sarah-palin-nicki-minaj.html) of Sarah Palin’s stint as the Republican Party’s nominee for the vice presidency as a half-wit, or even current President Joe Biden’s [struggles](https://www.newsweek.com/snl-mocks-try-guys-scandal-jokes-about-biden-second-show-season-1750164) with his age. Once the thesis is imprinted on a culture, it’s tough to scrub it. By the end of the 2008 campaign, it mattered not one blip that Palin never actually [said](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sarah-palin-russia-house/) she could see Russia from her house; it will invariably be among the first paragraphs of her obituary many years hence. Which is why the most recent [episode](https://time.com/6279599/succession-season-4-episode-8-recap/) of HBO’s _Succession_, called “America Decides,” hit way too close to home for those of us steeped in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Set in a fictionalized Fox News media environment on election night, the conservative elements in the fictional network’s ownership and leadership rushed to help the bid of a far-right presidential candidate promising them favorable regulation by declaring him the winner of Wisconsin while the outcome remained in doubt. With that swing state under his belt, the neo-fascist-lite candidate was able to soon claim victory after winning Arizona. Put plainly: Once the Chyron is loaded, not much else matters. If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, good. Trump, after all, did something similar during his 2020 campaign. “We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list,” Trump [told](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/04/trump-tries-to-claim-victory-even-as-ballots-are-being-counted-in-several-states-nbc-has-not-made-a-call.html) supporters the morning after Election Day. In the fictionalized world of HBO, that was also the argument being put forward by the stand-in Trumpist, a figure who inspired alleged violence, whose victory speech sounded a whole lot like one we heard before, and whose support of autocracy flies in the face of every post-World War II instinct. The appointment-viewing hour blended the real world _realpolitik_ inside the executives’ communications at Fox News—now [known](https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/media/dominion-fox-news-allegations/index.html), thanks to legal filing that [showed](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/business/media/tucker-carlson-dominion-fox-news.html) the network’s brass are often at odds with its most popular personalities—with the minority desire in the ranks of the newsroom brass to play it straight. All the while, the network watched its power fade and clout grow dull while rising brands to the right claimed their ownership of the new Republican Party. It’s not always clear when art imitates life, or vice versa. It may not even matter, especially if it’s a race to the bottom, as was the case as _Veep_ chased more outrageous stories only to be [topped](https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/trump-wrecked-veep-hbo-1203196732/) by the real-world Trump era. What is often missed in these fictionalized moments, though, is this: the symbiotic relationship between the two often brings out the worst in each. The United States remains a deeply polarized nation, so much so that the script for _Succession_ has no trouble turning a discussion of the potentially criminal torching of ballots in Wisconsin into a partisan shouting match. That the outcome of the next election turning on such vagaries feels plausible is part of what made the episode feel like an hour-long anxiety attack for many. The right and wrong matter less than the blame. But readers would do well to realize this is a hyper-fictionalized portrayal that ignores how the real world works. A single network calling a race wouldn’t mean much if the rest of the media establishment insisted it was too soon to call, just as Fox News’ infamously [early call](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/upshot/fox-arizona-election-call.html) of Arizona for Joe Biden in 2020 was not celebrated by Democrats until other outlets echoed that sentiment. (Nowhere I’ve ever worked would turn aside millions of dollars in sophisticated data modeling, polling, and shoe-leather reporting based on a billionaire heir’s whims.) _Succession_ has always been the perfect approximation of the Sunday Scaries, one last HBO-scripted freak-out before a new week begins and the escapism to the fictionalized lives of America’s top 1% of the One Percenters set. The characters lack moral compasses, but that’s not to say they’re immoral. Rather, they are more amoral—much like a former President who views the world in a transactional light rather than one of rights and wrongs, and who refuses to exit the stage. In that cultural familiarity, deep anxiety finds its feeding. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ Why Succession's Election Night Episode Triggered D.C. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6279940/succession-america-decides-election-reality/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6279940/succession-america-decides-election-reality/"},"headline":"Why Succession's Election Night Episode Triggered D.C. So Hard","datePublished":"2023-05-15T21:28:55.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T15:53:01.462Z","description":"That the outcome of the 2024 election could plausibly turn on similar events made the \"America Decides\" episode anxiety-attack inducing","url":"https://time.com/6279940/succession-america-decides-election-reality/","keywords":["The D.C. 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