She had braced for the possibility that Donald Trump could win the White House and was “petrified” at the idea. It wasn’t that she was a fan of Hillary Clinton but volunteered for the campaign because she considered Clinton the best of the bad options.
The next morning, when she dropped her daughter off at school, she ran into Katie Lieberman — until then just a passing acquaintance — and the two started commiserating, then they hugged and then they broke down in tears.
Neither Himoff nor Lieberman had been especially active in politics, but both decided to put together a gathering of people like them, shellshocked by the Trump victory, to discuss what to do next.