Five Election Night Cocktails To Help You Completely Leave This Plane of Existence

1. Maple Bourbon Smash 

What better way to treat your Election Night guests than with a classic American cocktail featuring beloved ingredients from three very different regions of our great nation: bourbon, maple syrup, and orange juice!

As you excitedly watch those returns roll in with your buddies, just don’t let the origins of those ingredients make you think about us being powerless to stop Mitch McConnell from blocking every liberal judicial appointee, or the fact that even wonderful ol’ Vermont has somehow found itself with a popular Republican governor for the last six years. 

As for the orange juice…while the Maple Bourbon smash is not a particularly high alcohol content cocktail, it is crushable enough that three of these should get you pretty far gone before the races are called in notoriously fast-counting Florida. 

2. Black Manhattan

A twist on an old standby, thanks to the addition of complex Averna Amaro. And it’s not stingy on the booziness either! This one is packing 33 grams of pure alcohol. 

Speaking of Manhattan, can you fucking believe that the New York governor’s race is competitive this year? Lee Zeldin? The election denier and extreme abortion ban aficionado? But because he’s another 40-something guy with light brown hair who sometimes smiles in his TV commercials, tens of thousands of Westchester dipshits will say to each other: “Let’s give him a shot! It just feels good to take everything out on Democrats again for some reason, ya know?”

More pain is on the way: pour yourself another!

3. Oaxaca Old Fashioned 

Tequila? Yup. And Mezcal, too? Don’t mind if I do!

As the polls close in the American southwest’s battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada, you’re gonna wanna be absolutely fucking blasted on this delicious concoction that also features chocolate bitters. 

If you look up at the TV and see Kari Lake’s terrifying eyes bearing down into your very soul, this drink will make you feel very marginally better (at least until the morning). 

4. Bianco Negroni 

Ah, the glorious, dependable Negroni. Not a non-alcoholic ingredient in sight. This clear, mellifluous version of the king of bitter cocktails, which features Luxardo Bitter Bianco, will have you thinking: Did I hear somewhere that it’s not really all that hard to emigrate to Italy? Can that be right? I think I have a great, great grandmother from Naples. Do I?

You could be on the Amalfi coast as soon as tomorrow night, you know. Sipping one or two of these in a cafe above a cliff nestled behind a beautiful, empty beach…so far from this vile, cursed land. 

Here’s hoping you pass out while drunkenly trying to trace the generations in your family tree with your finger - before you remember that Italy just elected a fascist, too!

5. A Handle of Vodka 

Stop kidding yourself and just do it.