A few things to keep in mind

The election is over and many of the results are known outside of the composition of the US House of Representatives, which we probably won't completely know for a while longer. We'll have to be patient. The House and Senate flipping were expected, but then again, so was Harris winning the Blue Wall states, and we can see how well that turned out. So, right now, I hold out some faint hope that Hakeem Jeffries will get the Speaker's gavel, and essentially be able to throw a few necessary wrenches into the works whenever necessary (probably often).

A few other things I want to put out there. I really like Joe Biden and think he was a good solid President during his term. He was not perfect, but perfection is over-rated and non-existent. He was competent. He did not create chaos. That said, I had expected him to be a transitional President who would serve a term and pass the baton to the Democratic Party's future leaders. That should have happened in the summer of 2023 at the latest in order to give time for potential candidates to mount their primary campaigns and time to sort out an appropriate leader to take the baton and run with it. Instead, he waited until near the end of June this year and only after reality set in that not only had he stumbled badly in the debate, but that there was just no way his approval numbers would ever go up. That was a missed opportunity that will cost our nation dearly, and will tarnish his legacy a bit. 

Harris ran a very solid campaign in short order. I have a hard time finding fault in her strategy, and given all of the political headwinds she faced, she handled that campaign with aplomb. Her campaign was disciplined, focused heavily on the known swing states, brought us some much needed energy, and offered at least enough of an idea of her policy positions that we could reasonably understand what her term would offer. At minimum, my hope was that she could at least buy us four years while we try to further recover from Trump's decade of chaos and the trauma from the pandemic. Harris made her appeal to a grand coalition, which when dealing with an autocrat at the top of the GOP ticket, is a rational move. I was happy to donate to her and I was pleased with how she handled herself in her one debate and with the press. I honestly don't know what else she could have done. Maybe her candidacy was always doomed, but that would be the wisdom of hindsight. 

Those of us who oppose Trump and his MAGA movement with every fiber of our being need to avoid finger-pointing and score-settling. That will be counter-productive if there is any hope of resistance for the next four years, and perhaps much longer. 

One little bit of wonkiness: I first heard of Allan Lichtman in 2016 when he was making the rounds on talk shows stating that he predicted Trump would win based on a set of 13 historical "keys" that Lichtman and a colleague had researched in the early 1980s. It turned out Lichtman got it right. He got it right again in 2020, and actually had consistently got it right with his predictions going back to 1984. This election was a good destructive test of his theory. It is safe to say he got it wrong this year. Maybe the keys are not as robust as Lichtman believed. Theories come and theories go, and it is possible that this Lichtman's 13 keys will be swept into the dustbin of history once all is said and done. Hopefully I don't come across as if I am throwing shade here. It seemed like a good theory with a good track record. Theories have shelf lives. They get discarded and replaced all the time. This will be no different.

We have a long road ahead of us. I think it is safe to say that the worst is yet to come, and we will be around to experience it. For some, expatriation may be the only viable option. Others may stay and fight, with the knowledge that as we fall further into an authoritarian regime, doing so will become increasingly difficult and risky. We will be able to say with great confidence that the version of the US and world we are leaving our children and grandchildren will be considerably worse than it was before. That will be a stain on all of our legacies that will not wash out. This is me being optimistic, by the way.

 

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