FINALLY!!! Mission Accomplished!!! Sort Of. Maybe. Partly.

What an agonizing ordeal the past week has been for this country and the world! In the middle of a rapidly worsening pandemic here and abroad, we have finally pulled the plug on Donald J. Trump, blocking four more years of the worst presidency in modern American history! It was certainly the epitome of high anxiety and déjà vu all over again for days while the absentee ballots were slowly counted and slowly erased DT’s seemingly insurmountable lead in many of the swing states that emerged on Election Day. But even though the primary and critical objective of dumping Trump has been achieved (of course pending certification of the votes and barring any unexpected earth-shattering surprise), the celebrations must be tempered by the otherwise very disappointing election results. Except at the presidential level, it was a great outcome for Republicans. Rather than the expected gaining of seats in the House, the Democrats will lose a handful of seats! And as for the widely predicted shift to Democratic control in the Senate, nearly all of the key Senate races which had Democrats polling comfortably ahead of vulnerable Republicans were lost except in Arizona and Colorado, resulting in a net gain of only a single seat in the Senate (due to the predictable loss of a seat in Alabama), aside from the two undecided Senate races in Georgia which will both face runoff elections in early January. Unless both of those are won by the Democrats, which is highly unlikely despite Biden’s very narrow victory in Georgia, the Senate will remain under Republican control, which will effectively block anything substantial that Biden wants to accomplish legislatively. That is a very big deal!

How is it possible that nearly all of the polls were so wrong for a second time in a row?! Nearly all were off by 5-10 points or more skewed toward Biden and Democrats!! Biden had a very steady average of 8-10 point national lead, which will probably end up close to only 2 points! It is extremely discouraging, scary and appalling that after everything that has transpired during Trump’s term, Republicans, who turned out in unprecedented numbers, were still mostly able to come out on top, except for Trump himself, and that only by an uncomfortably close margin in the swing states. There is probably no simple explanation for this. It is likely a combination of Trump’s uncanny talent as probably the best con man in modern history, the eager gullibility of his base, the terrifying intensity of the culture wars and associated racial, ethnic and other divisions which were all very effectively harnessed, stoked and magnified by Trump et al, the fear generated by the recent urban civil unrest related to various police killings which was effectively capitalized on by Trump, and the enormous power and influence of state TV (A.k.a. Fox “News”) and social media, including the disgusting flourishing of the right wing conspiracy theory universe. The Republicans were also effective in scaring voters with their labeling of Democrats as radicals and socialists who all wanted to defund the police and leave them vulnerable to minority and left wing mob attacks. Trump’s reckless mass rallies were also probably quite effective in mobilizing his voters to get to the polls. We also don’t know the extent of Russian and other influence on the vote through their disinformation efforts. Fortunately the Hunter Biden October surprise, which was pretty clearly part of the Russian propaganda campaign, did not seem to gain much traction beyond Trump’s base. And it also seems likely that there is still a large mostly silent majority of the country which remains more conservative than liberals like to think. It also proves that Trump’s strategy of driving up base turnout can be more effective than enlarging the base. There needs to be a lot of post-election analysis by Democrats (and pollsters – again!) to figure out what went wrong and how to do this better going forward. Unfortunately it seems inevitable that there will be continued and possibly even worse DC gridlock, at least if the Republican Senate decides to continue to play political hardball, to the detriment of the country. That bodes very poorly for advancing any progressive agenda that cannot be accomplished through executive orders.

As expected, after many months of haranguing his base with dire predictions of rampant election fraud from mail-in ballots, Trump is not conceding and will probably NEVER publicly concede his loss to someone he characterized as the worst candidate ever. Instead he is continuing to stoke political and social unrest with his claims of a stolen election, and even in a rapidly worsening pandemic situation he will probably continue to hold campaign style rallies to further indoctrinate his cult in the belief that the election results are illegitimate. This actually makes it important for every possible legal challenge to be mounted and hopefully rejected by the courts, but even that will not convince most of his brainwashed base. Unfortunately, even after he is out of office, he will probably continue to wield considerable power and influence over his party and his base, to the great detriment of the country. There is already talk of him running again in 2024! Hopefully a felony conviction will prevent that, and I don’t think you can tweet from prison! But none of that is by any means assured, and it may even be a long shot, as most of his potential legal threats are civil rather than criminal. And knowing Trump, he will probably preemptively pardon himself, in addition to all of his indicted and convicted cronies, before leaving office. Of course it remains to be seen whether that unprecedented step would fly in court (though I wouldn’t be surprised if his packed Scotus would pass it!), and it would not apply to any state convictions.

Meanwhile, we can all breathe a HUGE sigh of relief and hopefully safely celebrate before gathering ourselves up for the next battles!