Show a Little Grace, Democrats

How hard can that be.

The election is over. The Trump side is having a hard time with that and I understand it. I was there four years ago. That is why I won’t join in with those spiking the ball and celebrating. Empathy is sometimes a curse but I’d rather have it than not have it.

Democrats are busy celebrating the win of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris without realizing how much they have lost in the last four years with their all-consuming unbridled hatred for Trump and his supporters. They have revealed themselves to be nothing like the shining city on the hill Obama’s influence manifested. Goodness, turns out, has to mean: only if you agree with me. And if I hate you I will destroy you until there is nothing left. How in the world is it possible to still share a bed with these folks and be happy about it?

How much more impressed would I have been if they had collectively realized just how alienating the party had become and taken this win with grace and humility instead of arrogance and spite. But by the end what defined the left and the Democrats was nothing except hatred for Trump. That was it. They could offer nothing else to the American people. Their hatred won. Imagine that.

Two years from now there is a pretty good chance the House will flip red. The same Republicans who wanted Trump out because they believed he was too xenophobic to carry their party into the future now have to reconcile that Trump drew more non-whites to the GOP than any Republican in 60 years. They just couldn’t see it because no one could. The media insisted on one story and one story only. Thus, no one could really explain why Trump’s support among voters Democrats believed they owned.

Now those same Republicans are going to have to find a way to deal with Trumpism and that isn’t going to be easy because Trump will be there to call them out at every election. They will take a victory lap, of course, and pretend that things in their party will ever be the same. But they won’t. There are so many candidates that are supported by the anti-establishment voices on the right that rose up during the Trump era and they’re not going to take too kindly to helping the candidates from the establishment republican side of things. How awkward if Mike Pence becomes the next contender for President in 2024.

Meanwhile, the Democrats do not seem to have learned their lesson either and will continue to support and maintain all of the things that scared voters for the past few years. No doubt Critical Race Theory will not be stopped, as Trump had tried to do. The Democrats will continue to cling to alienating identity politics which depends - even now - on calling every white person a racist.

In the end, it was a pandemic that finally took down Trump because that allowed for early and mail-in voting. Without that, Trump would have won. How do I know? Well, he won Ohio - you have to go back to JFK to find an election where the winner didn’t win Ohio first. Trump’s last minute momentum could not impact votes that were already cast even if people wanted to change their vote.

Democrats will be happy to have put the first female of color as Vice President and thus, she will have to be the one who runs for President in 2024, not those who did much better in the primary. Who knows how that one will go but you could see a showdown between Harris and Pence in 2024.

Finally, Democrats never accepted the results of the election in 2016. They still don’t. They spent four long years trying to defeat Trump. He deflected nonstop attacks from everyone that were brutal — but made little impact. He was impeached and he survived it. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars and had an entire media establishment helping them this year. That ought to tell you a lot about the direction of this country. It tells you Democrats barely won. And that Americans are starting to grow weary of the left.

And that usually means they will be ready for a big change. We also have to wonder, how will CNN and MSNBC survive now that they’ve been completely unmasked and don’t have Trump hate to fuel their ratings, which weren’t really matching Fox’s anyway? Who knows and who cares. For some of us, we’ll never turn them back on again.

On the upside, I do believe that, despite Trump’s many undesirable qualities, he has renewed an interest in politics from the people upward. I have found many voices that I now trust and that make sense to me. I have found a community of people who still have their hearts and minds well intact. And still believe in speaking the truth as it is, not the way the algorithms demand. I do believe those will be the voices that lead us into whatever is coming next.

Onward.