Bonus Chapter: The View From My Home This Afternoon
Some Thoughts on the Election
Did anything positive come from the election? Here are some thoughts that I have discussed with friends.
It is good that this was not close. There is no question – she lost by a lot. So we are not in the midst of lawyers fighting desperate battles. There is space to recover from this campaign.
The Democratic Party leadership has failed utterly. The Party must reinvent itself. No question about that either.
Most of the talking heads were wrong. We now know that they were much too smitten with a candidate that did not have a record of proven appeal to the electorate. At the least, the party needs a robust primary system.
What can we make of the polling? A supposedly quality poll in Iowa just prior to the election had Harris up by 3 points. She lost Iowa by 14 points. Trump should never be underestimated again.
Being gracious now is not the worst idea in the world. I don’t make it a habit of quoting Hubert Humphrey, but here is what he said in his concession speech to Richard Nixon after the bitter campaign of 1968: “We've got a President-elect. He's going to have my help.”1
Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are rarely realized. Not never, but rarely. Perhaps Trump II will not be as bad as he has been portrayed. Our thinking about this man must be tempered with a lot of humility. That is, it is impossible to see the world through his eyes. He came within a millimeter of being assassinated. He ran a highly unorthodox campaign. And he won – establishing himself as the most important American political figure since FDR. He has nothing left to prove. Perhaps with his political resurrection will come an appreciation of democracy. After all, it worked for him.
If our Constitution survives and we have an election in 2028, the nation will make it through this experience.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-conceding-the-presidential-election-minneapolis-minnesota
I meant to add, in my comment, that I was moved almost to tears, by the video of Hubert Humphrey. Where are people like this when we need them so urgently in public life?
He was a wonderful man.
Richard,
Thank you for your measured and thoughtful response to what the nation has just gone through.