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The least interesting political stories for me are those which explain the reason Democrats, in this case, (or any party, in any election) didn’t win. The thing is – and I feel very confident in saying this -- there is pretty much never “a reason” why a presidential candidate doesn’t win. And the only reason I say “pretty much never” rather than never, ever is because I’m leaving open possibility that in the future a presidential candidate turns out to be a serial killer who goes on a shooting rampage during his campaign and it’s all caught on camera. (Though in fairness, we came close to that this year, and it didn’t seem to make a difference to most people who voted MAGOP.)
There are always a great many reasons why a candidate lost. Some of them in the candidate’s control, but many of them – if not most – out of the candidate’s control. They can certainly try to address those things out of their control, and do a good or poor job at it, but in the end, if the hurdle is out of your control, there’s not much you can do about it. That’s why it’s “out of your control.”
Two related examples. First, there is absolutely nothing Kamala Harris could have done about President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, withdrawing from the race in July. She could run a great or poor campaign after becoming the nominee herself, but there’s absolutely nothing she could have done about not having been a candidate for the previous year, making herself and her positions known to the public.
And second – and I swear this is true (you can read about it here) – there is absolutely nothing Kamala Harris could have done about there actually being voters not knowing until Election Day that Joe Biden had withdrawn from the race over four months earlier. And yes, honestly, really. I don’t know how many, but I know it was enough that Google Trends reported searches for “Did Joe Biden drop out” began to spike early in the morning on Election Day and rose throughout the day, peaking at midnight. And spiked again, the day after the election around 8 in the morning. Yes, I know. Willful ignorance is not a virtue. And that’s a really big hurdle out of a candidates control -- when you’ve raised over a billion dollars, had a party convention covered on every TV network, had a presidential debate covered on every network, inundated TV with ads for four months, did countless interviews on television including on 60 Minutes and podcasts and newspapers, had countless rallies for four months, were covered on TV and online news (for four months) – for there are still enough people to spike Google Trends the day after the election asking if someone else running who dropped out four months ago!
What I also always find odd in post-mortem analyses of elections is that what tends to be ignored as one of those reasons is arguably one of the most important reasons, if not the most important reason: that more people, for any number of personal reasons, simply wanted to vote for the other candidate. No matter what your policies are, no matter what your record is, no matter who endorses you – if people want to vote for the other person, they will.
The result of all this is that I’ve found most post-election commentary woefully uninteresting. I have a general idea – from having followed the campaign closely, and the election night coverage – what many of the issues were for each candidate, which tends to translate why one of them get elected. What I’m most interested is who won – not just in the presidential election, but also the Senate and (now, especially, since it’s undecided) the House. That, to me, is far more important in the moment. In-depth analysis from the perspective of time can (again, for me) come later.
As such, I haven’t been watching news much later. I check out the headlines online, and valuable stories and stay in close touch with what’s happening. And have “live results” pages open, to see how the Congress is going.
And this all got me to thinking of what lies ahead. Pun intended. Trump is a chaos agent. We’ve seen it in the first administration. We’ve seen it in the campaign interlude. Eight years of it all. We know the storyline, the lying, the racism, the misogyny, the malignant narcissism, the fascism, the need to outrage, the need for attention, the dementia which will only degenerate.
Been there, done that.
And I have no intention to buy a ticket to the sequel. I know what’s there. Like so many sequels, it's the same material, only worse. Watching it intensely only pours a morass of hell on everyone and buries what’s important.
So, my plan – even more than just a concept of a plan –is to pay close attention to what’s in the news, read the stories that are important, record news shows when possible and fast-forward through the bedlam and stop to watch closely what is actual news. What is important. So, that it stands out. And not have the news on all day, as I work at my desk, from morning through dinner, pounding Trump rantings, hate and demented delusions, and MAGOP dysfunctional misdirection that does what it can to inundate everything in its sphere, filling it with buzzing, empty white noise. Pun intended.
Been there, done that.
I still plan to write about politics. A lot. (As I wrote yesterday, “I now have so much to write about in politics over the next four years.") Because it’s not only important, but these days, it’s critical. But there are a ton of people who thankfully will cover it all, and with overwhelmingly bigger platforms than me. But my plan, my hope, is not to be outraged by everything -- because then the most important outrages are merely “more of the same” and blend together – but be infuriated by what (to me) most matters as having impact. Trump being “outrageous,” rude, crude, sociopathic, racist, lying, demented isn’t news. It's repetition. It’s Trump being Trump. But Trump putting democracy at risk is news. And I’m certain he’ll be doing that plenty enough.
I have no idea how this plan of mine will all pan out. I’ll write just as much as always. I’ll write about politics a lot, too. (A lot.) I love writing about politics. And about theater, movies, sports, travel, history and various folderol. What I won’t do – I hope – is let myself gets sucked into the hellhole that is Trump and today’s MAGOP on a daily basis of exhausting minutia. Pointing out every Trump and MAGOP outrage, which we all know endlessly. And in many ways, it borders on self-defeating, because the sheer magnitude of it all means that so much that's most important gets pushed down out of the way as more and more piles on top of it. Instead, let the rubbish sink to the bottom so that the heavier crud can sit on it at the top.
There is clearly a huge resistance among Democrats and Never Trump former Republicans and Independents, which is half the country, and half the state governments, as they aggressively fight back against today’s MAGOP fascism. Together, they all play a part. And not becoming exhausted by a fascism whose goal at times seems to be to exhaust those opposing them. It’s the strength in numbers that allows the efforts to overlap and support itself. And hopefully it will grow, as Trump’s dementia, which is degenerative, begins to collapse on itself – not only in Trump but among those who are invested in it.
Yes, this below is melodramatic. But this particular version, for reasons that will become clear, I believe transcends that.
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