Dawn Wednesday slammed many Democrats with the question: How could this have happened? How could the country have returned to its highest office a man of such terrible character and demeanor as Donald Trump?
Democrats should look in the mirror.
For the country’s willingness to risk a second Trump administration is just the measure of the disaster of the last four years of Democratic administration, a measure of the country’s desperation for change. All elections for high office are continuation or change elections, and this one was a change election that became grotesque because of the excesses on both sides.
The nation knew perfectly well about Trump’s character and demeanor. But it also sensed that the prosecutions of him were really political persecutions, and that at some point policy outweighs character in politics and government. Jimmy Carter had a sterling character, but as president four decades ago he gave the country a disastrous term as president and was overwhelmingly defeated for re-election by a former governor many regarded as a right-wing kook.
This week the country decided that even if, as the Democrats said, Trump was a kook, a crook, a rapist, a fascist, and a Nazi, he was still much better than the Democratic alternative: ruinous inflation and unprecedented and essentially treasonous illegal immigration that has driven the wage base down and housing costs up, thereby devastating the working class, all topped with another stupid imperial war, sanctimonious wokeness, transgenderism, and, in Vice President Kamala Harris, an empty-headed product of the looney left who wouldn’t or couldn’t answer a serious question.
Trump is unlikely to end inflation. As Harris did, he supports the virtually unlimited deficit spending and borrowing that are weakening the dollar and pushing the world away from it. Since the federal government now is incapable of any financial restraint because voters themselves now have been falsely taught that everything can be free, the dollar will continue to be inflated away. Thus Democrats eventually may be glad they lost this election.
But at least Trump may reduce illegal immigration, start deporting people who entered the country unvetted, end the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, discard environmental extremism, and stop government from putting men into women’s sports, restrooms, and prisons.
Will Democrats ever recover enough from their Trump Derangement Syndrome to reflect on their defeat, not just for president but also for the Senate and probably for the House as well?
Having lost the Senate, Democrats shouldn’t need to reflect much on their desire to repeal the filibuster rule, which they dreamed of doing after Harris’ election. Indeed, for the next two years the filibuster may become the last lever of national Democratic power. The Democrats will quickly swallow their hypocrisy and move on.
Democrats and liberals generally did little reflecting a week ago when 250,000 of them canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post because its publisher, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, prevented publication of an editorial endorsing Harris. Such an endorsement from the Post would have been routine and have changed few if any minds. But by slanting its news coverage the Post has been a major propagandist for the Democrats. Cancelling their subscriptions, the Post’s former readers have weakened their own side.
Though Connecticut went heavily Democratic again, the state embodies much of what the country has just rejected.
The state nullifies federal immigration law by giving identification documents and medical insurance to illegal immigrants and prohibiting police from cooperating with federal immigration agents. The state promotes and coddles transgenderism in schools, pushing boys into girls’ sports and restrooms and requiring boys’ restrooms to stock feminine hygiene products.
With policy identical to Connecticut’s, Minnesota famously has Gov. “Tampon Tim” Walz. Less famously, Connecticut has Gov. “Napkin Ned” Lamont.
These “woke” policies almost certainly do not have majority support in Connecticut. But even with such easy targets, the state’s Republican Party remains too weak to provide consistent and coherent opposition. So the state keeps lurching left.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.