I generally deprecate “hot takes”—some media pundit’s instant response, still oozing and runny, to the news story of the moment.  Despite this feeling, I do have one brief thought about yesterday’s election of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States.  Well, maybe two brief thoughts.

The first is this: the Republican Party won, in part, because it has embraced its new identity: populist, authoritarian, and radical. The Democratic Party lost, in part, because it has failed to come to terms with its new identity and duties as the conservative party; that is, the party of an elite, urban, educated governing class.  It’s not news that the character and constituencies of the parties have flipped, so that the people who used to be Democrats–the working and lower middle classes–are now Republicans, and the people who used to be Republicans–the managerial and professional classes–are now Democrats.  What hasn’t made the news, or at least the news that I read (NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer), is how the Democrats disable themselves by clinging to their memories and myths and insisting that they are somehow progressive, transgressive, and transforming.  They aren’t, and their offering up of a lack-luster, conventional candidate confirms that failure.  What is more conventional than for a party to choose the vice-president of a sitting president, even when that president is unpopular?  Ask Hubert Humphrey how that worked out.

My second thought is that it will be all right. The Constitution’s guard rails may bend during the next four years, but I have confidence that they won’t break. I voted for Kamala Harris, not because I found her impressive as a potential president, but because for me, Trump’s ethical and moral depravity disqualifies him from high office, or even low office.  During the next four years, I intend to take to heart David French’s emphasized advice in this morning’s Times: “Defend the vulnerable, speak the truth.”

~Lee T. Pearcy
November 6, 2024