I AM AN OPTIMISTIC PERSON BY nature, but also by necessity.

As a professional screenwriter, I face the daily risk of turning a blank page into a successful film or television show. Since it’s my job to try anyway, I practiced taking a Lloyd Noël’s approach to life. So you say there is a chance!

True to character, I walked into Tuesday night thinking it was more likely than not that Kamala Harris would be elected our first female president.

I had no illusions. I knew Donald Trump was an elderly person crook with a visibly worsening personality disorder was not enough to rule out any chance of winning. But as the polls closed and I turned on the butter cow shaped candle atop my homemade shrine to Ann Selzer, I felt pretty good.

When the Blue Wall began to collapse shortly after, I I went to bed I tossed and turned in a shiver of sweat, as I realized that I was wrong in assuming that the Mussolini-looted man, who was kind enough to warn several times that he destined to govern like a dictator on his first day in power, probably wouldn’t sit well with most of us. That’s stupid for me. Could I be more disconnected?

Making a mistake is not easy, especially when the consequences are so serious. And apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Since Tuesday evening, my phone has been flooded with a continuous barrage of virtual penances from everyone from my expert friends to my college friends about how bad we were.

This is the time when we should focus on how we might try to survive the next four years under the leadership of a maniacal demagogue. Instead, the anti-Trump coalition finds itself engaged in a level of contrition I haven’t seen since a promising, openly apolitical young Yale Law School graduate. truth teller wrote a poor memory which excited a large part of the shame-prone coastal elites after the electoral shock of 2016.

But here’s what’s putting a 20 percent tax on my patience when it comes to figuring out who really missed the mark this time: They I was wrong too.

On Tuesday, before the moment of truth, Trump’s hard core shouted incessantly about the terrifying specter of the election. fraud they saw hiding on every street corner. Before the votes began to be counted in their favor, a large portion of the MAGA faithful painted gloomy forecasts for the countryin which Democrats would revolt if they didn’t get what they wanted — copying the playbook their exalted leader used four years ago.

Trump himself warned Tuesday evening against “massive cheating» which he said was underway in Philadelphia.

Isn’t that at least somewhat interesting to the MAGA henchmen who chatted for four years about imaginary stolen elections and that when their team actually won fair and square, not only the cries of “Voter fraud!” suddenly silence on the right, but no one other than the most marginalized figures on the left cried foul?

Despite all the darkest things, most deeply felt fears As Steve Bannon’s acolytes had whispered before Trump’s victory, which they had correctly anticipated, the Democrats are not seeking to block the outcome of the elections. No hordes of guys with pink pussy descend on the courthouses to demand that the count be stopped.

Instead, Vice President Harris conceded defeat and felicity the man who deserves no praise. President Biden then invited Trump to the White House and promised the type of orderly transition that the president-elect had so childishly, vindictively and dangerously denied him four years ago.

During the prediction contest, Team Trump suffered an insurrection. That, in my opinion, counts as an even bigger miss than an incorrect estimate of where a few hundred thousand voters in three Rust Belt states would go in 2024.

So, is it too much to ask our fellow Trump supporters to examine some of their own track record — not only on how Democrats would handle this defeat, but also on their implicit support for Trump’s top line? – lose the situational electoral denial said about them?

Harris voters can reflect in good faith on whether we may have alienated potential voters with our “he/him” email signatures and our collective failure to recognize the blinding brilliance of prodding our candidate to interact with Barron. favorite podcast hosts.

But can’t Trump voters also stop for a moment to consider the possibility that they might one day be left speechless if a future grandchild asked them why they supported a man for president who made fun of people with disabilities, considered American military heroes losers and losersand became our nation’s first convicted felon and commander-in-chief of sex offenders?

I realize that it might be absurd to talk about it. Asking a certain type of Trump supporter to turn their gaze inward is a bit like taking the microphone at the New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago and challenging attendees to ask if that next dose of Botox is really necessary.

But is it unconscionable to suggest that, when the November fog clears, the more reasonable among them might take the time to consider the merits of their enthusiasm for a man whose first vice president was almost hanged? by its most vocal enthusiasts and whose second the vice president openly worried he could turn out to be the American Hitler?

I’m not blind to the possibility that anti-Trumpers corner the self-flagellation market. But I also believe that maybe – just maybe – some members of the new Trump coalition can be persuaded to think more deeply about how history will judge them.

I raise this question because, despite my natural optimism, I was surprised to feel even more pessimistic than almost everyone I know about what we have in store in a second Trump term. In my opinion, it will be even worse than we think.

So while ongoing thought experiments about where the Harris campaign went wrong and how Democrats might improve their branding might one day prove useful, right now it all feels a bit like which I imagine the opposition party could have reflected on afterwards. Viktor Orbán was elected with a mandate to govern what was until then a democratic Hungary.

We defeated Tokaji-sipping fools must admit that we are out of touch and strive to meet the triumphant majority of stuffed cabbage and goulash where they are. This is not the kind of thinking that is enough when you have just elected an aspiring autocrat who wants to punish his enemies and consolidate power.

We are currently going through a serious and unprecedented crisis. So can we spend a little less time chastising ourselves and a little more energy thinking about how we’re going to get through the next four years with the American experiment intact?

I’m not entirely naive. I know the aspiring Proud Boys from George Washington’s “Don’t Tread On Me” cosplay set will never do “the job.” But as we all begin to climb out of this abyss, I cling to hope that many Trump voters will eventually experience buyer’s remorse.

And perhaps they can be persuaded to participate in some soul-searching of their own before the most dangerous man ever to hold the highest office in the land succeeds. eradicate freedom of expression that we have long taken for granted.

Share