Now What?

I first started paying attention to national politics when I was in seventh grade. I remember the day well: it was Friday, November 22nd, 1963, and President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas.

There was a dance — called a sock hop — scheduled for that afternoon, and it was canceled. I remember being quite upset for a couple hours, and then it finally hit me what had happened (I’ve always been a bit slow, but like to think I usually get to where I need to be eventually).

I’ve been paying attention to politics ever since.

Along the way I’ve managed to survive Barry Goldwater, LBJ and the Vietnam war, Richard Nixon and the Vietnam war, Spiro Agnew, Jimmy Carter and Iran, Bill Clinton and his cigar, Bush and 9/11, Bush and Katrina (what was he thinking?), and so many others, up to and including Donald Trump and MAGA.

What we saw happen last night was memorable, to say the least. As it stands now, the Radical Left Lunatics have taken control of both the House and Senate, but that may not mean as much as it would seem. According to Mr. Trump this morning:

I have total veto power, so they have to come to us.

I’m not quite sure who “us” refers to in this case, but he was probably resorting to the “Royal We” that many of those in a position of uncertain power like to fall back upon in an attempt to deflect some of the onus.

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Anyway, here we are on the day after and the search for the hero or villain — depending on which network you are tuned to (I’ve spent time on both sides) — is raging. As expected, the President has added his version, although (up until now, at least) in a somewhat subdued voice.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Trump said that he believed Republicans suffered losses because he was not on the ballot.

I consider it to be the most successful two-year period in the history of any president… I wasn’t on the ticket, and because I wasn’t on the ticket, we couldn’t get enough people out to vote.

Maybe so, but — and notwithstanding the record turnout and literary precedent articulated in The Wizard of Oz — I suspect there may be a bit more to it than that, considering the magnitude of the voter response.

In a phone interview with Fox & Friends the morning of election day, the president made the following observation:

Inflation is solved

So said Mr. Trump, even though consumer prices have surged since he took office, rising 3.7 percent in September from a year earlier, driven in part by high energy costs stemming from the war with Iran and the tax burden hidden inside his tariffs.

The talking heads on Fox may have given him a pass for his cognitive dissonance and total disconnect from the reality that the voters live every time they check out at the grocery store or fill the gas tank on their car (or the diesel tank on their tractor), but the electorate apparently wasn’t so forgiving.

The big question now is what will the Democrats do with their new-found control of congress? They are so good at self-destructing, that it’s hard for me not to think that they probably will again, and we will be left in the same swamp that we’ve been in for the last several years.

One can only hope they can beat expectations again (and that our democracy can survive until January 2027 when the next congress is constitutionally scheduled to be certified and seated).