Considered one of my objectives as I anticipate the New Yr is to embrace extra persistently the ideas of grace and gratitude. And given the outcomes of this previous election, it’s more durable—however maybe extra vital than ever—to attempt to aspire to this goal.
The election’s smoke has cleared. There’s a definitive outcome. Apart from some random conspiracy theorists on the left—spinning the identical sort of ballot-tampering nonsense that election deniers did 4 years in the past—America has accepted the result and both has moved on or is bracing for the tectonic shifts in governance that may accompany the incoming administration.
We all know, after all, that had the outcomes turned out in a different way, we’d have been in for one more spherical of “Cease the Steal.” However the fireplace hose of bogus complaints that had been streaming in on Election Day—Pennsylvania skilled “massive CHEATING,” bellowed Donald Trump on Fact Social—stopped abruptly round 10 p.m. ET, when it was clear Trump was going to win. The playbook had been foreordained: “We lose, it’s rigged. We win, it’s truthful.” However since we’ve truly had a free and truthful election, and can quickly have what we count on to be a peaceable switch of energy—sans revolt—perhaps most observers can acknowledge that one of many nation’s foundational tenets survived the 2024 race: Consultant democracy in America is constructed on an election system that also works, and works very effectively.
Who cares if Trump received by 1 million or 2 million, or if he received the favored vote by 1.2% or 1.1%? He received clearly and convincingly. The time has handed for partaking in absurd arguments over the semantics of what defines a “mandate.” The time has come for the pundits to cease blathering, for the pollsters to cease making an attempt to justify their botched forecasts and outmoded fashions. The truth is apparent: Republicans will maintain the presidency, the Senate, and the Home. The fitting additionally has a strong majority on the Supreme Court docket. So name it no matter you need, however whether or not you prefer it or not, Republicans get to run the present.
At the beginning of 2016, the presidential race had a couple of dozen Republican candidates. Keep in mind Carly Fiorina? Rick Santorum? Jim Gilmore? Neither do I. However if you happen to have been a political operative who needed to seize on to a candidate’s coattails, hoping to work for the likeliest subsequent president, Trump was your twelfth interview. So he bought the worst of the lot, and he went into the Oval Workplace with a bunch of damaged toys.
Not this time. Trump can be beginning his second time period with an skilled, well-oiled help group, one together with chief of workers Susie Wiles, who in all probability ranks up close to James Baker as one of the revered former marketing campaign operatives to be tapped as White Home chief of workers.
The damaged toys are headed to Goodwill. One of many key shit-stirrers who helped run the marketing campaign, Corey Lewandowski, is out within the chilly for now. After the election, having critically thrown his weight round throughout the 2024 marketing campaign, he reportedly supplied a conciliatory handshake to co-campaign supervisor Chris LaCivita, who, in keeping with Politico, poked a finger in his chest and stated: “Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you. You might have fucked with the mistaken individual. I’m going to fucking destroy you.” This was like a cinematic face-off between an underboss and a consigliere—a battle that at one level concerned LaCivita posting an image of Tony Soprano giving the center finger.
