I DONE SEEN BETTER TIMES, BUT I'M PUTTIN' UP WITH THESE

When I went to bed last night, I felt a lot like I’d felt four years earlier, when I wrote, “This is not what I expected.”

I don’t feel as bad today as I felt four years ago, because it appears that Joe Biden will be our next president, and I got to vote in a blue state for the first time in my life.  To recap, if you’re keeping score at home, I was right about Biden carrying AZ, and about Mark Kelly beating Martha McSally.  I was wrong about a Biden landslide, the makeup of the Senate, and the expansion of the Democratic House majority.  But apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

It could be worse.  But not by much.  Here’s something else I wrote on election night four years ago:  “Right now, 2016 feels like the worst political year of my long lifetime. I’m beyond surprised. I’m shocked and disheartened. That will remain true even if Clinton wins the popular vote, and even if she somehow ekes out a narrow Electoral College victory. I wrote last summer that there was a large pool of racist, sexist voters in this country, but I had no idea that it amounted to half of the electorate. I’m ashamed to be an American.”

Change 2016 to 2020, change Clinton to Biden, and that’s pretty much how I feel this morning.

What mystifies me is that most of those same 2016 Trump voters, and even some new recruits, took a look at the past four years and said, sign me up for four more.  I mean, the racism and sexism are pretty much baked in at this point, but couldn’t those folks find someone competent to rally behind?  Nope.

Byron York, editor of The National Review, argued that Trump voters would make this a “middle finger election.”  I think he got it right.  Sixty five million people hate me (and people like me) enough that they’ll happily vote for the guy who has presided over 220,000+ preventable deaths, with a third wave building up steam. 

I don’t get it.  I quite literally don’t understand it.  Last night as I was trying to get to sleep, I tried to think of synonyms for what I was feeling.  Confusion, incomprehension, bafflement, gobsmacked, etc.

I’m writing this on Wednesday morning.  For the moment, it appears that disaster has been averted.  I was hoping for better than that.  I’ll opine at greater length once the dust settles (and I get a little more sleep.)