Maybe it’s premature for me to write this. Hillary could still pull out a miracle. But at the moment, it appears that Trump will almost assuredly win the election. And he will have a Republican House and Senate to push forward his agenda, to appoint the next Supreme Court Justice.
I’m not going to mince words: The situation is fucking awful. Maybe Trump will start a nuclear war. Maybe he will institute a dictatorship. We can’t really do anything about the first but hope for the best. But operating on the assumption that President Trump doesn’t destroy the world, we can’t give up just now. This is still our country too, and we will fight for it if necessary.
But — as awful as it is — there are advantages to the current situation too. With full control over the government, Republicans would no longer be able to motivate their base with Hillary or Obama as the scary bogeyman. They would have no choice but to acquiesce to President Trump [and have him tied around their neck like a lodestone], or fight him as well. And if the United States survives as a democracy, we now have the chance to motivate our base to make 2018 into 2006 redux, to win a landslide in 2020 that sweeps state legislatures and gives us a chance to undo the horrific Republican gerrymandering that’s made a mockery out of our republic.
To some degree this is looking for the silver lining on the cloud. But it does give us a path of where to go constructively forward from here. Recriminations and finger-pointing serves nothing and no one, except President Trump. If we convince ourselves that we are helpless and incapable, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we flee collectively to Canada, there will remain no one left to fight.
We need to call on every Congressman and Senator [even Republicans who oppose Trump and perhaps some who supported him as well] to stymie President Trump’s agenda. The American people hate Trump; they only voted him in since the right-wing noise machine convinced them that Hillary was worse. We still have 46 seats or so in the Senate; we can take a lesson from Mitch McConnell and filibuster every single bill if necessary [and if Republicans end the filibuster, make them own it in the eyes of the press.] With Trump as an albatross around the Republican Party’s neck, perhaps the neverTrump wing will gain a spine without the bogeyman of Hillary Clinton to scare them. On Redstate, some conservatives are celebrating, yes, but many others are saying that the Republican Party is dead to them now and forever. We must not lose hope, and we must never, ever, acquiesce to Donald Trump, or support any unprincipled Blue Dog or DINO who gives in to his dark vision of America. Anyone who does so will be dead to us forever.
This is still our country. Democracy is more than a word; liberty and equality is more than a phrase, and as long as the American people continue to believe in it [as difficult as it may be at times], no tinpot dictator can take complete power. As cynical and pessimistic as this electoral season has made me, there is still a way forward from here, and we must never lose the audacity of hope.
We have no time for recriminations or arguments. The fight for 2018 begins tomorrow.