What Now, Genius?
Election is over. It's time to play the blame game.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not okay.
Processing what happened on November 5, 2024, is going to take more time than I anticipated. Having spent the week being confident and content with the outcome I predicted last month, then seeing it crash down like a horrible plot twist you didn’t see coming, akin to an innocent dog getting murdered by the bad guy, has been unsettling.
The worst plot twist in reality is that convicted felon and former president Donald Trump will now be convicted felon and president-elect of the United States.
There already is too much post-election analysis, and there will be a lot more by people who are somehow Election Geniuses - boasting their talents by quickly pointing out what went wrong or how a campaign should have reached out to a specific demographic. If you can predict how 150 million people will do across the country, please hire me and let me soak up your brilliance.
The tired rhetoric of Democrats losing touch with the working middle class has been brought up again and will be beaten to the death forever. The argument continues that somehow an Ivy League-educated New York City real estate mogul who inherited his wealth, along with his running mate, who earned his law degree from another Ivy school, are somewhere better equipped to help the “working class” by telling them their hard-working immigrant neighbors are eating their pets.
No, Election Geniuses say the Democratic Party has left behind the working class despite its leader being the most pro-union president in 80 years and delivering for the working class with a strong economy and 8.7 million jobs created, the most in any president’s first year and a half in office. Election Geniuses ignore wage increases, low employment rate (under 4%), and the American Rescue Act that kept families afloat during the worst global pandemic in a century as examples of helping the middle class.
So now that we know Latino men, no college degree people and non-union working class broke for Trump. In contrast, the educated, union workers, and black people broke more for Harris, which begs the question:
What now, geniuses?
Before I let them answer, let’s get some things straight.
Elections are determinations of our moral compass and capacity. In elections, we look for leaders with a moral compass that aligns with societal values, trusting they will act in the best interest of others. By voting, we entrust our leaders with the moral capacity to admit mistakes, show empathy, and unite fractions. It takes resilience and strength as an electorate to choose leaders who will guide us on a path that will be challenging and do it responsibly and ethically.
When we elected Lincoln, it was with the understanding that we would be able to navigate the ending of slavery. Sometimes, our moral compass steers us in a direction where we make a mess of things, like pretty much everyone elected before Lincoln. Elections aren’t perfect, but they can be disastrous or republic-saving.
Frankly, there’s nothing inherently great about America. We aren’t guaranteed a republic, let alone a great one. We work for greatness. We get there when we are inclusive, innovative, and equal. We were great at different historical points, like the Civil War, women’s suffrage, Civil Rights, and immigration.
Anything we had to earn made us great.
But there are things that we think are great but aren’t. Nobody, ever, has copied our National Football League or our Electoral College. No one emulates our violence. We revere our right to own weapons that can massacre hundreds of children while at school, and a favorite activity is to watch steroid-filled men and women body slam themselves into tables and chairs.
Who else consumes as much garbage, for lack of a better term, as we do?
Garbage in, garbage out, and what we get is Donald Dump Trump.
Those who didn’t vote for him are stuck with him.
Again.
I wouldn’t call that great.
Just like four years ago, when we adjusted to working during the pandemic, America is entering a new normal regarding its moral compass and capacity.
We now conclude that January 6, 2021, is no longer an issue.
We no longer require character and decency in our chief executive.
Nothing short of being a woman is disqualifying.
Tuesday’s outcome isn’t about Election Geniuses lecturing the party that lost its way with words or associations like this Washington Post Election Genius thinks.
This election isn’t where a genius like the USA Today columnist blamed Joe Biden for not announcing he wouldn’t run again much earlier.
These geniuses seem to know there’s an unknown candidate who, with the same infrastructure and resources, would have magically convinced the working class to vote for things that Democrats already deliver on. They actually believe if the Democrats had a primary, they could have disqualified the current vice president because Americans think poorly of the job she is doing, despite what the facts are.
No, we showed the world that our moral capacity as people has decreased significantly.
We have 40 years of economic reality that trickle-down effects never happen. The United States has 813 billioniares, the most in the world, and it’s a number that continues to grow. Not one was affected by the pandemic and economic downturn many families experienced. Lost jobs, lost wages, didn’t matter. The rich got richer while the poor continued to subsidize them. This is where we place our values. For 40 years, we have handed our leaders the compass to walk us through economic plans like those of Reagan, Bush, and now, Trump.
The stock market roars, and corporate profits increase. These things don’t matter when inflation hits 9% at any point during four years, but in reverse and inflation is low, while trading and profits lag, the incumbent will still be in an untenable position.
But to Election Geniuses, it’s politicians, advisors, and party bosses who are to blame.
Donald Trump is not an unknown entity. He’s been in the political spotlight for about ten years. He’s been running for president for nine of those.
There is an argument to be made back in 2016 that we didn’t know what the D List actor would do once in office. He immediately clued us in.
He gave tax cuts to the richest Americans and corporations. He didn’t even try to increase the minimum wage. The big infrastructure plan he promised never materialized. He rolled back overtime protections and made it more difficult for workers to sue their employers if injured on the job.
Trump doubled down on these issues this time around and campaigned on promising tariffs and deporting the working class undocumented workers. Today, a judge he appointed overturned a Biden policy that would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are married to US citizens.
Election Geniuses will tell you that Democrats didn’t do a good enough job overcoming their success by focusing too much on things that don’t matter in the new normal, but that’s armchair quarterbacking an NFL game. Conservative Election Geniuses would have you believe that “Going Woke” broke the party because they messed up our sports and invented words like Latinx.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that the country consumes information from sources other than the Mainstream Media, which is a useful punching bag for politicians and grifters. Instead, we receive information from podcasts, the most popular of which is from a failed comic who used to host a show called Fear Factor, which I think was about eating bugs for prize money.
Election Geniuses now suggest that if the next politician doesn’t sit across from Joe Rogan and his Experience for a few hours, you will lose as Kamala Harris did.
If this is true, then we can add for certain that we are unserious people. Because we think we are inherently great, we are doomed to fail. We are content with what we have, quick to complain about what we don’t, disinterested in helping others get what they deserve, and never work for the collective sacrifice it takes to live in a country that provides ourselves with numerous NFL games and WrestleManias you can attend.
Look, I could go on, and on, and on. It’s exhausting. This initial draft was over 3,000 words.
I’ll say this: Just like the president we elected, Americans are accountability avoidants. I used to think my last employer had the market on plausible deniability all to themselves, but they are amateurs compared to the American people and the Election Geniuses who cuddle them.
There are tens of millions of people who have voted for Trump. We proved you cannot shame people into doing something right. People who voted for Trump will use the Nikki Haley Standard that she simply disagrees with him.
The new normal is that Trump is just simply disagreeable.
So what now, geniuses?
As you know, I’m no genius. I don’t have any words of inspiration. I hate this country right now. I hate everything about it: how we take it for granted, how we idolize liars, vote against our best interests, and the NFL because my team has never been to the Super Bowl.
If Trump's economic plan is achieved because Republicans control all branches of the government, we can expect inflation to rise faster than the rockets Elon Musk will be building and bilking the government he will be charged with gutting, sending the economy into chaos after Biden had navigated us through choppy waters.
If Trump’s immigration plan moves forward, families will be broken up, businesses will suffer, and we will have lower tax revenue.
So what now to those of us stuck with such an unfit leader? To be here when everything falls apart. Not to lean into “I told you so” but to increase our moral capacity and use our compass to lead us toward a path when we earned greatness.
Okay, I hope that insight was helpful. I’m back to work on my practicum this weekend, which includes Monday. I’m hoping to make a huge leap in terms of what I will finish. Wish me luck!
I’ll bang out another Maundy Monday Newsletter for you.
Have a great weekend.
Okay,
Chris
Hi Chris, don’t hold back! I hope it doesn’t make you angrier if I remind you that Winston Churchill, the British hero-leader of WW II, was unceremoniously voted out of office and was replaced in the middle of the Potsdam Conference by the new Prime Minister. And that Lincoln won election with less than 40% of the popular vote. Not a strong mandate. Which only goes to show that electoral politics are weird and fascinating and unpredictable and with a logic all their own.