If like me you’re still stunned and appalled that a racist pathological liar — whose narcissism has clearly gone beyond personality disorder into full-blown mental illness — has been vaulted into the most powerful job in the world, if like me you cover your ears at every mention of “President” Trump and switch to the Food Network, or old reruns of “Bewitched,” or any damn thing else whenever he shows up on the TV screen — in sum, if you’re freaked the hell out at our current situation, you may see nothing but gloom and doom on the horizon.
But there are a few silver linings among the thunderheads of darkness.
* Consider that Trump actually did lose the popular vote by a wide margin. The American people in toto aren’t quite as stupid as one might be tempted to think.
* As we all know, a total change in 80,000 votes in three historically solid blue states would have led to a different result. A reversal of that total in 2020 is not hard to imagine, especially as Trump won’t be able to deliver on his promises to swiftly rout ISIS and bring back all those industrial jobs.
* Even in a most difficult year that defied all conventional norms, Virginia and Colorado both went for Hillary by about 5 percent. Along with Nevada, we may reasonably switch them from “swing” states to blue states.
* Trump starts off his presidency with an approval rating of 45 percent. This is astonishingly low, given that new presidents typically enjoy a period of goodwill. Even after the bitter post-2000 election fight, George W. Bush began his tenure with 57 percent approval. Most astonishing is Trump’s “disapprove” number — also 45 percent, giving him a net approval of 0. Most entering presidents average between 10-20 percent disapproval. “No opinion” usually garners a fair number, but in Trump’s case, only 10 percent don’t have an opinion already.
We can argue all day about what caused the disaster of 2016, and Hillary’s relative strengths and weaknesses as a candidate. (Full disclosure: I supported her, somewhat reluctantly, in the primaries, as what I saw as the strongest of the three major candidates who offered themselves up.) Clearly, she was self-handicapped by the email problem and failure to campaign more. But there was, it seems to me, more afoot out there in the hinterlands. Trump was also a unique phenomenon, let’s admit it.
But Trump’s uniqueness will be history in four years, and the Teflon armor that protected him in 2016 in the face of his innumerable lies, inconsistencies and senseless jibber-jabber is unlikely to wear so well in an actual presidency, when it will have real consequences. We saw just this morning that a gratuitous insult towards Mexico has caused President Pena Nieto to cancel his trip to the U.S. Unless, like some portion of Trump voters, you believe in unicorns, it’s hard to see Trump delivering on all those promises he made. Even his recent flurry of executive orders to “build the wall,” “derail Obamacare” and “end sanctuary cities” are largely (though not entirely) toothless, since the president can’t spend much money without the approval of Congress nor fail to deliver entitlements required by law just on his say-so.
So, amid the bafflement and grief — and believe me, I’ve seen presidents come and go — Truman was still in office when I was born, and this administration is unlike any I’ve seen — among all that gloom, take heart that better days are ahead.
It will take work, though —
* Relentless resistance to Cheeto Jebus, as exemplified by the energy of the Women’s March
* Building the strength of the Democratic party in all 50 states — no more conceding flyover country to the enemy
* Having a spirited 2020 presidential selection process, but one that is focused on unity and taking out Trump, and not on internal squabbles
Let’s start — in every town in every state — with 2018 and build from there to throw Emperor Donnie in the East River in 2020.