Some thoughts after the most consequential US election in my lifetime:
1. The pollsters got it wrong -- for the third time in as many US Presidential elections. The vote tallies were not razor thin, or even just plain thin by any margin. Donald Trump won the popular vote by more than 5 million votes, and the Electoral College by 292 to 224 at this moment. He won the swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with Arizona and Nevada still too close to call. He lost New York State, but Kamala Harris did much more poorly than Joe Biden in New York four years ago. The polls predicted none of this. Maybe it's time to stop paying so much attention to them -- or any attention at all.
2. Maybe all the Democrats who hounded Joe Biden out of the race after his unsettling performance in his debate in June with Trump should have thought twice about coming after Biden. I said at the time that debate performance has nothing to do with Presidential decision-making and governing. But everyone from George Clooney to Adam Schiff* were so sure that just about anyone other than Biden would do better than the man who was born in Scranton -- one of the reasons that Biden did so well in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election -- and they went on and on in the media as if it were their sacred duty to make sure Biden stepped down. Kamala Harris would have made a great President. But she would have been far more likely to beat Trump or any opponent four years from now, after she had served another term as VP in a second Biden administration. Of course, no one can know now if Biden would have bested Trump in yesterday's election, but I and everyone who expressed concern about Biden being driven out of the election can't help but think that he might well have done better, much better, in the election just concluded, given his success against the same opponent in 2020.
*No doubt influenced by the same polls that later said the Harris/Trump run for the White House was way too close to call.
3. The US House of Representatives is still up for grabs. If the Democrats don't retake control of the House, we can expect unobstructed Republican rule, with the courts as the only check on their power. And we've already seen more than once where the Supreme Court stands on that.
I may have some further thoughts as the day goes by.
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