Washed Away.

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It was broad and it was deep. It flipped unflippable seats. Good candidates, good people, beat bad ones. Tellers of truth, proposers of policy, beat liars and polluters of policy. I’d like to think it was about more than the price of food and gas. I’d like to think it was, contrary to J.D. Vance, not just about Trump’s stupid, illegal, disastrous war. More importantly, contrary to Trump, who spent the last couple of months telling voters to vote as if he were on the ballot but now says if he were it’d have been a Republican landslide, I really want to believe that it is, in fact, EXACTLY how they voted.

I’d like to think that people are finally fed up with Trump’s deluge of lies, including his pre-election, poolside message in which he perseverated in claiming it was vandalism that wrecked his Reflecting Pool adventure rather than the cronyism, mismanagement, and incompetence of his hand-picked, unqualified contractors. I’d hope enough people saw through that lie, if not immediately, then when Trump’s own DOJ and the contractors admitted it was incompetence only, that there was never a shred of evidence of non-spontaneous shredding. And that they’d extrapolate to all of his other untruths.

Maybe people finally noticed that the Republican Party under Trump has had nothing positive to offer; that they tired of racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, the cries and lies about communists, jihadists, and the warnings that if Democrats won, communistic Sharia law would result. Maybe, too, it was revulsion at seeing masked and malignant thugs brutalize and even kill people, including US citizens. Trump’s deliberate cruelty, intended to convince himself of his power. Seeing his deference to dictators, abandonment of our allies, Ukraine especially.

I hope it was about the blatant and pervasive corruption in the Oval Office, bleeding through every member of Trump’s Cabinet and family. Waved as proudly as J6 insurrectionists waved Confederate flags and swastikas.

I don’t have to care if John Fetterman switches parties, because it won’t matter. I don’t have to care if Mary Peltola loses (as of this writing, it remains unclear); maybe she deserves it for pulling that foolish stunt, even though it’s been done before, by both parties and wasn’t illegal. It’s ironic that it was done to help her win but, given the enormity of the nationwide rejection of Trumpism, had she not done it, she probably would have won easily.

I don’t feel like gloating. I feel relief. I feel the lifting of a nearly unbearable weight. I’m allowing a bit of hope that Democrats will find the proper balance – whatever it is – between holding our corrupt, Constitution-ignoring, court-defying leaders to account and legislating for the good of everyone. And that in doing so, the contrast between what Trumpublicans did and what Democrats do will show all voters what good, honest, inclusive governance looks like. And never again choose the opposite.

I’d like to think a couple of well-deserved impeachments, joined by Republicans, will happen, leaving Trump alone to watch from the Oval Office, gilded and glum. Not for vengeance, but to revive Constitutional checks and balances; for our government, once again, to work the way the Founders intended.

Before the Senate majority is sworn in, who thinks Justice Alito or Thomas will resign, enabling Trump to install long-lasting, far-right, bench-legislating, precedent-ignoring, equally arrogant replacements? Mitch McConnell’s legacy (some wag wrote it’s too bad he didn’t live to see this), in addition to enabling Trump, is blocking President Obama’s choice of Merrick Garland and, ignoring “rules” he’d formerly invoked, forcing Amy Coney Barrett through after Trump had lost to President Biden. Which means, I guess, there are no tactics by which Democrats could stop whatever person the Heritage Foundation coughs up and hands to Trump.

Okay, I’ll gloat: Despite spending half a billion dollars on this election (more than George Soros has spent on elections in his entire life), including two hundred million in Texas alone, Elon Musk’s dream of buying our government for his personal use crashed like his first couple of rockets. Permanently? Maybe not. So, really, it’s less a gloat than a glimmer.

I want to believe that this making of America great again represents a reawakening of the goodness of our country; that, forevermore, politicians will be elected based on character and plans; that flooding the airways with negative and untruthful political ads will be rejected as a blot on democracy. And that a formerly credible political party will resume its previous, long-gone role as a partner in legislating for all Americans and will help with returning elections to them rather than the oligarchs and sycophantic incompetents over to whom Trump and MAGA Republicans have handed them.

Based on the last ten years, it’s probably too much to hope for. But until there’s reason to do otherwise, let’s hold onto the thought.