Trump won, Kamala lost, and you can read the analysis anywhere you look on the internet.

One detail I can add, however: Let’s call it the Ghost of Election Nights past … memories of 2004 and 2008, in particular. I watched the coverage as a supporter of Barack Obama, although I wasn’t old enough to have voted for him. I so clearly remember hearing the pundits say that more Latinos were coming to America every year, and they tend to vote Democrat, so Obama’s wins were just the beginning of a dynasty for Democrats. I was thrilled! Democrats were destiny.

As it turns out, though, you have to at least pretend to care about people and their problems. They’re not stupid; you have to earn their votes, and to do that, you have to treat them as individuals, not as members of a group.

Kamala Harris did not do that — not in sufficient numbers to tilt the election. (For the record, I don’t think Trump really did that either; he only pandered, but after the vote, his efforts look comparatively better than hers.) Turns out, you still have to at least look like you’re trying to earn women’s votes, too; you can’t just trot out a candidate who’s a woman, or a candidate of color, then dust your hands and pat yourself on the back. The numbers tell us that identity politics failed Harris and the Democrats.

I’m tempted to revel in their loss. I would laugh, if it weren’t so sad. Because, although I wish we didn’t have to deal with EITHER a hard left or a hard right, as long as we have one of them, we might as well have both and hope they cancel each other out. While we can argue which candidate was the lesser of two evils, Republicans won the Presidency, the Senate, and probably will win the House. The Supreme Court leans conservative, too, so Republicans will be able to enact a lot of the laws and policies they ran on. For us libertarians, that’s the scariest outcome of all.

And so, I’d love to see a strong, principled, left-leaning party rooted in the ideals that initially attracted me to Democrats and to Obama when I was young. As I saw one person say on X, “The world *needs* a sane and intelligent left to act as a counter-balance to the excesses of the right (and vice versa).” Again, I’m not sure the world “needs” a left (or a right), but for now, it would be a formidable roadblock to the Republican agenda.

I remember hearing about the “Blue Dog” Democrats when I was a kid. To me, that term — blue dog — resonated. They were guarding something, as dogs do: civil liberties, mainly. They were guarding against the creeping authoritarianism of the right: the desire to censor Eminem’s music, the push for creationism to be taught in biology class, the never-ending wars in the Middle East, and on and on.

After a quick Google search just now, I see that’s not what the Blue Dogs actually did or cared about. But I think it’s what the modern Democratic party needs: to rediscover its messaging about core, fundamental freedoms — the kinds of things Latinos and women and, frankly, most people in most places care about: freedom of speech, the freedom to spend their money how they see fit, the freedom to eat and drink and smoke and to worship whatever they want, and the freedom to love whomever they choose.

One other thing to remember: While Trump outperformed expectations, he still carried just 51% of the vote … and less than half the country voted at all. The “red wave” you’re hearing about comprises less than 1/4th of the country, and not a single person under the age of 18 because, well, they weren’t allowed to vote. Their support, and their hearts and minds, just like those of Latinos and women and suburbanites and rural folks and everyone else, can and must be earned.

So let’s keep reminding Democrats and lefties about the things they used to say they stood for. And let’s keep reminding Republicans and righties about the things they used to say they stood for, like fiscal responsibility and low taxes. 

In the process, I think and hope we’ll prove ourselves to be the most consistent, grounded, and logical voices on the political spectrum. And maybe someday, we’ll get beyond the two-party system. Maybe someday, we’ll be the ones celebrating on Election Night, instead of watching through our fingers with a split outcome as our best-case scenario, and a Republican sweep as one of the worst.

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