It’s lastly over.
All however the shouting, vote-counting, finger-pointing, authorized wrangling, attainable rioting and tried overthrowing — as soon as extra — of our 248-year-old democratic republic.
However that’s all sooner or later.
Perhaps.
For now, let’s have fun the top of essentially the most vexing, mean-spirited and household-dividing presidential election in trendy instances, because it heaves itself throughout the end line and crumples in a awful heap.
Columnists Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria look again on the rancorous path to today and supply some ideas on what lies forward.
Barabak: There are only a few issues I can say with certainty. However I can say doubtless that most individuals — save members of Masochists Nameless — are glad this marketing campaign is mercifully executed with. No?
Chabria: I really feel prefer it’s the morning after a Vegas marriage ceremony and we’ve tied the knot — we’re simply unsure with whom. As pleased as I’m that we’ve got lastly made it to voting day, I really feel duty-bound to squash any reduction on the market by being clear that we nonetheless have an extended approach to go earlier than all of us agree on a winner.
Votes will virtually actually be challenged — generally pretty and generally nefariously — for weeks, if not months, to return.
However right here’s extra excellent news: We’re within the technique of a free and honest election, upholding a democracy that has appeared tenuous at instances these previous couple of years. In order that’s a plus.
Are you feeling hopeful about something at this second?
Barabak: Not, as you steered, that we’ll all finally agree on a winner. There are nonetheless a surprising variety of deluded and misguided people on the market who imagine Trump gained in 2020.
Together with the denier in chief who sits atop the GOP ticket.
That stated, I like election day.
After all of the speeches and mail items, all of the TV advertisements, the debates, city halls, prime-time interviews, impromptu statements and hasty clarifications, it’s lastly voters’ flip to have their say. Hokey because it sounds, we’re reminded on this sooner or later that the facility in our political system in the end rests with the individuals and the feelings they categorical on the poll field.
I make no predictions; I’m good sufficient to know what I don’t know, which is an entire lot. And I’m not within the behavior of endorsing candidates. However I’ve made it fairly clear in columns during the last a number of years that I feel our president ought to be somebody who doesn’t attempt to overturn a official election, discuss suspending the Structure, threaten to make use of the navy in opposition to his political opponents, simulate oral intercourse at a political rally and who hasn’t executed and stated so many terrible and bizarre issues in simply the final decade that it will fill to bursting the complete web if I stored occurring.
If I’m hopeful about something, it’s {that a} majority of Individuals will really feel that issues on this nation have labored, if removed from completely, then nicely sufficient since its founding that maybe possibly we shouldn’t chuck our values and grounding rules simply because eggs and gasoline price greater than they did when the pandemic-ravaged financial system was on its again 4 years in the past.
Enable me to trot out a well-worn phrase that we hear nearly each election, how this one is an important of our lifetime. On this occasion, it’s true.
Chabria: I’m with you on all that. I like election day too. As a result of, sure, it does come right down to the individuals and, regardless of the overt makes an attempt by Donald Trump to subvert that, our will has held.
The place I differ from you is that I’m pleased to loudly and proudly proclaim that I am100% pro-Harris. I really don’t have a celebration desire — which may shock some (the dearly appreciated few who often learn our Politics e-newsletter).
However I’m at coronary heart a coverage nerd. I’ve written in favor of Republican laws on the statehouse once I suppose it’s good, and knocked the supermajority Democrats in Sacramento after they do dumb stuff, which is pretty often.
However, like many, I don’t see this presidential election as about Democrat or Republican. There are elementary values on the road, even past democracy — girls’s rights, civil rights, the protection of immigrants.
I deliver it up as a result of if Harris doesn’t win, individuals must proceed this struggle to push again in opposition to autocracy, even with a dictatorial-minded president within the White Home. Trump could also be calling this election the ultimate battle, however it’s not.
Barabak: Properly said.
Now if I can, I’d prefer to briefly acknowledge and provides reward to our present president — do not forget that man? — Joe Biden.
He basically vowed to be a one-term president, a “bridge” to a brand new “technology of leaders,” as he put it whereas campaigning in 2020. Then he yanked up that bridge up and determined, at age 81, to hunt one other time period.
Issues have been going honest to middling together with his candidacy till Biden’s catastrophic, catatonic debate efficiency in June, which brought about a significant Democratic freak-out and resulted in his grudging departure from the ticket and endorsement of Harris.
Supposedly, Biden nonetheless thinks he would have overwhelmed Trump, making him one of many few individuals on the planet to harbor that false impression.
However give credit score the place due. Biden spent many years of his life chasing and pining after the presidency and when he lastly realized his dream, he proved fairly adept on the job. It turns on the market’s one thing to be stated for all that Washington expertise, notably in relation to coping with Congress. He achieved way more legislatively than many thought attainable, given the slim margins Democrats held within the Home and Senate, and presided over an financial system that, partisan carping apart, is the envy of the world.
No surprise Biden wished for and felt he deserved a second time period.
Nonetheless, he walked away — albeit solely after getting a wholesome shove. It’s uncommon for somebody to willingly give up energy the way in which Biden did. If Harris wins, his selfless act might be a laudable a part of the president’s legacy. If she loses, out come the knives and the criticism that Biden selfishly overstayed his time in workplace and denied his get together the possibility for a aggressive major amongst a vibrant, contemporary area of candidates.
Chabria: Biden positively earned a spot within the historical past books — in a great way — for having the braveness and dedication to the great of the nation to step down.
I’ll additionally give a shout-out — and possibly a kind of oh-so-iffy predictions — to the ladies of America. From early voting, we all know that feminine voters are turning out in large numbers. A few of that could be the Dobbs Supreme Courtroom choice that cuts girls’s reproductive rights, however I feel it goes past that.
We have now seen a vicious assault on girls’s civil rights and their place in civic life, with some on the far proper suggesting girls shouldn’t even have the best to vote. So my prediction is that if Harris wins, will probably be as a result of girls — Republican, Democrat, Christian, Black, white, brown, you identify it — determined they have been, to steal her slogan, not going again.
Barabak: Wouldn’t that be poetic. In the long run, it will end up you can’t seize ‘em by the … nicely, you realize, and get away with it.
One very last thing. I stated that I make no predictions. I realized my lesson in 2016, when it turned out all the pieces I assumed I knew about politics was unsuitable.
However I’ll enterprise this: No one is aware of what’s going to occur on this election day or who’s going to win. However for the following 4 years, till the following presidential marketing campaign, and ceaselessly after, there might be no finish of individuals explaining how the end result was clear because the dawning daylight all alongside.
Don’t purchase it.
