11/10/25

HERE’S HOPING: 
* THE NOV. 4 VOTE PREDICTS FUTURE ELECTIONS;
* TRUMP SUFFERS REBUKE BEFORE FADING AWAY

TRUMP ASLEEP? A screenshot of California Gov. Gavin Newsom's X account showing the president seemingly asleep at an Oval Office event. Click on the image to see the X posting.

  SO WHY DON’T I FEEL BETTER?
     A week after the election, why don’t I feel the joy?
     After all, “we” won, and won big, coast to coast.
     Could it be that the Democrats are, in fact, alive and capable of actually winning?
     And then there’s fresh chatter about a sleepy president – Donald Trump unable to keep his eyes open during a much photographed Oval Office event four days ago.
     Could it be that Trump, approaching 80, is feeling the weight of the years and might simply slip away before his term is up?     

     Both the election dynamics and the reports of a drowsy commander-in-chief are tests of hope, that essential, but painful emotion that confronts us, both as spectators and players, in the struggle for democracy.
     The election results teases us by suggesting that our hope that democracy will endure is not wishful thinking. But the fear is that it will turn out to be a false hope.
     Meanwhile, for me, Trump’s diminished capacity challenges my hope that Trump will finish his term, so that he can earn the public and political rebuke that may be his greatest fear. Fading away would be too easy an escape for such a wicked man.

THE NOV. 4 ELECTION was a delicious political feast.
     Take New Jersey, where the pre-election surveys showed a “tightening” race. Except that Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate for governor, won a stunning victory, with 56.5 percent of the vote.   

THE DEMOCRATS’ INEVITABLE SHUTDOWN DEFEAT
    The capitulation by Democratic Senators last night to end the government shutdown is clearly a disappointment and possibly a betrayal of their party and its millions of supporters.
     At the same time, I never thought the shutdown made sense, because there was no clear path to “success,” how the tactic would force Republicans to agree to ease health care costs.
     As to people who said this was a rare, necessary choice for the minority party to flex its muscles, I think screwing up the machinery of government would never turn out to be true leverage.
      Now, the Democrats are double losers: millions have been hurt by having their pay disrupted, food benefits upended; and the Democrats have gained nothing but humiliation and division.
     It was always going to end this way. 

     Slightly bigger ( but still hugely), was the win by Abigail Spanberger in her Virginia governor’s race, 57.1 percent.
     Zohran Mamdani organized a huge, enthusiastic turnout in New York City, hopefully driving the despicable Andrew Cuomo and his horror-movie mug off the public stage for good.
     On the Other Coast, the complicated, brazen effort, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, to jury-rig California voting districts, captured 63.9 percent vote to create new Democratic U.S. House seats. The plot was to checkmate the Trump-GOP effort to invent five new  Republican seats in Texas.
     And in Pennsylvania, three Democratic state Supreme Court justices held their posts by 27-point margins.
     So last Tuesday was a Big, Beautiful Day for truth, justice and the American way.
      All of which put the lie to widespread anxiety about a  dispirited, ineffective resistance to Donald Trump by a defective, damaged Democratic Party.
      Again the question, a week  after the election, why don’t I feel the joy?

SUPERSTITION is part of the answer.
      I have mixed feelings about religion, but am devoted to idiotic  superstitions about Friday the 13th, wandering under ladders, and jinxing no-hitters by declaring no-hitter -in-the-making before the final out. So the jubilation that followed the election seems  to me downright treacherous by tempting evil spirits.
     Think of all the awful things that can happen with an election still a full year away.
     Trump could – and probably will – try to hijack or monkeywrench the voting process.
     He could – and probably will - try to declare martial law.
     He might designate the Democratic Party a terrorist organization. And so forth.
     Meanwhile, the Democrats might do what they sometimes seem to do best: self-destruct.
     The Democrats could splinter, declare war on progressives, bore the nation with ineffectual centrists' righteousness. 
      Mamdani could turn out to be the inept, inexperienced, foot-in-the-mouth twerp that the New York Times and the rest of the media have made him out to be, dragging the actual Democratic Party down with him.
       Democratic Doom and its scenarios are endless, and we are well warned that paranoia is both obligatory and well-founded.

BUT HERE’S THE THING. In the election’s wake, Donald Trump seems strangely diminished.
      I don’t know whether this is a consequence of the election, or whether Trump at long last is beginning to seem mortal. He is months away from turning 80 – an age where death lurks as a reality everyday, instead of somewhere in the vague future.
      He seems more vulnerable – politically and physically.
     For the first time, members of Congress are showing spasms of resistance – for example dismissing Trump’s call for the Senate to abandon its 60 vote rule that gives the minority party veto power over much legislation.
      He’s doing poorly in the polls. The public blames Republicans for the shutdown, even though the Democrats are full partners (See the above sidebar). The election is widely believed to have been about “affordability,” high prices being something that Trump promised to end, but cannot control or wish away.
     And maybe the man is simply wearing out.
     My wife  pointed out a weekend article in the Washington Post that I missed, and I bet you did to, because Post seemed to downplay it, at least on its website, and the rest of the media ignored it, maybe because of fear of Trump, maybe due to professional jealousy, maybe both.
     The Post’s article reported that Trump “seemed” variously to be  trying not to fall asleep and actually falling asleep in a widely observed Oval Office event. CLICK HERE to follow the link (the Post has a pay wall) to the article.
     The piece was about the occasion on Nov. 6 when Trump announced that pharmaceutical companies agreed to lower prices for weight-loss drugs. The Post wrote:

     “Sitting behind the Resolute Desk on Thursday, the president displayed a constellation of movements familiar to anyone who has attempted to stay awake during a work meeting. He closed his eyes. He put his hand to his temple. He slouched in his chair.”

     Personally, I hope that this is not going to be how justice comes for Donald Trump.
     I don’t want him to fade away, succumb to a fatal disease, trip on the Air Force One ramp or to be assassinated.
      Instead, I want him to hang around to be renounced, rebuked and rejected.
      Impeachment would be perfect, but won’t happen. Instead, it would be nice if the voters turned on him. It would be great if the Democrats took the House next year and checkmated his campaign of terror. 
      The best outcome would be for his administration to fail, for the nation to vote against the party that has sustained him and return the political system to working condition, so that the word “Trump” becomes a universal slur.
     Last week’s election showed us that that’s possible, even if it’s a long shot and a long way off.
     So, here’s hoping Donald Trump won’t simply nod off without giving the public a chance to understand and condemn the many ways he’s damaged their lives and their country.
      Rejection is Donald Trump’s nightmare; but for the rest of us, it’s an American dream.