Besides getting over the shock, we have other meetings.

Writing an After Action Report on a failure as catastrophic as this takes some time and will be the product of many hands. The clue that I feel I overlooked is that whatever the economy looks like to us, Biden’s approval rating is 20 points underwater.

Meanwhile: Some of the Never Trumpers helped get us into this mess, but it can not be denied that good writers walk among them. For example, Bill Kristol, who sabotaged the Clinton Health Care plan, now writes

And of course there is no guarantee that the American people will turn against Trump and his agenda. They knew fully well who it was they were choosing this time. Their support may well be more stubborn than one would like. It certainly has been over the last four years.

So: We can lament our situation. We can analyze how we got here. We can try to learn lessons from what has happened. We have to do all these things. But we can’t only do those things.

As Churchill put it: “In Defeat: Defiance.” We’ll have to keep our nerve and our principles against all the pressure to abandon them. We’ll have to fight politically and to resist lawfully. We’ll have to do our best to limit the damage from Trump. And we’ll have to lay the groundwork for future recovery.

And Charlie Sykes, one of the most repentant, contributes

But I would suggest taking a very deep breath. And another one. Because the fights ahead will be even tougher and more dangerous than the ones we’ve been through. 

How sad and how true.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, which at least made an endorsement, ran this to show they have finally understood where the electorate is at:

Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are

We don’t know yet how the opposition to autocracy best continues. Remember, as William the Silent said, “One need not hope in order to undertake, nor succeed in order to persevere”. And unlike so many, don’t obey in advance.