This means something

"I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road, I've been seeing this shape... Dammit! I know this. I know what this is! This means something. This is important." Roy Neary

OK, I knew that I was being plum silly less than a nanosecond after I wrote in my post-election analysis that I was impressed with was the relative lack of early whining from the left about the election rout. It turns out that they just hadn’t had, at that point, a chance to catch their breath. Since then, there’s been whining aplenty. But the thing that’s missing in the wailing and gnashing of teeth is any rational self-awareness of how the map above came to be so red. If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be comical.

My favorite rationalization so far comes from The Washington Post, where a columnist opined that the rout wasn’t actually as bad as it appeared because Trump just barely won most of the “blue wall” states. Trump won, but just barely in a lot of places.

Let’s parse that last sentence. If you eliminate the last eight words, everything after Trump won, I agree with it. But, as is, I would simply say to the pundits at WaPo the same thing I said eight years ago to everyone who took solace and refuge in Trump’s narrow margin of victory over Hillary Clinton: Forget the margin. You lost to Donald Trump. Let that sink in.

I know a lot of people who voted for Trump. A lot of them don’t much like the guy. The most common sentiment seems to be that he is, far and away, the lesser of two evils. That means that most of America determined that a megalomaniacal cheat, liar, and braggart was a better choice than the other candidate. That’s got to leave a mark on Team Blue. Had the Republicans nominated someone like Ron DeSantis, Larry Hogan, Chris Sununu, or Nikki Haley, they might have run the table. This wasn’t about Republicans; it was about Democrats, illiberalism, and everything else they’ve come to stand for.

This election was a repudiation of the left’s policies on the economy, immigration, and crime. It was a thorough and unmistakable rebuke of the progressive embrace of wokeism, a radical climate agenda, censorship, and lawfare against political opponents. It was a raised middle finger to those referring to anyone who questions progressive policies on COVID, crime, and the economy as deplorables, garbage, and conspiracy theorists even though, in the fullness of time, those policies have been found wanting.

It was a rejection of the look-down-their-noses at the rest of us alliance between self-appointed sages in news and entertainment media, academia, woke businesses, and the left. It was a thumb in the eye of The Washington Post, the New York Times, Anthony Fauci, Jimmy Kimmel, Oprah Winfrey, Anderson Cooper, The View, Hollywood, all of MSNBC, and a clap on the back for Joe Rogan, The Free Press, Racket News, Public News, and Elon Musk.

Yet, as things currently stand, I see little indication that the left understands the 2024 map above any more than they understood what happened to them in 2016. I wrapped my mind around all of this by spending the last decade listening to my readers instead of just pontificating to them. Do I agree with all of what I have learned from them? No, I do not. But I understand it. And I have little quarrel with anyone who thinks differently from me about any of it. That’s democracy. It’s a brave new world.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for progressives to figure any of this out. My guess is that an internecine war breaks out among Democrats in the coming months with the progressive faction, the people who think that they keep coming up short not because their ideas are wanting but because there’s something wrong with the rest of us, winning.

When you are an ideologue bereft of self-awareness and compassion, allergic to any message or data that contradicts what you already think, kicking and screaming is the only way you’ll leave the comfort and security of the echo chamber that nourishes your dry and austere soul. I’m pretty sure that it might take political extinction to accomplish that.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com