So what now?
The election didn’t go the way Democrats wanted.
Hey, I’ve been there. I’ve been there a lot in my lifetime.
I have thoughts on what will happen and what should happen, and I honestly don’t know which to focus on right now.
I’ve spent hours on this and written a half dozen drafts at least, all of which didn’t really convey what I feel like needs to be said. Part of the problem is that I don’t really know what that is.
Right now, we have a golden opportunity. Trump won the presidency. Republicans control the Senate. As of this writing, they’re 19 seats shy of maintaining control of the House, while Democrats need to win 38 seats. There’s a good chance that the GOP will be able to do just about anything they want come January.
There are things that need to be done, and those things will set the stage going forward.
There are also a lot of ways this can be screwed up and spell disaster going forward.
But I do know that there are a lot of hardworking Americans out there right now who are trusting the Republican Party to make their lives better. They want lower grocery bills and an American Dream that’s attainable without the right six numbers on a lottery ticket.
They want the southern border secured so that criminals from Mexico and points further south don’t come into the United States and rob, rape, and/or kill innocent Americans.
In fact, crime is another issue they want addressed.
Basically, if you look at everything that mattered to Americans in this election, they want their life to be made better. They had it pretty good under Trump, then it went off the rails starting with COVID and got worse under Biden and just kept getting worse.
They want better. They want more.
Harris tried to run a campaign primarily based on feelings and vibes, but Republicans would do well to remember that the American people do actually want positivity in their lives. They want to live better lives.
Foreign policy matters to many, though, so it can’t be ignored completely. They want to see Israel get support and they want to see Russia get trounced, but they don’t want American tax dollars being spent on proxy wars that we have no business being involved in.
Republicans have a pretty clear path ahead of them. They need to, more or less, stick to that.
Deliver what Americans want and need and they’ll forgive a lot.
Focus primarily on culture war issues and fail to deliver economic prosperity and this is going to be short-lived.
The person most likely to be impacted by this? Vice President-elect J.D. Vance.
Regardless of what happens over the next four years, he’s got to be considered the early frontrunner for the next Republican nomination for president. He’s popular, young, energetic, with a background that makes it harder for elite Democrats to attack him as out of touch. However, the power of incumbency can be a double-edged sword. Just as Kamala Harris about that right now.
If Americans succeed over the next four years, Vance may well ascend to the top job. If they don’t, well, at least he wrote a hell of a book already.
It won’t matter if Trump listens to him or not, he’ll be saddled with whatever this administration produces. We did it to Harris and Democrats will do it to him; or they’ll at least try to.
But we know what people want and, in a far too rare moment in American history, it’s what needs to happen, too.
Making America Great Again means making Americans comfortable financially again. Make it so they don’t have to stress, so they know they can cover the bills and put a little away, and it’ll be a lot harder for Democrats to undermine them.
But it needs to start on day one. Republicans need to start planning now on what to do, especially if they retain the House (which I think they will, personally, but a couple of key races are really too close to say for certain) so that they can make things happen from the jump.
Today is a new day. It could be a great day for years to come of Republicans can manage to not screw it up.
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