Thread by @whstancil

I've been trying to figure out why I'm finding discussion like this so frustrating, and I think it's because, by every indication, we survived Trump by the skin of our teeth, and yet the usual suspects have IMMEDIATELY reverted to acting like it was never a problem

Of course we should look at how things played out. It's useful to see the limits of Trump's power to force the GOP to come along with him - extensive, but apparently not quite far enough. But who could have been sure of any of this in advance?

But this was a near miss, in a lot of ways. The election was an extremely narrow thing - as narrow as 2016. Not only could Trump have won outright, but with slightly improved luck, he could have won a few more states, making it much easier for him to challenge the results.

But a lot of influential liberals aren't treating it as as near miss, the political equivalent of a plane that successfully landed after an engine detached midflight.

They're just responding with open triumphalism, as if we were ridiculous to worry in the first place.

We are a week out from an epochal event in US history, where a president openly challenged an election he lost, after receiving 70 million votes, with wide party support. We don't know the long-term consequences yet.

It's manifestly not a time for crowing, for self-praise.

But from the tone of many liberals, you'd never know it. They're acting like it was unthinkable that Trump's challenge to the system would ever prevail - as if he had not similarly attacked the system in 2016 and every year thereafter, succeeding almost every time.

One thing I think about a lot is what had happened if Clinton had won in 2016 because, like, it rained in the Midwest. Instead of losing several states by tens of thousands of votes, she won them.

And I'm confident the class of liberal elites, after a few hours of panic, would have arrived at the conclusion that the then-unthinkable prospect of a Trump presidency was impossible all along. They would have congratulated themselves for never taking him seriously.

Somehow, for some people, we've managed to arrive at that same place, except after four years of Trump. We've jumped back in time to November 7, 2016. Nothing was learned and a lot of people seem intent on proceeding as if it never happened - as if it COULD NOT have happened.

Somehow, after all this time, a lot of people still think Trump belongs in the entertainment section. A lot of people seem to think he's a distraction from the real business of politics, which is conducted by and between serious men with degrees and credentials.

The key, all along, was not to overreact to the silly man! Nevermind that this approach, tried before, gave us Trump himself and four years of the total degradation of our system of government, a paralyzed House, unaccountable government, and a mad, out of control president.

And so the exact same people who brought us here return to the exact same behaviors that left us here, swelling with confidence, not because of any great or resounding victory, but simply because Trump did, at last, fail to completely overthrow the American system of government.

Bully for them, I guess. But the rest of us have to live with the knowledge that all a demagogue needs is a little bit of luck across a few states... and that many of the people in charge, who have demonstrated no ability to stop this, feel certain they've solved the problem.

Anyway, sorry for the long discursive thread. I'm still working through my thoughts on this, because we're only a few days out from (hopefully) averting a catastrophe by the skin of our teeth. You know - the kind of thing that generally triggers reflection, not gleeful certainty.