We have had grave concerns over the last two years that the election process might not survive the attacks on it by this presidential administration and the extremists in the once-proud Republican Party tragically in thrall to blind ideology rather than expertise or even basic competence. Consider recent gerrymandering of House seats, as seen so dramatically in Florida, North Carolina, and Texas, with tit-for-tat partisan gerrymandering in California and massive and often one-sided spending in the billions of dollars, both from unnamed corporate donors and billionaires intent on having their way.
Did you see the hit movie “Project Hail Mary” earlier this year? It’s a sci-fi nailbiter in which Ryan Gosling plays a scientist who wakes up with amnesia on a spaceship light-years from Earth and has to jerry-rig the spacecraft — MacGyvering together impossible solutions against all odds, building on his own engineering ingenuity, Scotch tape, spit, a surprising alliance with an alien being made out of rocks, and irrational hope — to save planet Earth.
The early hours of Tuesday night, election night, felt like the triumphal momentum of the closing scenes of “Project Hail Mary”: Good Lord, we thought, this spacecraft we call the great American experiment in Democracy may hold. After what felt like light-years — hurtling toward (or over?) the edge of authoritarianism, with democracy breaking apart at the seams, electoral and governmental norms flying off into space like loose parts — we are going to make it home safe.
It turns out that even when the levers of power are controlled by MAGA loyalists and there is a heavy thumb on the scale, the daily beatdown that ordinary Americans have endured (extrajudicial deportations, the militarization and violence of immigration enforcement, skyrocketing fuel and grocery prices, tariffs that hit manufacturers and farmers at home the worst, cozying up to foreign dictators, unfettered development of data centers, and the list goes on) have swayed hearts and minds so completely that voters were moved, en masse, to repudiate the outrages of the Trump administration. And it was done calmly and in good order.
From the Rio Grande Valley, where Latino voters — many of whom had helped elect President Trump two years ago — stood up and were counted, to Georgia, where the first-ever Black woman governor was elected, to New Hampshire, where the first proudly gay man was elected to a Senate seat, this was more than a movement or a blue wave. It was a seismic shift, an endorsement of rationality and common sense over bigotry and the politics of spite.
Even in South Carolina, where a new superPAC this fall backed by the potentates of the artificial-intelligence industry had thrown their money at Darlene Graham, voters were done with Trumpism. The extremists who have been allowed to destroy the vital core values of the Grand Old Party have fouled their own bed.
Sometimes public opinion is so overwhelming that even tyrants, understanding they cannot turn back the tide of history, head for the exit with their tail between their legs. Think of the moments the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union crumbled quietly, when the guns fell silent. Before we’d even heard that Michigan had gone for Abdul El-Sayed, the president had meekly told The New York Times that he would accept the results of the election and would work with Democrats: “We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them,” he said. Hopeful, but we shall see.
The people have spoken. The politics of hate have been defeated. Now it’s time to get to work repairing the damage that’s been done to our international reputation, to our national parks, to our research universities, to hard-working immigrant communities, and to the norms of judicial independence.