This Is As Good As It Gets
October 13th, 2016




Three quick items:

1: The election is over.

2: What comes next?

3: A parable of late-stage Trumpism.

We’ve reached the stage of Trump where the only question is how big the rout will be. My own sense is that we’re heading toward a Cat-5 superstorm where the House is gone and Paul Ryan steps down before Christmas. But maybe not.

I’m not pretending to have precognition here, mind you. This outcome was always a very real possibility with Trump. As soon as he clinched the nomination in May the chance of a Democratic wave election was at least as good as a chance of a narrow Trump victory.

But since August Trump’s loss has been nearly inevitable. (Evitable?) One of the great miscalculations of 2016 has been the continued denial of this reality by elected Republicans trying to save their seats. It was a failure of imagination that has only compounded the catastrophe for the party.



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