Presidential Post-Mortem

Well, I called that election more wrongly than anything I've written in the decade-long history of this blog! Back in May I argued that Trump would lose the presidential election because of demographics:

Remember the 2012 election campaign, when Romney supporters were convinced their candidate would win by a comfortable margin? Although I can't find the link now, at the time I recall a Romney adviser who admitted his boss' campaign strategy was to focus on winning a super-majority of white voters, and ignoring everyone else. Even so, the adviser admitted that due to changing American demographics (the percentage of white voters relative to others drops about 3 percent with each succeeding presidential election), 2012 would be the last time a "white votes only" strategy had any chance of winning the American presidency.

Of course, it did not work. And Romney's campaign merely ignored non-white Americans, whereas  Trump has actively insulted and/or threatened the bulk of them, in addition to polling far worse among women of all colors than Romney ever did.

The one possible silver lining to Trump's election is this: maybe now the American left will rediscover its Bush-era opposition to war and support for civil liberties, and even remember why it's a bad idea to put too much power into the hands of the president -- because even if you like how the current guy wields that power, there's no guarantee you'll trust his successor to do the same.
On the downside, with the GOP controlling all three branches of the government, and nothing to stop them from turning their voter-suppression activities up to 11, even if the left DOES rediscover these principles, it may not be possible for them to do anything about it.

Also this morning, I'm worried about the state of some of my friends' marriages -- not that they'll divorce over election disagreements, but that their unions will be forcibly dissolved by the government if Trumpence appoints Supreme Court judges who overturn the Obergefell decision.  And that's the only prediction I feel comfortable making right now -- all the other scenarios which spring to mind come dangerously close to breaking Godwin's law.