Against all reason, we elected “a national disgrace” (Colin Powell) and defeated a woman Trump himself described this way.
It is at horrible times like this we want to crawl into a hole but, at our best, do not.
Instead, we recall the words of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, conceding defeat in 1980: “Circumstances may change, but the work of compassion must continue. It is surely correct that we cannot solve problems by throwing money at them, but it is also correct that we dare not throw out our national problems onto a scrap heap of inattention and indifference. . . . For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on. The work continues, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”
The dream shall not ever die — the arc of the moral universe is long but does bend toward justice.
Still, I went to bed thinking expectations of an 800-point drop in the Dow are most likely understated. I think the sell-off over the next few days, as investors worldwide process what’s just happened, could be much worse.
With luck, I will be as wrong about that as I was about the impossibility of his being elected in the first place.
