What will Tim Kaine’s role be in the post-election Democratic Party? I thought he did a creditable job as vice presidential candidate but is a bit charisma-challenged for what promises to be an era of flamboyance and celebrity.

With Hillary Clinton now damaged goods it leaves President Obama as the unchallenged leader of the Party but I’m not sure that’s a role he wants or would care to fill.

I want to recommend that you read Jim Newell’s post at Slate in full. He catalogues the serial miscalculations that led Democrats to the point at which they find themselves:

The Democrats will now control next to nothing above the municipal level. Donald Trump will be president. We are going to be unpacking this night for the rest of our lives, and lives beyond that. We can’t comprehend even 1 percent of what’s just happened. But one aspect of it, minor in the overall sweep, that I’m pretty sure we can comprehend well enough right now: The Democratic Party establishment has beclowned itself and is finished.

Among the points he makes are:

• The DNC completely misunderstood the nature of the election.
• The professionalization of politics is a failed model.
• The Clintons are finished.

I think that over the next weeks and months we’ll be seeing:

• The Clintons struggle for relevance. They might be able to retain it. If they do, it will keep the Democrats wandering in the wilderness for decades. They’re old news.
• The Sanders supporters reach for power.
• The DNC and the battalions of professional consultants, pollsters, organizers, etc. blame anyone but themselves for the failure.
• Somebody will note that Barack Obama has very little impact on elections in which he’s not on the ballot.
• Democratic elected official, particularly sitting senators and big city mayors, start jockeying for position in the new, updated Democratic Party.
• The RNC worry about what their fate will be in the Age of Trump.

Isn’t just the DNC that has “beclowned itself”. So has the RNC. The RNC just has the unexpected misfortune of a newly elected president who isn’t a member of the club.

is the senior senator from New York, Sen. Chuck Schumer. How he handles the office of Senate Minority Leader is likely to set the tone for the next four (or, heavens forfend, eight) years. If he is as relentlessly partisan as retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has been, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Unlike some of the hysteria I’ve been reading the editors of the Wall Street Journal offer good advice:

Mr. Trump’s job, like any President-elect, is to provide confidence and reassurance. He set the right tone in his remarks Wednesday morning, pledging to unite the country and unleash every American’s “potential.”

One of the first tests will be his personnel decisions, starting with his picks for Treasury Secretary and Secretary of State, as well as how he staffs the West Wing. Does he surround himself with smart, sound people who know how to use the White House’s levers of power and who will tell him what he doesn’t know—as he did when he selected Mike Pence as his running mate? Or does he continue to rely on his own instincts and a small coterie of advisers?

After an intense and divisive campaign, Mr. Trump also sounded the right note of magnanimity toward Mrs. Clinton. He should go further and drop his campaign threats to investigate her and call off the Republicans in Congress.

and I see their instincts echo my own:

In Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, in 1865, he appealed to his “fellow-countrymen” to work toward reconciliation and domestic peace, “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” The 16th President always repays attention, but his words seem particularly rewarding after a long night like Tuesday.

but I’m also thinking of Emily Dickinson:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Abandon rancor and cynicism. Don’t lose hope.

I’ve been voting in presidential elections for a half century. In all of that time I have only voted for the person elected to the presidency twice, most recently in 2008.

My losing streak continues.

I have no words for Tom Friedman’s reaction to the election results:

But Donald Trump cannot be a winner unless he undergoes a radical change in personality and politics and becomes everything he was not in this campaign. He has to become a healer instead of a divider; a compulsive truth-teller rather than a compulsive liar; someone ready to study problems and make decisions based on evidence, not someone who just shoots from the hip; someone who tells people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear; and someone who appreciates that an interdependent world can thrive only on win-win relationships, not zero-sum ones.

because of the enormity of the cognitive dissonance it reflects.

Let me put it into words Mr. Friedman might understand. A lot of people in the United States just as in the rest of the world don’t want the flat world that you do.

Shorter Paul Krugman: America isn’t a progressive country. Governing as though it were is an error.

I strongly suspect that we’re going to be treated to a lot of musing on the lessons learned in the 2016 presidential campaign, much of it phrased as recriminations or even accusations.

The polls were wrong. Hillary Clinton did not have a three point advantage in the popular vote. She had a miniscule or non-existent advantage. Spending money on pollsters is a waste.

Early returns suggest that more blacks and Hispanics voted for Donald Trump than did for Mitt Romney. I can’t prove it but I suspect it’s because blacks and Hispanics already discount a certain amount of racism among whites as women other than elite women discount the crude sort of sexism of which Mr. Trump has been accused. The question is less whether he’s a racist or sexist but what’s in it for them?

The “ground game” is officially useless. Money spent on it is wasted, words that will bring existential fear to the hearts of many political operatives. It can help a bit but it can’t bring you victory. Mr. Trump had no organization and he didn’t even have offices in a lot of districts. He won anyway and came close to victory in states that he had, apparently, written off.

If you cry wolf, people eventually tune you out.

You can’t toss a quarter of the electorate into a “basket of deplorables” and expect to be elected president. Ordinary people are aware of the disdain that elites hold for them but elites usually have the good grace not to say so.

Registering people to vote doesn’t necessarily motivate them to vote.

Live in the present not the future.

Money isn’t nearly as important as people have been saying. The Clinton campaign and her supporters outspent Donald Trump and his supporters 2 to 1. She lost anyway.

Finally, we have learned that there is a path to the presidency other than serving in public office, building a campaign warchest, and creating an organization. Whether that can be imitated I have no idea.

As I wrote in my previous post, I literally have no idea of what President Trump will do. I can say what I hope he will do.

I hope he is gracious in victory. If I were in his shoes, I would announce my intention of pardoning Hillary Clinton or ask President Obama to do so as early as possible. Think of it as jiu jitsu.

I hope he tries to fulfill his promise of “being a president for all of the people”. I’m reminded of Sam Clemens’s wisecrack: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest”.

He could begin that by appointing blacks and Hispanics to prominent positions in his administration and appointing a woman to be his press secretary/spokesperson. Regardless of the demographics of those who voted for or against him, although we’re still a country with a supermajority of white voters, we have large black and Hispanic minorities and that deserves recognition.

I hope the media continue to go after President-elect and then President Trump hammer and tongs, a bulwark against presidential overreach. I have every confidence they will do that.

I hope he curtails the politicization of federal agencies that has become so apparent.

I hope that President Obama does not produce a flurry of last minute executive orders and that the Obama Administration does not engage in the sort of conduct that characterized the transition between the Clinton Administration and the George W. Bush Administration.

I hope he takes the words of the presidential oath of office seriously:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I hope he will be a prudent steward of American interests in the world, the national interests rather than the narrow interests of certain groups, companies, or individuals. I hope he has no conceit of his ability to remake the world.