The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog.

This time the pollsters were right. They had held all along that the election outcome was within the margin of error. It could go either way. And so it did. But in the wrong direction. Donald J. Trump won on a campaign of lies and grievances, fear and loathing. We’re a deeply divided nation, preferring a synthetic strong father to lead us , not  an authentic empathetic mother.

In 2016, we comforted ourselves that Trump’s victory was a fluke, a close Electoral College win by one of two deeply unpopular candidates, who decisively lost the popular vote. In 2020, we we thought the crisis had been averted. We focused on Trump’s losing both the electoral college vote and popular vote, and we ignored how many more million votes he received in 2020.

Last night, Trump won again, winning the popular vote nationwide- improving his numbers in blue and red states alike.  Many of us thought that would never happen because, knowing all that the American people had come to know about Trump in the past decade, “that’s not who we are as   a nation.”    Sadly, Donald Trump does represent who we are, at least a majority of voters in an unrigged election. For nearly half a century he has personified the Zeitgeist of the time: from symbolizing money and greed to tabloid front-page sex scandal gossip , to faux successful businessman reality tv star to master social media influencer .

A later blog can deal with the finger pointing and post-mortems. For now, just reflect on  Biden’s failure to be the promised “transitional” president to a new generation and his terrible job communicating his successes and darker risks avoided Think about Mitch McConnell’s failure to whip a Trump impeachment conviction vote after Jan 6 and the Democrats grossly mishandling the immigration issue . Reflect on the news media’s shameful normalizing Trump’s behavior and failing to explain clearly to voters the causes of inflation, economic tradeoffs, the basics of tariffs and implications of trade wars, the value of NATO and alliances, and the comparative risks of candidate proposed programs on the national debt .  And don’t get me started on the malevolent misinformation and disinformation spewed unchecked on social media.

Kamala Harris ran a nearly perfect 90- day campaign. She gave voice to values of community and caring, of listening to the concerns of everyone regardless of party. Sadly, too many voters didn’t buy her move to the center and saw her instead as the ultra-progressive ambassador of woke that she artificially was in 2019. She ran the 2024 campaign, but her ghosts and the unpopular Biden Administration were on the ballot. Given the defeats of the governing party in almost all liberal democracies in the wake of Covid, I’m not sure that any Democrat could have won this election.

As a dear friend texted me this morning, we have shown ourselves to be “a selfish nation that cares only about its own person interest – not the planet, not the world, not our neighbors who may be different from us.” As unsuccessful Democratic Presidential nominee Arizona Congressman Mo Udall said in 1976, standing on the sweeping staircase at the New York hotel where he was headquartered, “The people have spoken. The bastards.”

Trump once said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and no one would care. Here he didn’t even have to brandish a gun. A manifestly unfit person has been returned to perhaps the most powerful position in the world. A majority of voters in a high-turnout election were not bothered by his misogyny, racism, mendacity, fraudulent and criminal behavior, or the warnings of those who had served in his first administration.

So, how to cope? It isn’t enough to reassure ourselves that we survived the first Trump administration. At that time, he had some decent folks in his administration to keep him from his greatest outrages. But those people, seeing who he is, are there no longer. And his stacked  Supreme Court has given him virtual carte blanche to  deregulate environmental and other safeguards, implement his goals of siccing the Justice Department  and IRS  on his critics, pardoning January 6 rioters, dismissing would-be prosecutors, and gutting the independent federal workforce . The prospects are scary as hell.

Tuesday night Donald Trump said, “Promises made, promises kept.” We know what he promised. Mass deportations. Stripping entitlement programs to pay for tax cuts. Perhaps a federal abortion ban and other horrific bills sent him by a GOP-controlled Congress.  Weakening international commitments to the disadvantage of our allies like Ukraine and Taiwan. Punitive tariffs that will increase costs for American families by thousands of dollars and add exponentially to the national debt. Not to mention his traditional approach to nepotism and grift.

Welcome to the no-guardrails reign of Elon Musk as Grand Vizier, JD Vance shepherding Project 2025 implementation, Stephen Miller in charge of deportations, and RFK, Jr. of health care.  This will be a sick joke. Loyalty not competence will be the watchword for cabinet officials and administration appointments. Under this worst-case scenario could Rudy Giuliani become attorney general?

And Trump will have the Supreme Court, U.S. Senate, and perhaps the House with him. In a little over a year, we’ll be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States and the birth of our democracy. With Donald Trump as an unchecked President, we’ll soon have a better idea of whether that democracy is dying  in sunlight or giving  the American people what they claim to have desired. (Il Duce 1925 redux?) As Pogo once said,” We have met the enemy, and he is us.”