It’s finally over.
All but the shouting, vote-counting, finger-pointing, legal wrangling, possible rioting and attempted overthrowing — once more — of our 248-year-old democratic republic.
But that’s all in the future.
Maybe.
For now, let’s celebrate the end of the most vexing, mean-spirited and household-dividing presidential election in modern times, as it heaves itself across the finish line and crumples in a lousy heap.
Columnists Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria look back on the rancorous path to this day and offer some thoughts on what lies ahead.
Barabak: There are very few things I can say with certainty. But I can say without doubt that most people — save members of Masochists Anonymous — are glad this campaign is mercifully done with. No?
Chabria: I feel like it’s the morning after a Vegas wedding and we’ve tied the knot — we’re just not sure with whom. As happy as I am that we have finally made it to voting day, I feel duty-bound to squash any relief out there by being clear that we still have a long way to go before we all agree on a winner.
Votes will almost certainly be challenged — sometimes fairly and sometimes nefariously — for weeks, if not months, to come.
But here’s more good news: We are in the process of a free and fair election, upholding a democracy that has seemed tenuous at times these last few years. So that’s a plus.
Are you feeling hopeful about anything at this moment?
Barabak: Not, as you suggested, that we’ll all eventually agree on a winner. There are still a shocking number of deluded and misguided folks out there who believe Trump won in 2020.
Including the denier in chief who sits atop the GOP ticket.
That said, I love election day.
After all the speeches and mail pieces, all the TV ads, the debates, town halls, prime-time interviews, impromptu statements and hasty clarifications, it’s finally voters’ turn to have their say. Hokey as it sounds, we’re reminded on this one day that the power in our political system ultimately rests with the people and the sentiments they express at the ballot box.
I make no predictions; I’m smart enough to know what I don’t know, which is a whole lot. And I’m not in the habit of endorsing candidates. But I’ve made it pretty clear in columns over the last several years that I think our president should be someone who doesn’t try to overturn a legitimate election, talk about suspending the Constitution, threaten to use the military against his political opponents, simulate oral sex at a political rally and who hasn’t done and said so many awful and weird things in just the last decade that it would fill to bursting the entire internet if I kept going on.
If I’m hopeful about anything, it’s that a majority of Americans will feel that things in this country have worked, if far from perfectly, then well enough since its founding that perhaps maybe we shouldn’t chuck our values and grounding principles just because eggs and gas cost more than they did when the pandemic-ravaged economy was on its back four years ago.
Allow me to trot out a well-worn phrase that we hear just about every election, how this one is the most important of our lifetime. In this instance, it’s true.
Chabria: I’m with you on all that. I love election day too. Because, yes, it does come down to the people and, despite the overt attempts by Donald Trump to subvert that, our will has held.
Where I differ from you is that I’m happy to loudly and proudly proclaim that I am100% pro-Harris. I actually don’t have a party preference — that might surprise some (the dearly appreciated few who regularly read our Politics newsletter).
But I am at heart a policy nerd. I’ve written in favor of Republican legislation at the statehouse when I think it’s good, and knocked the supermajority Democrats in Sacramento when they do dumb stuff, which is fairly frequently.
But, like many, I don’t see this presidential election as about Democrat or Republican. There are fundamental values on the line, even beyond democracy — women’s rights, civil rights, the safety of immigrants.
I bring it up because if Harris doesn’t win, people need to continue this fight to push back against autocracy, even with a dictatorial-minded president in the White House. Trump may be calling this election the final battle, but it’s not.
Barabak: Well stated.
Now if I can, I’d like to briefly acknowledge and give praise to our current president — remember that guy? — Joe Biden.
He essentially vowed to be a one-term president, a “bridge” to a new “generation of leaders,” as he put it while campaigning in 2020. Then he yanked up that bridge up and decided, at age 81, to seek another term.
Things were going fair to middling with his candidacy until Biden’s catastrophic, catatonic debate performance in June, which caused a major Democratic freak-out and resulted in his grudging departure from the ticket and endorsement of Harris.
Supposedly, Biden still thinks he would have beaten Trump, making him one of the few people on the planet to harbor that misconception.
But give credit where due. Biden spent decades of his life chasing and pining after the presidency and when he finally realized his dream, he proved quite adept at the job. It turns out there’s something to be said for all that Washington experience, particularly when it comes to dealing with Congress. He achieved far more legislatively than many thought possible, given the narrow margins Democrats held in the House and Senate, and presided over an economy that, partisan carping aside, is the envy of the world.
No wonder Biden wished for and felt he deserved a second term.
Still, he walked away — albeit only after getting a healthy shove. It’s rare for someone to willingly surrender power the way Biden did. If Harris wins, his selfless act will be a laudable part of the president’s legacy. If she loses, out come the knives and the criticism that Biden selfishly overstayed his time in office and denied his party the chance for a competitive primary among a vibrant, fresh field of candidates.
Chabria: Biden definitely earned a place in the history books — in a good way — for having the courage and commitment to the good of the country to step down.
I’ll also give a shout-out — and maybe one of those oh-so-iffy predictions — to the women of America. From early voting, we know that female voters are turning out in huge numbers. Some of that may be the Dobbs Supreme Court decision that cuts women’s reproductive rights, but I think it goes beyond that.
We have seen a vicious attack on women’s civil rights and their place in civic life, with some on the far right suggesting women should not even have the right to vote. So my prediction is if Harris wins, it will be because women — Republican, Democrat, Christian, Black, white, brown, you name it — decided they were, to steal her slogan, not going back.
Barabak: Wouldn’t that be poetic. In the end, it would turn out that you can’t grab ‘em by the … well, you know, and get away with it.
One last thing. I said that I make no predictions. I learned my lesson in 2016, when it turned out everything I thought I knew about politics was wrong.
But I will venture this: Nobody knows what’s going to happen on this election day or who’s going to win. But for the next four years, until the next presidential campaign, and forever after, there will be no end of people explaining how the outcome was clear as the dawning daylight all along.
Don’t buy it.
