Mibeers

Bill is exactly right. There are plenty of micro-explanations and micro-excuses for what happened in the presidential election of 2024. And on the margins, any number of them—indeed, almost certainly, a combination of them—made the difference. But their impact was only on the margins. Don’t get me wrong—small margins and the factors that move them do matter, a lot, in elections—particularly in America in the 21st century. They deserve careful analysis, but only to a point. For the bottom line is that these considerations are not what we must focus on first and foremost today. What deserves the lion’s share of our attention are the facts that a major political party could have even considered nominating Trump despite his manifest criminality, moral depravity, psychological derangement, and cognitive deficiencies and deterioration—and that nearly half the country would have voted for him no matter what he did or said and no matter whom he had run against. That was the ultimate problem in this election, and remains so. We suffer from a deep sickness in our national polity. Far above all else, before it’s too late, thoughtful Americans of good faith must work together to confront, to better comprehend, and to ultimately address that grave and metastasizing ailment if our great experiment in self-governance is to survive. Scapegoating and blame-assigning about anything else serves no end but to diminish our chances of overcoming our profound national moral crisis.