Basking

QUITE NATURALLY I was elated at the results of the election. Devout Democrat that I have long been, it feels great to win big. Now, perhaps, Trump is dead in the water, inert, a true lame duck serving out the rest of his term impotent. The Democrats seem to be engendring a new young generation of political leaders, attractive folks, ready to replace the Trump-Biden generation, which badly needs doing. The new Democratic majority Congress seems poised to take on Trump, and force a new, progressive agenda down his raspy throat. Trump'll doubtless utilize the veto pen more often than even, say, Gerald R. Ford who, as president in the liberal seventies, was not only weakened by his status as Nixon's theraputic replacement, but was at odds not only with the heavily Democratic Congress, but with a solid majority of the American people as well. This Democratic landslide is just what the doctor ordered, ideologically, and clearly demonstrates, yet again, that the United States is a fundamentally progressive country, European culturally, with strong fundamental egalitatian impulses. As it has been for more than a hundred years, the Republican party remains the party of big business, of the wealthy. Lincoln's free soil party was captured by big business in the post Civil War American industrial revolution, and has remained captive ever since. The G.O.P. is also the white Christian party, as contemporary scholars often point out. Today's Republican leaders are well aware that their party has become bottlenecked by white upper middle class Christianity in a country increasingly darkly colored and multicultural, including spiritually. Only about fifty percent of the American people are caucasian. Only about half of the American people self identify as "Christian" and attend church. Republican leaders and pundits are talking about how the G.O.P. must become more broadly appealing, to expand beyond its white Christian base. Pure, unadultered conservatism inherently hurts the G.O.P., in that, over time, over the years and decades, society and history move towards the left, in that, people and societies seek circumstantial self improvement, which can only come from change, change being the foundation of societal advancement of any sort and progressive liberal ideology in particular. There is of course the possibility that the new Democratic Congress will turn out to be a bunch of lackluster wimps, who will backtrack from their ambitious promises, but early indications are other- wise. Generally speaking, the newly elected young liberal Democrats seem truly intent on opposing and defeating Trumpism and leading the country from their end of Pennsylvania Ave. But history hath shown that they had better get started right out of the blocks, because their window of opportunity will not remain open forever.