Day 1014

Strong political signals

A friend sent me the Thanksgiving column of a well known American conservative columnist. I read it twice.

I find myself grateful that while the national winners, the Republican Party, can fairly claim a mandate—carrying both houses of Congress and the popular vote, winning in the battleground states—it is still, yet, a modest one. The margins in Congress are real but not overwhelming, the battleground states were close, the popular vote at time of writing, with some votes still being counted, is 76,883,434 for Mr. Trump and 74,406,431 for Kamala Harris. There’s something touching and impressive in the specificity there, if you needed to be reminded that every vote counts. But what we’re looking at is a clear, close margin— 49.96% to 48.35%. Even with an ultimately insufficient presidential candidate, the Democrats got almost half the votes. They’re not over, but they’re wobbling, and the things they stand for aren’t popular and don’t deserve to be. — Peggy Noonan (The Wall Street Jou…