Lessons Learned. I guess there weren't any.

I'm tempted to stop this series of posts, and likely will slow them down or halt them for awhile, somewhat.   There's been a flood of post election commentary and so there's hardly any point in doing any more, which doesn't seem to mean that anyone is stopping however.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of warning those who will not learn from history, I cannot help but note that part of the Democratic and left of center commentary has been a howling scream of "we did nothing wrong and we intend to keep on doing the same".

It's truly been amazing.

There has been, to be completely fair, a fair amount of post election analysis in these quarters that's pretty biting, quite analytical, and likely correct.  But there's also a lot that's flat out delusional.

In that category, there have been some who have been floating suggestions along the lines of "if Trump really wants to work with us, like he says, he'll (fill in terms of surrender to the Democrats here).

First of all, I haven't heard him saying that at all.  Indeed, I think the great self delusional element in much of the post election analysis is that Trump isn't going to keep on keeping on in the direction he's been going.  He will.

So, I don't think he's really that worried about working with Democrats.  He really doesn't have to.

He has to work with Republicans, but they also have to work with him and they know it.  Republicans now will have no excuse at all for not doing things they've paid lip service to, but have not done.

Chief amongst the more off the rails suggestions I've seen is that if Trump really wants to show that he can work with Democrats (a doubtful proposition) he should renominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  That's largely the same in nature as suggesting that if Lincoln really wanted to show the South that the nation was one again, in 1865, he should allow slavery to continue.  I mean, seriously?  There's no freaking earthly way that's going to happen, and indeed it should not and could not.

Now, as noted, I'm not a Trump fan (and I wasn't a Clinton fan either), but a person like Trump doesn't get elected to go in and say, "oh, I guess everything is okay here".  Not hardly.  And cherished items such as a left wing Supreme Court were the very things that probably served, in this instance, to torpedo the Democrats chances this year.

Indeed I think a good case can be made for the proposition that the turning point for the Democrats in this election was the Obegefell Decision.  Like it or hate it, it was on legal ice so think that a person could have taken a steam bath in it.  As such decisions are inherently anti-democratic, and that decision certainly was as well as being legally anemic, celebrating it the way the White House did, combined with major Democratic figures announcing that they no longer stood by the things they'd said, when they had to say them to get elected, a few years prior may very well have doomed them.  So essentially saying that the Supreme Court should be turned over to the hard left for a generation, maybe, as a peace offering is really out there.

It's not the only such suggestion that's out there, however.

A less obvious one is the suggestion that the Democrats blast into the future by putting their party in the hands of the same sort of thinking that got them where they are now.  Basically their decision is akin to the "once more over the top" thinking from World War One.  "What, we've been mowed down. . . huh. . . well, let's try it again"

There's a popular suggestion that Keith Ellison be put in charge of the party.  Have you listened to him?  His stated comments, so far, sound pretty much like a repeat of failure.  The New York Times, in an op ed, suggests that Chuck Schumer, one of the most detested Democrats outside of the East Coast, will be given a leadership role. Really, NYT, wouldn't a better suggestion be that Schumer simply keep quiet?  Outside New York, he's not exactly super popular.

In fairness to the Times, however, Schumer was mentioned as an inevitability, along with Sanders, who at least deserves a voice.   They urged the party to look towards younger leaders and I'll note that at least Ellison, who is a few months younger than me, actually fits that definition by Democratic terms.  Not in human terms.  53 years old is not young.  But when the two candidates who ran for the Democrats this year in the primaries have a combined age of over 140, well, I guess its youngish.