Royko Gets His Wish

If you look around or listen, you’ll hear the newly minted cliché that the Democratic Party is now engaged in soul searching after it got hammered yesterday, top to bottom, by voters who did not like what it was selling.

It was a huge surprise. I like to think that one of the souls involved is that of a great Chicago columnist, the late Mike Royko, who on March 15, 1984 encouraged his readers to lie to the exit pollsters in that year’s primary election. If everyone did, he said, “The entire nation will be treated to one of the finest evenings of television viewing since the tube was unleashed.” (He was made to apologize, but I don’t think he meant it.) Yesterday, what he suggested more than 40 years ago came to pass, and it was as glorious as he predicted.

This night of pure viewing enjoyment was almost as frustrating to me at first as it was to the people who thought Kamala Harris was a good idea. The — I have to be careful in characterizing them — decision makers at Frontier Communications have not maintained their system and on Halloween night my telephone and internet service disappeared. I’ll write about that next week; for now I’ll merely note that as of Tuesday it had not returned, though it would occasionally, briefly, come to life, but not enough to be useful.

Experienced with Frontier Communications, I have also installed a television aerial that lets me watch the lefties of PBS on the local university station, with their increasingly uninteresting programs, and whatever other stations are hanging on the TV tower at WTAP in Parkersburg, West Virginia, which broadcasts several networks and syndication services. Last night it looked as if that would have to do.

It was hilarious, before it got satisfying. The NBC evening newscast was on at 6:30. A little before 7, Lester Holt proved that it’s not only on cable that the news is more showbiz than actual coverage. With a big countdown graphic he counted down to 7 p.m., when, he said, the first election projections would be announced.

The countdown proceeded, digits on the screen and everything, and exactly at 7 p.m. the graphic blasted across the screen: “Wheel of Fortune.” I thought for a second that this was a very strange logo for election coverage, but hey, network television is desperate. Then I realized that, no, WTAP-TV was actually broadcasting a game show. NBC’s promised results, well, that was NBC’s promise, not WTAP’s.

I switched to CBS but did not care to stay for long. Norah O’Donnell cannot be anyone’s idea of a newscaster. She reminds me of nothing so much as the riding-crop-waving commandant in those movies you’re not supposed to watch about German women’s prisons.

If I had known what was about to unfold, I would have stayed with CBS, not for the information but for the sheer schadenfreude of their delightful anguish. I did pop in from time to time, to watch O’Donnell age a month a minute. Royko was right.

Based on the exit polls, the election would not turn out as it ultimately did. CBS’s pollsters, CBS said, had discovered that the voters’ chief concern was the maintenance of progressive democracy or some such drivel. Not the economy, not inflation, not national security, not even abortion. No, a category no one had ever heard of before, that was what would sweep Kamala Harris to the White House. Looking back, I think what the voters meant was that those who opposed Trump opposed Trump. But they were not in the majority.

During the evening, the internet dribbled slowly back, off and on, sometimes a half-dozen times a minute. But by the time the real trend was emerging, it was mostly back, and between the internet-only channels and my Pixel tablet (running GrapheneOS) I was able to get the ever-more-astonishing information, ahead of and without broadcast network anchors.

I had voted early in the afternoon, on one of the most beautiful days since Creation. As previously noted, I have no brief for either of the presidential candidates (nor for any of the minor ankle-biter candidates that got, like mouse droppings on the closet floor, onto the ballot).

On the presidential line I wrote in “No.” It’s more of a statement of position than just leaving it blank would have been. As the evening progressed I learned that every candidate for whom I had voted was victorious.

Knowing that either of the presidential candidates was bad news, I voted with the idea of keeping under control whichever clown that got elected. Bernie Moreno, the Republican candidate for U.S. senator here, strikes me as more than a little sketchy. Either of his two primary candidates would have been preferable. But bad as he is, he’s better than the incumbent, Sherrod Brown, who would go along with anything Harris wanted, should she have won the election. Moreno wouldn’t, and he seems slimy enough that despite Trump’s endorsement he would betray the former-and-future president if there were something in it for him. (Yes, we’ve reached the point where lack of character might be a defense against political corruption.) It was with some delight that I learned Moreno had won and Sherrod Brown is soon to be senatorial history.

If you’ve watched elections over the years you’ll remember that during the course of the evening various losing candidates would speak to their supporters, usually in somewhat graceful concessions, and the winners crow to their backers. Last night was surprisingly devoid of that. In fact, we heard from pretty much no one on either side. The various networks were so stunned that if their buildings had burst into flames they might not have had presence of mind to leave.

Today we heard from a few people here and there, most notably Letitia James, attorney general of the State of New York and general national embarrassment, declaring war on Trump, as she does from time to time. One hopes she has a fall-back job; she will be angry (her default emotion) when the Democrat powers that be in the Empire State tell her that her services are no longer needed, a day brought closer by yesterday’s election.

There has not been any recrimination that I can find. There’s no thought given to the possibility that a country of sane grownups has rejected what the “progressive” left has to offer. The country has had it with DEI, with trans-gender fairytales, with the idea that you are not a person but a member of a group. The people would reject those and other lefty notions if they were available for free; they’re sure as hell not willing to pay for them.

The problem, according to the left, is not me, it’s you.

To which I say: Great! Keep at it!

This afternoon, Harris made a sort of concession speech. “Do not despair,” she said. She needn’t worry on that count for the country writ large, though I imagine her supporters will need treatment; they did before the election and their condition has surely been exacerbated. Mostly I think the reaction will be something involving the door not hitting her on the way out. Her legacy will be as the answer to a trivia question that in a few years no one will know, and no one will ask. History’s shallowest candidate for president overnight became its shallowest presidential loser. Hillary Clinton, not a trivia answer but the punchline of jokes, does angry better.

Those who pay attention have noticed a trend toward rejection of “progressive” shibboleths. Hollywood embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion in its movies, and audiences did not embrace those movies. Hollywood studios now verge on bankruptcy, and no one who doesn’t work there cares. Yesterday, California enacted a law making criminal activity illegal again, and Los Angeles tossed out the George Soros-sponsored district attorney, George Gascón.

The country told the coastal “progressive” loons and their scattered admirers throughout the land to go pound sand yesterday, and the loons and loon-adjacents aren’t listening. They will grow increasingly shrill and will more and more isolate themselves. Good. Maybe by 2028 the Democrats will take the country and the world seriously. Maybe they will realize that by any standard of decency the “death to the Jews” crowd should be condemned, not catered to. (Maybe the Republicans, too, will more carefully consider its choice of candidate: remember, in 2028 there will be no incumbent running.)

This assumes that nothing goes seriously haywire between now and then, which is highly unlikely; indeed, it would be almost unprecedented in our history.

There is one thing of which we can be sure: the “news” media will engage in no retrospection. Which will be reflected in its continuing decline in both influence and business. The “legacy media” are as dead as Kamala Harris’s political career, such as it was.

The soul searching the Democrats are supposed to undertake is for your soul, not theirs. We’ll hear whining and Letitia James-style anger. If you don’t go agree with them, they’ll blame it on your lack of enlightenment.

But nobody much cares what the left thinks or wants anymore — we learned that yesterday.

It appears the Republicans will have control of the House of Representatives and Senate as well as the presidency. In a better world that would be a sign of hope. But I’m reminded of the election 30 years ago when, behind Newt Gingrich’s politically astute “Contract with America,” the Republicans disciplined Bill Clinton but then enacted policies that said, basically, “the goodies belong to us now.” Potential reform was lost.

A government headed by Trump seems if anything less likely to behave responsibly than the Congress of 1994. (I could be wrong. More unlikely things have happened.)

The one thing that is certain is that the things people told the poll takers and what they actually did are widely divergent, and it was a joy to behold.

Mike Royko, I salute you!