The Message

At 4:22 this afternoon, Kamala Harris gave her concession speech, at Howard University, her Alma Mater, where she had hoped to give a victory speech.

She spoke for 12 minutes, praising America and its system, thanking her supporters and telling them she loved them, and telling them to not give up the fight for making this a better country.

Do I feel better for having heard that? No. To continue that fight, we need a plan. Right now, to paraphrase her opponent's line, we don't even have a concept of a plan.

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So, after an emotionally devastating election, what message to I have for the people who, like me, supported Kamala Harris?

In 2016, the message was easy: "Don't flee to Canada. Stay and fight. Together, we will get through this." This would seem to be a good message again. But, this time, we can't be sure of that. Trump says he'll be a dictator on Day One. No dictator ever gave up power on Day Two. He's said he will terminate the Constitution of the United States, which, he has said, has been "unfair" to him. And he has the Supreme Court on his side now, along with the Senate, and probably (the returns are not all in yet) also the House of Representatives.

Can we survive four years of Dictator Trump and the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025? Or, if, for whatever reason, Trump can't complete the term, four years of a combination of Dictator Trump and Dictator Vance, carrying Project 2025 out? I honestly don't know.

I tried. I warned as many people as I could. Not enough listened to me. I'm sorry. I know that makes me sound like McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he was no hero, and came to the kind of end that I can imagine Trump's new government carrying out. But it's all I can say. 

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What's the message to the people who voted for Trump? It's simple:

You got what you wanted. You own it all now. Whatever happens over the next four years, it is all on you.

You have bet your lives, and everybody else's, on Trump having a successful second term. Even though his first term was, by any rational measure, a complete disaster. The day he left office the first time, the country's economy was in tatters, it was causing the inflation you blamed on Joe Biden, over 1 million people died from COVID when he could have saved the vast majority of those had he taken it seriously, the crime problem had gotten worse, he hadn't come close to solving the border problem you care so damned much about.

You decided that his first term, his various failures, his various crimes including impeachable offenses, his various bigotries, and the other evidence of his low character don't matter. You also decided that, whatever virtues Harris has, don't matter. Whatever I might think of such an attitude, it is your right.

But, know this: You are betting your lives, as well as ours, on Trump having a successful term. Even though you know that he is now 78 years old, older than Biden was when he was elected, and morbidly obese. And even though that you also know that, if, for whatever reason, he can't complete this term, the Presidency will fall to J.D. Vance. I'll bet you any money you like that not one of you was undecided, heard that Vance was the choice, and chose Trump on that basis.

But it's all on him now, and it's all on you. Whatever happens over the next four years, it's because you chose this guy.

If it works out in your favor, you are well within your rights to gloat.

If it doesn't -- if Trump crashes the economy a second time, if crime gets worse, if the immigration problem is not fixed, if there is a foreign-policy disaster, if there is another pandemic -- I am well within my rights to tell you that I told you so.

Whatever happens, as was said in the first Joker film, you get what you fucking deserve.