MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKS

There's a reason they are on the sidelines.

Monday morning quarterbacks, that is.

It's because they aren't playing in the real game.

The 2024 election is now a week old. Trump won.  Harris lost.  That wasn't all that hard to say.  Too bad Trump couldn't say it four years ago.  Too bad millions of Americans couldn't either.  As I write, Trump is going to the White House today to meet President Biden for the post-election congratulatory meeting where the new guy and the old guy (unfortunately, they've all been guys thus far) meet to assure America that the transition will be seamless and peaceful.  Too bad that didn't happen last time either.  Five people died and hundreds were injured as a result.

For the past week, we have been flooded with "analysis" on why Trump won and Harris lost.

The simple answer is Trump got more votes in states where it counted.  

Not a ton more.  

But enough to win.  

Four years ago Biden got not a ton more but enough to win in those states and in the election before that Trump did.  

Frankly, for all the presidential elections that have been held since 1988, that has been the pattern.  

There haven't been any blow-outs.  

America is a divided country.

And has been for over thirty years.

There's also been a see-sawing quality to these results.  In 1992 and '96, the Democrat won. In 2000 and '04, it was the Republican.  Back to the Democrat in 2008 and 2012. Then a Republican (2016), a Democrat (2020), and now a Republican again.

Into this sea of apparent indecision, or at least a sea of different decisions over a relatively short span of historical time, have waded a boatload of analysts ready to tell us the reasons why. Typically, this being America, the loser in this analysis takes it on the chin and the winner is perceived to have wrought some sort of personal triumph. 

Back in 2000, when Florida's hanging chads and a ballot that had Jews in Palm Beach voting for Pat Buchanan allowed members of the Supreme Court to vote twice and thereby make George W. Bush president, Al Gore was upbraided for sighing and making faces during that year's debates, signs -- it was said -- that meant he wasn't the guy you'd want to have a beer with in an election so close that the would-you-have- a- beer-with-that-guy vote had to have mattered.

In 2004, another close one, a war hero lost because he was supposedly a wind-surfing Nantucket elitist.

 In 2016, Hillary allegedly went down for being "unlikeable".  

Hard to believe the "pussy-grabbing" alterative was more likeable.

But what do I know.

Now the swords are out for Kamala Harris.

A week before the election, people were praising her flawless campaign.  

They were marveling at her adept eleventh-hour entry following President Biden's departure and praising the speed with which she herded the cats that are her party, avoided the expected bloodletting, and fought Trump to a toss-up that might be won.

Now . . .

She either wasn't dishonest enough to repudiate Joe Biden.

Or progressive enough to win back the working class.

Or specific enough to sway the undecided.

Or wise enough to pick Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro as her running mate.

Or a candidate long enough to have battled through primaries that, I guess, would have somehow increased her appeal among black and Hispanic men . . .

Or resulted in a different candidate with all of her attributes but none of her flaws.

The problem with all of this is that in a race as close as the one we just witnessed, any of these explanations might be right. Or they might be wrong.  In the real world, there is no way to know.  We'd have to redo the election with all these variables changed and see the results.

My own view is that none of them would have mattered.

Because . . .

They all ignore the other side.

They get to have a say too.

Even when they shouldn't.

I think election analysts should have to be certified.  Others are.  Lawyers pass bar exams.  Doctors are licensed. My wife just spent thousands becoming a CFRE.  That's short for certified fund-raising executive.

Here's a modest proposal.

Before you decide why someone lost an election, run in one.

Put your name on a ballot.

Make all these decisions in real time.

In the game.

Not on the sidelines.

I have and I cannot tell you why Kamala Harris lost other than to say Trump got more votes. 

Shit happens. 

Whether Trump should be president is a different question.  

He shouldn't be.  

He is a rapist, a felon and a fascist. 

His election does not change any of that.

The people who voted for him are responsible for putting him back in the Oval office come next January.  They made a bad decision, one that I believe over time they will regret and one that has already done serious damage to the country and will do even more damage in the future. Even as I write, Trump is naming yes-men and women to his Cabinet, demanding that he be allowed to make recess appointments to avoid the need for Senate confirmation, and fulfilling Liz Cheney's dire predictions of a government beholden only to his dictatorial impulses. Abroad, Vladimir Putin is emboldened, Europe and Ukraine prepare for American cowardice, and China eyes Taiwan. 

The voters, however, are not the only responsible parties.

The institutions of America failed.

The two biggest failures were the US Senate and the US Supreme Court.  

Following the carnage of January 6, 2021, the Senate should have convicted Trump on his impeachment and made it impossible for him to ever be president again.  For the same reason, the Supreme Court should have enforced the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause and made it impossible for him to run again.  Both had the power to do so. The impeachment and insurrection clauses in the Constitution were designed precisely to confront and eliminate the problem Trump presents, an autocrat as president who dishonestly and regularly violates the rule of law, seeks to exercise dictatorial power, and resorts to violence as a means to that end. 

The Founders and the authors of the 14th Amendment knew that elections alone could not be counted on to preserve American democracy and a Constitutionally-based republican form of government.  

Sadly, the Senate and the Supreme Court forgot that lesson. 

The fact that Trump won the 2024 election means he will be president again.

It does not mean he should be. 

The fact that Trump won means Harris lost.

And that doesn't mean she should have either.