By Scott Graber
It is early, raining, and I’m in Port Royal. This morning the news lingers on the election. Why did the Democrats lose? Who didn’t show up? What went wrong with the polling?
But Fox, MSNBC, CNN and the ever-expanding corps of “explainers” and “influencers” seem to agree that this was an honest election.
We should, I suppose, take some comfort in the fact that the voting machines were not infected by Russia’s FSB; were not pre-programmed by Venezuelans; and there wasn’t any significant turn-out of the dead.
Apparently there were Republican lawyers ready to file petitions to stop the counting and seize the tainted ballots; but now most of those disappointed litigators will return to their offices and wait for a call that may get them a job in a marble-clad building on Independence Avenue.
The new Administration has its “mandate” — roughly one half (49.96 percent as of Monday at 5 p.m.) of the American electorate wanted a radically different government. Some of that cohort want no government at all — or at least no rule-making bureaucracy to slow down the laying of pipelines; the burning of coal; the expansion of crypto. A big part of that majority believes that government “is the problem.”
Part of this cohort also believes that they have been ignored; lectured to about racism, sexism and gender reassignment; and lied to about the border. Part of this cohort believes that inflation is (entirely) the fault of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris; and most of this majority doesn’t just want changes on the margins.
Many of my friends say this running-of-the-table; and the changes in the Supreme Court; signal a seismic shift that will remain in place for the rest of our lives. Since most of my friends are in their late 70s we are, I suppose, talking 10 years at best. They also point to an acknowledged effort to put young, partisan Turks into every nook and closet of the vast Federal edifice. And so, perhaps, I should be alarmed by all of this and Susan and I should re-examine the expiration dates on our passports.
But I’ve been here before. Actually, we’ve all been here before.
I was alive, mostly sentient and sober in 1980 when Jimmy Carter was swept out of office by Ronald Reagan’s revolution.
In 1979, Carter was struggling with Iran — the Revolutionary Guards had invaded the U.S. Embassy taking 50 diplomats hostage. They held those hostages for 444 days during which major newscasters began their evening program sonorously saying, “It has been 150 days since the hostages were taken in Tehran.”
At the same time, Soviet-backed rebels were making gains in Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique. More importantly there was high inflation, high unemployment and frequent spikes in the cost of gasoline.
Jimmy Carter — after taking a national poll showing widespread discontent — gave a speech wherein he said there was “malaise” drifting across the countryside.
“It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt of the meaning of our own lives and the loss of unity and purpose as a nation. The erosion of confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of the nation.”
Notwithstanding Carter’s candor, he harvested only 41 Electoral Votes in his subsequent race with Ronald Reagan.
I am not saying that the current frustration with our government was exactly the same in 2024 as it was in 1980 — there were no hostages this time around. But there was inflation, the mile-high cost of bacon and biscuits mixed with the fear of a migrant invasion that was not all that different from the humiliation from the kidnapping of American diplomats and the “malaise” paired with that humiliation.
I do not need to say that in 1992 a Democrat named Clinton got to sit in the Oval Office on the strength of his predecessor’s declining economy. Nor do I need to remind my long suffering readers that in 2008, another Democrat named Obama, won the White House during a dramatic nose dive in the Stock Market — many Americans watching their retirement savings evaporate.
In 1980, Jimmy Carter did an internal poll and discovered that most of America was angry or overwhelmed. He saw what was coming and his speech was a kind of “Hail Mary” pass. This time our pollsters somehow, someway missed our own malaise saying that Harris had a slight lead going into the election.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
