Post-election thoughts

President Biden had it right when he said yesterday that democracy won Tuesday’s elections. The pundits, pollsters and press had it wrong when they say Democrats won the election.

Clearly, Democrats won the expectations game because they did way better than those same pundits, pollsters and press said they would Still, the Democrats definitely have lost their majority in the House and are on the verge of losing the Senate.

If that’s winning politically, give me losing.

What the pundits, pollsters and press got wrong was dealing with abortion as if the immediate aftermath of protests when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade had gone away. Talking heads kept saying in the last couple of weeks of campaigning that inflation was the top issue voters were concerned about and the GOP had the advantage on that turf. Women’s right to control their own bodies was always a not-that-distant second. though.

Plus, this election proved — again — that American voters can chew gum and walk at the same time. Yes, they hate the inflation everyone around the world is facing right now. Gas, food, pretty much everything is way up in cost plus that supply chain hasn’t caught up with demand yet. We’d be crazy not to be worried about inflation. And, we’d be nuts not to worry about the Supreme Court taking back rights Americans have.

After most every election, but especially this one, the media need to rethink not only how they cover lies splattered all over the place mostly by MAGA Republicans but how they report on polls and who’s up and who’s down.

Network exit polls showed that almost 3 in 10 voters nationally said abortion was the most important issue in their vote, and that about 4 in 10 said they were “angry” Roe was overturned. Motivated voters, for sure.

There were winners and losers, of course, Tuesday from a 10,000 foot perspective. My view:

Democracy. Clearly our democracy is more resilient than it gets credit for, as the president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks said. The “guard rails” protected the country through the Trump presidency and did again Tuesday. Those founders were onto something, eh?

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: Is a winner because political talk immediately began focusing positivelyon him as the leading GOP candidate in 2024 because of Trump losing (more in a moment). The other side of being the front-runner to defeat Trump for…