Notes on Doom and Silver Linings

"History is replete with turning points. We must have faith."

"Faith?"

"That the universe will unfold as it should."

–Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

We are all sitting here today in this unfortunately-already-discovered country, unfortunately having a pretty good idea of what comes next. 

I am a liberal and partisan Democrat. If you know me you're not under any illusion otherwise. I would be concerned with any Republican winning; I also think a lot of the Republicans' current rot was there years before the president-elect decided he was one. 

Donald Trump is not any Republican. He is an ignoramus, a grotesque racist, a narcissist, a 78-year-old child, a consummate liar, and an enemy of basic democratic principle. This will be bad, for the reasons we are all familiar with at this point and yet upwards of 70 million citizens decided they think they're fine with all that.

But I have to keep living in this world. So I think it might be helpful (for myself and maybe for you), instead of listing off all the known impending dooms, which you can read almost anywhere else today, to list what I see as the less-bad things, hopes, and opportunities.

My silver linings are all political in nature - there's a place for silver linings of the "just b r e a t h e" or "thankful we still have each other" or "Jesus is still LORD" sort but frankly I'm finding those less helpful today.

I hope it goes without saying that this is not meant to deny that Trump's second term will harm many people. 2025 and beyond will be very difficult for immigrants (and, I fear, some naturalized citizens), LGBT people (and trans people in particular), women, Palestinians, and Ukrainians, to name a few.

But it is not yet the end of history. This is what I'm telling myself today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow:

1. The election was bad for Democrats but could easily have been even worse. Depending on how Nevada and Pennsylvania end up, it looks like Republicans will "only" win 52 to 54 Senate seats (it could easily have been 56 to 57). This is comparable to the number of Senate seats they held after the 2004 and 2018 elections, after which the Democrats retook the Senate within one cycle.

The Democrats could also still win the House, and even if they don't, they seem likely to stay close to their current slim minority. If the House margins are narrow enough it's plausible the Democrats could retake the House via special elections before the 2026 midterms.

It's best, I think, to look at this election as more comparable to 2004 or 2016 (decisive but fairly modest wins for a party) than to a full-on repudiation like 2008.

2. Democrats avoided a bad 2022 on the federal level and that has limited some of the damage to congressional Democrats. 

If the Democrats had lost Senate seats in 2022 we could easily have been looking at a filibuster-proof Republican majority and no possibility of Democratic control until the 2030s.

3. Democrats and non-insane Republicans had a relatively good 2022 and not-abysmal 2024 on the state level. 

Democrats swept all the statewide offices in North Carolina yesterday. Abortion-rights ballot measures also passed in a number of conservative or Trump-voting states. 

In 2022, Democratic governors won in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. The Republican who won in Georgia famously refused to rig the 2020 election for Trump; the Republican who won in Nevada is [still] contained by an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature and presumably wants to win what will likely be a tight re-election contest in 2026.

Essentially none of the swing states will have their next couple elections run by election deniers, which will mitigate a lot of attempts by Trump et al. to mess around with future elections.

4. Even if they keep the House, the relatively narrow GOP majorities in Congress will probably block a number of bad legislative outcomes.  

ACA repeal is probably dead; there will probably not be the votes for a [statutory] national abortion ban; most of the Republicans who voted for the Respect for Marriage Act are still there anyway. Large rollbacks to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are probably less likely to happen.

The legislative output will probably be fairly similar to Trump's first term, i.e. not much aside from large tax cuts.

5. Trump and the people he surrounds himself with are evil, but also, historically, incompetent. 

Again I stress that this does not mean that there will not be damage. But even though his second administration is likely to include more yes-men than his first, I would not count on Trump's agenda being enacted quite so grandiosely as he thinks it will.

6. The hulking, creaking, antiquated mess that is the United States Constitution will still mitigate Trump's policies to some degree. 

The same institutions that constantly stymie progressive change (federalism; bicameralism; the Senate; the filibuster; midterm elections; judicial review) will also, at least partially, frustrate Trumpist change. I still think this is true even taking into account the likely greater recklessness and enablement of a second Trump administration compared to the first.

7. Trump's policies will likely provoke a backlash, and this will be reflected in election results as early as next year. 

Some of this is inherent to public opinion and happens with any presidency (including Trump's first term). But I think in particular, the American voter will not have as much stomach as they think for Trump's two signature policies of mass deportations and high tariffs once the real-life implications (/horrors) become apparent.

8. The 2026 midterms are still happening, and just based on history the Republicans would be at a disadvantage to start with. 

Maybe some scheme to cancel all future elections will happen (though for reasons 1-3 above I doubt it). Assuming they do happen as normal, I don't see any reason to doubt the usual midterm effect as a baseline.

9. Trump was *personally* very unpopular for most of his first term, and I think it's reasonable to assume he will be again once the election high wears off. 

We've gotten used to the idea of Trump being unsinkable and scandal-proof, but his innumerable scandals, unpopular policies, mishandlings of crises, and general odiousness did make him one of the most persistently unpopular presidents on record - there's a reason, after all, he lost re-election the first time.

10. Après Trump, le déluge. 

It is not at all clear that "Trumpism without Trump" will be viable on the national level after Trump is gone - we see this in J.D. Vance's unpopularity, Kari Lake's two losses, Mark Robinson's blowout defeat, etc. It's entirely possible that Trump's particular electoral juice is unique to him.

11. Electoral trends are trends until they aren't. 

Remember in 2004 (well maybe you don't, but bear with me), when conservatism was ascendant and the Republicans were headed for a permanent majority?

Remember after 2006 and 2008 when the country had totally rejected the Republican brand, especially among young people, and Obama would be the next FDR?

Remember after 2012, when Republicans lost a winnable presidential race attributed to their hard-right stances on immigration, and winnable Senate races due to their stance on abortion, and would be locked out by the emerging Democratic demographic majority?

Remember after 2016, when the Democrats were reduced to a smoking pile of rubble?

Remember January 7, 2021, when Trump was widely assumed to be finished for good?

Remember Florida the swing state? Blue Indiana? Red Colorado? The "blue wall"? 

Democrats, liberals, moderates, small-D democrats all have a lot of real, concerning problems with voters right now. But I do not believe they are permanent, and I think we will probably end up being surprised by future trends/trend reversals and how swiftly they happen.

12. Supreme Court majorities are permanent until they aren't. The likely prospect of a court with a majority of justices just appointed by Donald Trump is undoubtedly the most alarming result of yesterday. Given the howlers the current court has handed down the last few years (Dobbs being only one of many), you should absolutely be worried about where the Supreme Court is headed in the near- to-medium term. 

Where I would slightly hedge, however, is on the assumption I've seen from a lot of people (Jamelle Bouie, among others) that a second Trump term means we are consigned to a hard-right Supreme Court for the rest of our lives. 

It could happen. But I think it's worth remembering the highly contingent, relatively rapid series of events that led to the current court's makeup:

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg refuses to retire while Obama can replace her (2013-14ish)

• Democrats lose the Senate majority (January 2015)

• Antonin Scalia dies unexpectedly (February 2016); Mitch McConnell refuses to hold a vote on Merrick Garland (rest of 2016)

• Trump becomes president and gets to replace Scalia with Neil Gorsuch (2017), and then Anthony Kennedy with Brett Kavanaugh (2018) - the second replacement shifting the court a vote to the right while only going through with the barest of Senate majorities

• RBG dies and is replaced by Amy Coney Barrett (2020), flipping a liberal seat to a conservative one

That is a swingy-but-moderately-conservative 5-4 majority becoming a solidly-right-wing 6-3 majority in the span of only 6 years, with 2 of the replacements happening due to particularly-timed deaths. If Clinton had won in 2016, or if RBG had died 6 months later, or if Scalia had died 18 months earlier, we would be looking at a vastly different court right now.

The point is - we do not necessarily know how the Supreme Court, or Senate math, will shape up going forward and I think it's premature to assume how whatever Trump does to it will last beyond the next 5-10 years. Like election trends, these things can change more quickly and in different directions than you might think.

13. Autocracies or would-be autocracies or hybrid states or thousand-year-Reichs last until they don't.

People are rightly worried about where American democracy is headed. And Trump and his minions will absolutely try to chip away at the democratic process, free speech, judicial independence, and a number of other liberties, at least moving us in the direction of Orban's Hungary or Poland under the Law & Justice party.

None of this is inevitable and we should not treat it as such. 

For one thing, for all the reasons I've listed above, it's not remotely a given that Trump will succeed at doing any of that. Maybe there will be less pushback than 2017-21, but there will still be resistance, and incompetence, and Trump's own decline, and institutions all standing in the way.

For another, hybrid regimes and "flawed democracies" are not infallible or immutable. They still rely on popular legitimacy, are sensitive to public opinion, and if even some part of the democratic system still functions, vulnerable to removal - Law & Justice was kicked out of power just last year and it was much farther along the path to autocracy than we are right now.

14. Deciding that this is The End constitutes surrendering in advance and we should not do that.

Trump et al are relying on us thinking this is The End. We cannot give them that.

There will be future elections, future generations, future fights. It will be a bad 4 years (or maybe more) but not the final 4 years. 

There is always tomorrow.

Waiting.

About eight months ago, I took my Eagle Scout badge and buried it in my sock drawer.

Some people sent their badges back to BSA National. The cynic in me thought that it would annoy the BSA more for an "open and avowed" homosexual to hold on to it. The idealist in me was thinking about the day that they'd finally come to their senses, and I'd finally be able to take my badge out of my sock drawer.

I procrastinated like everyone else at that age. But I worked hard for that badge. And I learned a lot from my troop — how to camp, canoe, and hike, but also how to deal with people, how to lead, how to be patient. How to use axes and knives even though axes and knives freak you out. How to keep trudging along even when it's raining and you have the stomach flu and you haven't showered in a couple days. How to appreciate a camp stove meal and the beauty of a mountain morning.

And I spent time with my father, probably some of the closest times I've ever spent with him.

I was determined to finish up the Eagle, and I did. I turned in my paperwork 2 days ahead of my 18th birthday. I sailed through my Board of Review — probably as one of the few prospective Ivy Leaguers they'd seen in a while.

A couple years later, I grew up a bit more, and came to terms with who I was. Being out has been great. But it's also meant that I've had to downplay my Scouting past. It also means that unless things change, I won't be able to wear that badge or my uniform in public (thanks to both personal conscience and institutional frowning). It means that unless things change, I won't be able to share Scouting with my son, certainly not as much as my dad did with me.

It meant that I had to live a lie — or at the very least, a tacit omission — in order to become an Eagle Scout.

So my badge is still in my sock drawer. And I'm waiting.

It looked this week like we had an opening. For the first time ever, the BSA said it was "considering" lifting the ban. But it looks like we're going to have to keep waiting. Today, the National Executive Board decided to keep the ban while they form a "task force" to look at the issue.

One quote in particular stood out to me:


“You don’t need to form a task force to know that discrimination is wrong,” said Jennifer Tyrrell, a lesbian mother from Bridgeport, Ohio, who was ousted as the leader of her son’s Cub Scout Pack in April 2012 because of her sexual orientation. “I had to tell my family and my son that the Boy Scouts of America didn’t think I was good enough to be their den leader, all because of my sexual orientation. No parent should have to do that, yet today the Boy Scouts told America showed that they don’t have the courage to condemn this kind of discrimination.”

The family values crowd has been pushing back against lifting the gay ban. But they couch their language in vague, cushy terms like "values," and "the issue," and "tradition." The BSA is forming this task force because they decided "this issue" had too much "complexity" to make a clear decision right away.

This is not an "issue." These are people. These are insecure preteen and teenage boys, many of whom already hear in their churches, locker rooms, etc. how bad and weird and sinful they are, who are looking for at least one organization that welcomes them. These are children who are being explicitly told that their parents are worth less than "normal" parents, and aren't welcome to participate in the troop with them. These are young men who have to lie about who they are in order to stay with the organization they love.

This is not complex. A Scout is supposed to be Brave: where is the courage here? Where are the "timeless values" in reinforcing intolerance, religious dogmatism, self-loathing, and dishonesty?

At least there's some hope. They didn't completely rule out changing things. Maybe this "task force" will come to the right conclusion on "this issue."

All we can do is keep pressuring, speaking out, protesting. And waiting.