The day after, and all the days after that

I keep seeing these posts that express sentiments along the lines of "I'm so glad the elections are over. Now we can forget about these things that divide us and get back to normal."

That is, to put it politely, nonsense. Unlike Trump's army of illegal aliens coming to invade us ("caravan after caravan!"), the real issues that divided us during the election aren't things that just go away the day after the election. Trump is still in office, and the once-proud Republican party is now entirely in thrall to him.

Democrats did well, as well as I dared to hope, and maybe a little better. They took the House. Pennsylvania kept its Democratic governor (Wolf, who defeated the Trump-backed Scott Wagner, who had pledged to stomp on Wolf's face with golf spikes), its Democratic Senator (Casey, who defeated Trump-supported Representative Lou Barletta, who now will be neither a Senator nor a Representative), and my redistricted district got to hold onto its Democratic Representative (Matt Cartwright,who defeated longtime New Jersey resident John Chrin, who managed to lose even without Trump's support.)

Voting irregularities abounded. Native Americans in North Dakota were effectively disenfranchised by new voter ID laws. Voters in one precinct in Detroit arrived to find their voting machines locked up and inaccessible. Early voters in Florida found that their precincts had run out of ballots. On election day, other voters in Florida discovered that their polling places had been moved to inside gated communities - and while no ID was required to vote, it was required to get access to the polling place. In Georgia voters arrived to find that someone had forgotten to provide power cords for their voting machines.

Georgia's voting irregularities were the most egregious. The person in charge of making sure the election was free and fair - the Secretary of State - was also one of the candidates for governor. Unsurprisingly, he has declared himself the winner. His opponent has not conceded.

The survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas traveled the country and organized and rallied. In the end their efforts paid off: numerous NRA-backed candidates went down in defeat. But in their home state of Florida, they found that the majority of voters - more than half, at least - just didn't care, and voted for the same politicians whose policies helped make the mass killing of seventeen of their fellow students, teachers, and coaches possible. In the end I fear that they will be faced with the same choice that anyone born and raised in Northeastern Pennsylvania must eventually make: leave for brighter opportunities and greener pastures, or stay and fight to try to make things better at home.

Trump is in full panic mode, knowing full well that Democrats in charge of House investigative committees will not give him the free ride that he has had from the Republican house for the last two years. He fired his Attorney General and placed a political crony in charge of the Mueller investigation. He held an epic, rambling, eighty-seven minute long news conference today, with he opened by using the term "we" to refer to Republicans and "they" to refer to Democrats and members of the media - making it clear that he does not consider himself to be president of all of the United States, but only the bits that support him unquestioningly. He also lashed out at CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta in an imperious tantrum that ended (as of this writing) with Jim Acosta's access to the White House being revoked.

We now face an uncertain future, more uncertain than when Republicans controlled everything, and we could only be certain that nothing would be investigated. Trump is a cornered rat, lashing out viciously. Things are going to get a lot worse before they will get any better.

So please don't imagine that now that the mid-term election is over, everyone will just forget about all the things they care about.