As even most on the left realize, the lack of protests (and violence) and wailing after Trump’s reelection was simply because of the breadth of his victory. It’s difficult to organize a mass mobilization of “The Vote Was Stolen” adherents when the Nov. 5th champ won the popular vote, 312 Electoral Votes and the GOP now has all three branches of the government in its control. Most liberals are just tuckered out and resigned to the result. There’s minor online indignation—frequent X/Twitter posters leaving for the “happy place” of Bluesky, including a number of inconsequential celebrities (I wonder if this social cocoon’s name came from the Allman Brothers 1972 song, “Blue Sky,” which would cause me mild heartburn, since it was one of the last Duane Allman played on before his untimely death in the fall of ‘71) and self-appointed media gatekeepers I’ve never heard of—but it’s nothing compared to the quickly moving parts at media companies, particularly cable shows. I’ve no appetite for cable, but it’s not a small matter that CNN and MSNBC suffered their most precipitous drops in viewers since 2000 and 2001, respectively. Serves the likes of Rachel Maddow right if MSNBC is sold by Comcast to a conservative entity, maybe to do battle with Fox.
Social media is still active, but it’s “whispering” rather than shouting, about Trump’s cabinet picks, in particular the creepy Trojan Horse Matt Gaetz and Bobby Kennedy Jr., along with a smattering of bordering-on-libel fibs about Tulsi Gabbard. Suits me, let The Greatest Show On Earth go on for another month or two, and I’d guess Trump has a dozen more middle fingers for the Democrats (that ethical party that apparently doesn’t care that the Harris campaign paid off Oprah Winfrey and Al Sharpton for their endorsements: reverse checkbook journalism that one might believe is worthy of investigation) that might be more outrageous than the Gaetz nomination for Attorney General. That’s hard to top, but asking Rachel Levine and Randi Weingarten to consult in Mar-a-Lago would be a scream. Oh, and throw in Mayor Pete as well.
Meanwhile, the useless speculation about the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election occupies the time of journalists/analysts who’re now bored this election is over. Could be the GOP gets wiped out in 2026 and the presidency reverts to the likes of AOC two years later; unlike so many I see on Twitter—but not Bluesky, since I don’t have the “Hero Blues”—I’ve little in the way of clairvoyance, and refuse to ruminate on the 2030 census that’ll give more EVs to (now) Red States. The New York Times, though faithfully indignant, did include some wishy-washy commentary, typified by reeducation camp survivor Ross Douthat, who wrote: “Is the American age over? Almost certainly not, but if it continues, it will be as a New America of some kind, in a global order very different from the world of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.” Forgettable, but as Coach Walz would say, Douthat left it all on the field, even if his two-out double in the ninth didn’t get past the goal line.
And Democrat David Brooks had nothing to say, either, except that some election stats weren’t on his “bingo card.” This gem demonstrates why Brooks ought to be figuratively euthanized (saving a trip to Canada): “It turns out a lot of people don’t behave like ambassadors from this or that group. They think for themselves in unexpected ways.”
Getting back to Naughty Bobby’s possible confirmation, I’ve had some health and human service issues hit home: no illness, thankfully, but a conked-out boiler in the basement that left our large North Baltimore house (built in 1928) without heat for two weeks. Compared to hurricane, flood and mudslide victims, our predicament was small change, but it wasn’t inconsequential. Using space heaters to keep fingers from cramping was one way of coping, but when the dog’s shivering and it’s warmer outside than in, that’s, as the Buckinghams sang, kind of a drag.
This heating problem began six days before the election, when my wife said she smelled gas in the basement: my sniffer, for better or worse, isn’t top-caliber, so I deferred to her better-safe-than-sorry attitude and had Baltimore Gas and Electric make a visit (not a fan of BGE, but when a gas threat’s mentioned, they dispatch engineers in 15 minutes) and the news was dire. The fellow took a look at the boiler, said he’d never seen anything so corroded and rusted, and ventured it was a miracle the house wasn’t blown up.
I called my friend Jim Bush (“The Drain Surgeon”) and he confirmed my fear that a new contraption was necessary—immediately—and he farmed out the job to another independent company in Harford County, and that’s where the two weeks came in. The five-man crew had to disassemble the 20th-century boiler, wait for parts for the new one, install that, fiddle with gauges and wires and thermometers, an interminable process that was probably worse than the $24,000 I had to shell out (after minimally-satisfying hondling); inflation, supply chain difficulties, etc. makes it a seller’s market. Last Thursday, they got it up and running, but after a round of hearty small talk and thanks for a job well done, the heater conked out again, and my wife, dog Billy and I were back in Siberia. The following morning one of the crew put his noggin into the boiler, twiddled this and that, and when I got home from work it was 80 degrees, disregarding the thermostat set at 72. Could’ve been worse.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023
