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Overcoming Heartbreak, Embracing Hope and Optimism
Yes, the last decade has often been demoralizing, but we have good reason to envision better days ahead. I take a look back at the last eight years.
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I remember the day after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. How devastated, how heartbroken, I felt. How betrayed I felt by a country I thought I knew.
Here’s what I wrote on Nov. 9, 2016, the night after the polls closed:
I went to bed literally sick to my stomach. I have woken sick to my heart.
I am an optimist. Optimism has never seemed so naive.
I am an American. I believe in my country. That's a country built on a bedrock of values like liberty, equality and justice that have shaped our history and nourished our progress.
Today I am left to wonder what my country stands for. I am left to doubt whether the days and years ahead will be building a better future or battling a mortal danger to our most basic commitments to humanity and decency toward all.
I have believed in the better angels among us. I will continue to seek them out. We will need them now more than ever. We will need to find strength and clarity and solutions together.
As the great Irish writer Samuel Beckett put it: ‘I can't go on. I must go on.’
You don’t need me to tell you how many ways the subsequent four years fulfilled the dark expectations of heartbroken Americans. Eight years later, we have learned a terrible lot about the ability of a felonious malignant narcissist, conman and demagogue to create a cult comprised of tens of millions. We have discovered that—even in America, where democracy and freedom depends on citizens’ capacity for self-governance—a significant portion of the electorate has disengaged from factual reality and accepted whatever their cult leader says.
And, as if those facts are not tragic enough, we have witnessed one of the two major political parties and its unprincipled elected members forsake their commitment over and over to the Constitution, to democracy and to the truth itself in their desire to get and keep power. We can see the reality of this played out on a daily basis as they stick by Trump, making excuses for this dangerously unserious man’s appalling behavior.
I was among the many in America and around the world who clinked glasses of champagne and watched cheering crowds dancing in the street when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were the projected winners on Nov. 7, 2020. We had reason to believe that Biden’s inauguration and Trump’s eviction from our White House would mean that we could begin to put this terrible man behind us.
But that belief was short-lived: The Trump-incited attack by insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021 was the culmination of long, fraught weeks of denial and lies by a White House occupant determined to deny the people’s will. Until I saw the disgraced, twice-impeached Donald Trump and his wife exit the White House, walk toward Marine One and eventually exit a plane in Florida on Jan. 20, I remained uncertain that this dark chapter would really end.
Even as he filled his early post-presidency days sidling up to the breakfast bar and crashing weddings at his Florida golf club to milk applause from surprised invitees, it soon became clear that he would not go away. The pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and ring-kissing by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy less than two weeks after Trump’s eviction was a bad omen that GOP leaders would not break from him.
The mounting tally of criminal indictments—88 criminal offenses in four criminal cases, including trying to steal the election and mishandling highly classified documents—offered hope for accountability. But this unprecedented level of criminality also ensured that he would exploit the cover of a presidential campaign to insist that the wheels of justice were nothing more than political persecution.
Is it any wonder that he declared his candidacy almost two years ago on Nov. 15, 2022? The Supreme Court supermajority’s ruling on July 1 that would provide him almost total criminal immunity if he were to retake the White House was the near-fulfillment of his devious plan. The only missing piece: One more election. Or, to put it more precisely, one more election process to provide him the opportunity to declare victory, whatever the actual outcome.
By the time of his coronation at the Republican National Convention in mid-July, the party had become virtually indistinguishable from Trump after he replaced its leadership with sycophantic loyalists, including his daughter-in-law Lara serving as its head. The gleeful arrogance of its July convention—intensified by the assassination attempt just days earlier and the debate with Biden just weeks earlier—reinforced their conviction that their victory in November was essentially guaranteed. Why not double down on the MAGA darkness and unprincipled cruelty by choosing the largely untested Ohio senator, JD Vance—that knowably anti-woman guy who had served for less than two years but had risen with the backing of right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel and now the endorsement of Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric?
Three days later, following weeks of pummeling by the media and panicking Democrats after Biden’s disastrous debate, the incumbent president committed an extraordinary and selfless act of patriotism and announced he was exiting the race. Then, less than an hour later on that momentous Sunday, this great patriot endorsed his vice president.
With stunning speed, Kamala Harris not only coalesced the support of Democratic leaders and party delegates, she activated an exuberant Democratic and pro-democracy electorate that was yearning for optimism but nervously fearing that the country’s fate would devolve to an increasingly fascistic Trump. The size and joyful intensity of her rallies—and the record fundraising that eventually topped $1 billion—gave evidence of the depth of the desire for change, the belief in democracy, and the hunger to end the toxic poisoning and dismal pallor that had fallen upon the body politic. Harris’ selection of the instantly likable Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz succeeded in deepening the enthusiasm across the country and continuing the seismic jolt.
Trump struggled to regain his footing once Biden exited the race, inevitably leading him to amp up the hate-filled playbook as his fear of losing grew. Harris’ demolition of Trump in their Sept. 10 showdown—and his cowardly rejection of another debate—underscored his increasing fear.
Recent weeks have exposed with awful intensity the accelerating cognitive decline, the rising desperation, the unhinged lying, the hateful attacks and the increasing incoherence of Donald Trump. The repulsive lies about Haitian immigrants and migrant crime, the constant slurs and cursing about the vice president, the repeated proposal to use the military against Americans he deems his enemy, the growing inattention to anything approximating credible policy, the degradingly detailed story just this weekend about golf legend Arnold Palmer and the size of his genitalia—these are just a small sampling of how tragically unfit this man is to ever be near the levers of power again.
Alarmingly, in an expression of how divided the country remains, the polling portrays a disturbingly close and tightening race. This is true both in the national polling and in the battleground states. Worried Democrats have begun to fear that the nightmare of a Trump win is a real possibility. We’ve seen this movie before, even as the coalition of support for Harris has widened to include hundreds of high-profile Republicans worried for their country if Trump gets back in.
But the last week should give Americans committed to democracy, the rule of law, the Constitution and a less divided and less hateful country reason for optimism. Vice President Harris has intensified her outreach beyond Democrats and reliable voters, including a tough and tenacious interview on Fox News. She has begun speaking more openly about her religious faith and is benefiting from the barnstorming of still highly popular former President Barack Obama. She also has intensified her prosecution of the dangerous case of an increasingly “unstable,” “unhinged” and “unchecked” opponent.
Meanwhile, a clearly exhausted and inept Trump has been canceling scheduled interviews with major media outlets and weirdly cut short a town hall to listen to recorded music and dance for 39 minutes while the confused audience watched. And finally—far too late, but finally—a growing number of mainstream media outlets have begun to document Trump’s mental decline and doubt his capacity to do the job.
Which candidate looks to you like they are conducting a winning campaign?
With just 15 days until Nov. 5, this is a time for closing arguments. And while Donald Trump spent this weekend vulgarly talking about Arnold Palmer’s “manhood” in the late golfer’s beloved hometown of Latrobe, PA, and frying french fries at a McDonald’s to falsely claim the vice president didn’t work at the fast-food giant as a teenager, Kamala Harris went to church in Georgia to shore up the Black vote and reassert the stark differences between her and her opponent.
Yesterday, on her 60th birthday, Harris asked Sunday congregants whether they want to live in a country of “chaos, fear and hate” or a “country of freedom, compassion and justice.” She reminded them that they have the power to answer this question: “So let us answer not just through our words, but through our actions and with our votes.”
If you’re measuring the election outcome by the current polling, you may count yourself among the worried Democrats. But I am increasingly convinced that the results will not be as close as many observers are expecting. The carnage-loving Trump may resonate with his cult followers, but that will never comprise a majority; the forward-looking Harris continues to have the ability to expand her voting population.
Yes, as I wrote on Nov. 9, 2016, I am an optimist. And I still believe that most Americans yearn for a positive future characterized by humanity and decency, not one defined by grievance, degradation and hate. With overwhelming turnout, we can prove that in just a matter of weeks.
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