THE FAT LADY’S SILENCE AND THE FAT GENTLEMAN’S CAUTION – by Jim Kent

My Democrat friends, and quite a few of my Republican ones, are walking around humming “Ding dong, the witch is dead” after the recent electoral bloodbath. One understands the impulse, but they may well have forgotten the source. (Come to think of it, they may also have forgotten about the chorus of Republicans humming identically just two years ago.)

That cheery tune does not come at the end of the show, with happy endings all around. It comes very close to the beginning, and is followed by a long and perilous journey with a fresh hell emerging every few minutes. So I reckon it’s the right song for the present moment, but not for the reason you might think.

We are often admonished to be aware that the opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings. But as of Thursday morning, the fat lady was still backstage getting bolted into her armour. (And as you may recall, when the fat lady is done singing, the world ends. So be careful what you wish for.)

This election result is being described as a “tsunami.” Right again, but a tsunami is in itself a very short event. It usually starts with a seismic episode which may take place a very long way from where the damage is done. The damage can be significant, which means the real work begins after the water recedes. The tsunami is only the beginning.

In the present case, it looks like the blue tsunami wiped out a fair amount of political infrastructure and caused more political casualties than most people anticipated. It will matter a great deal who manages the repair work and what they think the repair work should consist of.

As our metaphor slowly crumbles and washes out to sea, let’s look at some of the predictable consequences of recent events.

First, the Democrats will learn the wrong lessons. Political parties of all stripes and all nations reliably learn the wrong lessons when they win big. They think they won because they were especially clever attractive, and so keep running the same kind of campaign on the same issues until the next election—which of course they will surely win.

Luckily for them (and us), the Aged Incumbent will continue to be impaired and dreadful, and will blow the ’28 elections for the Rs no matter how hard the Ds beat their dead horses. This will, alas, imprint the wrong lessons more deeply into the Democrats, who will start losing again in 2032 if the Rs learn any of the correct lessons.

Second, things will turn nasty again quite soon. People who studied under Roy Cohn do not suddenly become repentant or even civil. When thwarted, even briefly, they become resentful, enraged, and consumed with the desire for vengeance. This seems to be not a transient mood, but a real biological drive with life-or-death implications. If the Cohnhead is also impaired, as Cohn was the President is, things can get weird pretty fast and stay that way.

This implies at least that attempts to weaponize the civil and criminal law systems will get more frequent and bizarre over the next two years. Calls for violence against political opponents may well become more overt and explicit.

A serious crisis could ensue when he turns from the Department of Justice to the Department of Defense as his main instrument of revenge. At the very least, he will sack any senior officers who adhere to their duties by refusing to carry out illegal orders. The Aged Incumbent is a proponent of Nixon’s view as he put it in the David Frost interview: "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." Luckily not many people agree with that, or at least didn’t until recently.

He will likely also intensify his war on Iran, because to do otherwise would imply that it was a mistake. One of his core beliefs is that he has never made a mistake. Roy Cohn would be proud.

Third, his cognitive impairment will accelerate. That’s what cognitive impairment in us older folks tends to do. He will become even more erratic, and can be expected to continue in the path of ignoring his official duties so he can pay more attention to his uglification of Washington and its environs.

Sometime around next summer, he will resume his mad bloviations about another term. He will explain that this is necessary since he is the only one who can rescue the country from the villains of his fever dreams. There is a small but nonzero chance that the Vice President will begin covertly seeking support for activation of the 25^th Amendment. Everyone will deny the rumours about this, which will be true.

So, boys and girls, curtail your merrymaking. There is a mountain of work to be done. It will be difficult and contentious, and it may never be all the way finished.

The fat lady is still warming up in the green room, but while we’re waiting, we can hear from a famous fat gentleman. In 1942, two long years after he took office promising nothing but “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” there occurred a notable military success. Perceiving the need for a buzzkill, he cautioned, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” So keep the parties short; the hard part is still ahead.