Election day finally came and went. The final outcome of the Presidential contest appears to still be several days away, and perhaps weeks if we get into recounts and contested balloting, but at this juncture, it’s more likely than not that Joe Biden will be taking the oath of office in January.

No matter the delay in outcome, there’s already a litany of lessons to be gleaned from this contest.

The first and most obvious is that the polls were wrong. Most predicted an easy victory for Biden, gains in the House, and a Democratic takeover of the Senate. While the last is still possible, the gambling markets heavily favor Republican retention chance as I write this, and the Democrats actually lost a few seats in the House. There’ll be much digital ink spilled over the pollsters’ failures, but next time around they’re going to make the same sorts of predictions, and we’ll likely witness the same sorts of “what went wrong?” post-mortems after their next failures.

There’s also the disgraceful mismanagement of the electoral process in many states, cities, and localities. There’s absolutely no justification for the messiness of our electoral process, and it’s long past time that politicians and bureaucrats put in a major effort to ensure the accuracy, integrity, and rapidity of the voting process.

Of much greater import to the future of the nation, however, is the rebuke aimed at the progressives by the electorate. Behold, an incumbent president loathed on a personal level by a significant fraction of his party, and a hatred and contempt felt for him by the opposition so rage-inducing that it drove voter turnout to record-shattering levels. The Democrats should have waltzed into the White House, and ridden their candidate’s coattails into Congressional dominance, per any sort of conventional wisdom., especially since they picked their most mainstream primary candidate as standard bearer.

Unfortunately for them, they let the progressive chitterers drive their agenda and write their platform. Biden, a Washington careerist without a whole lot of “progressive” history, produced (or allowed to be produced) a platform well to the left of any previously offered up by the Democrats, picked one of most left-leaning Senators in Congress as his running mate, and continually made promises that fell squarely into the “Joe, what are you thinking!?” category in the mind of anyone not of the far-Left.

Hubris goes before the fall, to modernize Proverbs 16:18. The Left figured it could ride Trump-hatred into unchecked power, and bring about a progressive revolution in America. Instead, we sit here today with a squeaker of a White House win, a loss of 4-5 Democratic seats in the House, and a probable failure to take over the Senate. Even if Biden ultimately prevails, and even if the Senate somehow miraculously flips Blue, the message will remain:

America doesn’t want the leftist vision.

This appears especially true among minorities, whose Trump support increased this election. This, too, should wake the progressives up to reality.

Alas, I don’t expect it will. A “mandate” will be claimed, assertions that America has chosen the leftward path will be put forth, and Biden/Harris will fire off a series of executive orders that speak to this delusion.

Fortunately, and again assuming the Senate remains red, they won’t be able to follow through on their promises to pack the Court and add blue states, nor enact major legislation without cooperating with the Senate Republicans.

The question that will stand unanswered until the next election season will center on the lessons offered by this one. Will the Democrats heed the message that leftism/progressivism isn’t selling? That, outside the leftist echo chamber, things like the Green New Deal, socialized medicine, and much of the other stuff that Biden and Harris have been hawking aren’t winning issues?

Will the Democrat center up for the next election, or will they continue to embrace their leftward shift? Will the Press recognize that they’re not doing their party any favors by going full-lefty? Will the academics and wokerati who are running universities in a Marxist direction desist? Will Kamala Harris reinvent herself, Bill-Clinton-style, as a centrist for her run at the White House, or will she try again to push progressivism down the throat of an unwilling nation?

Only time will tell. But, were I a betting man, I’d bet no. Heeding public opinion is of little interest to the Best-and-Brightest. They’d much rather tell the public what it should believe.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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