The 2024 election for the presidency is over. My candidate lost by a mere two percent of the popular vote. A difference of two percent sounds close to me: flip a mere thousand votes in every American county and the popular vote outcome reverses. However, based on my despondency over the election’s results, the mandate Trump claims, having won thirty-one states and more than three-hundred electoral votes, seems more aligned with my feelings: the electoral competition wasn’t even close. Democrats, liberals, and progressives were decisively trounced.

The election “postmortems” from professional liberals are flying fast and free and will do so for many months as the losing party uses the trouncing to plan for 2028 and beyond.

But like my fellow amateur liberals, I’m traversing a personal postmortem, too: a shock, a grieving and an assessment, concluding with recommitments. My conclusions and recommitments?

Most fundamentally, I’ve decided not to give up on the American people. This is not an easy decision considering the character and agenda of the candidate seventy-five million Americans supported. The bases for this decision are rational and irrational.

As for the irrational, my personal optimism and purposefulness could not continue in a world in which Americans actually prized dishonesty, ignorance, misanthropy, grift, and narcissism manifest in one person, even a political leader. Some, no doubt, will call this conclusion naïve. I don’t have a good riposte for that critique, other than that I run on the irrational just as much as any other human. My sense of agency and psychological health are important to me. I need to believe that humans are generally good.

As for the rational, although there are many reasons for Harris’s loss including immigration, I’m placing inflation at the top of the list. As consumers absolutely hate inflation, I’m chalking up the loss primarily to “the economy, stupid!” Yes, average wages rose just as much if not more than prices. And yes, America surprisingly avoided the recession that frequently follows high inflation. Nevertheless, capitalism doesn’t offer a politically acceptable way to reverse economy-wide price inflation. Command socialism does, but there was no way Biden/Harris were going to deploy that playbook. As there was no way America was going to magically avoid the post-COVID global inflationary spiral, Biden/Harris unsurprisingly paid the price.

Another rational basis for continuing my belief in the American people is that a majority of Republicans and Democrats actually agree on lots of issues, such as gun safety laws, paid parental leave, raising the federal minimum wage, increasing mental health spending in schools, and scores of other policies. Encouragingly, then, there’s much the American people agree on—if given the chance to do so.

My optimism about Americans is lastly fed by the county library now offering free access to the digital version of the New York Times–one of the world’s most respected, decorated, and best-resourced daily newspapers. Cardholders can read the editorial page or not, but at least now they have free access to a news provider that prioritizes evidence-based understanding rather than “newstainment,” misinformation, and manipulation.

As for my renewed personal commitments, nothing about the election outcome has changed my commitment to the fundamental values of liberalism: freedom, fairness, and reciprocity. I won’t accept, then, Christian Nationalists attempting to establish in America an oppressive and antiquated moral system. I won’t accept, then, the race privileged who ignore the reality of systemic racial advantage and disadvantage. And I won’t accept, then, the wealthy and elite classes prioritizing their interests over those of everyone else. America needs to work for each and every one of us, which is why this liberal will continue to act locally in a reflective, intentional, purposeful, and outward-focused manner.

Endings make new beginnings possible. Although I voted for a different new beginning November 5, the Trump new beginning is galvanizing me. Bring it on for I’m with the American people!

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