Oh the humanity . . .

I suppose I have to say something. I’m very angry, including at myself for not being able to do anything about this. I did do a bunch of low-impact volunteer gigs at the polls and early voting. Nothing strenuous. One back to school night. ( I was handing out sample ballots there, one clown refused to take one, said this is not a place for politics, then he walked over to the Republican, took their sample ballot, and chatted him up for a while. This is why I tend to avoid human contact.)

I was on a flight back home from Miami to visit the little one, who will be a mother next year. I stupidly booked a flight that connected in Charlotte, NC, and nearly killed myself running from one gate to another, in one big ass airport. A big F-U to American Airlines. As we landed, the pilot asked those who did not need to make a connecting flight to remain seated, so the rest of us could get off more quickly. Not one damn person stayed on the plane. It would surprise me to learn that they all had connecting flights.

That’s why the human race is doomed. I always like watching apocalypse movies to see how the characters doom themselves by rejecting simple forms of cooperation.

Chris Hayes made a key point in the MSNBC post-election babble, that throughout the social-democracies of Western Europe, we can observe the flight of the working class from its prior loyalties on the Left. That tells me it’s not a matter of how Kamala should have campaigned but didn’t. One can always find arguable errors in a big campaign, after the dust has settled, especially after a defeat. Of course the party establishment will blame the left. It’s what they have done since the ‘80s.

If we believed in the merits of a traditional meat-and-potatoes approach as the key missing dimension of Democratic Party politics, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester would be a senators next year. I doubt they were seen talking about pronouns.

I don’t follow or analyze polls. As far as that goes, the dominant thing for me that emerges is the shift in the Latino vote. It reminds me of a book that made a big impression — “How the Irish Became White” — by Noel Ignatiev. In Miami we talked to a Cuban cab driver who said the newest wave of Cuban immigrants were lazy bums, accustomed to moral indolence due to living under Communism. Isn’t it the same with every immigrant group? Everyone who gets in wants to pull up the ladder to block newer arrivals.

Here in Loudoun County, VA, the big thing is preventing further population growth. And that’s the Democrats. The liberals in their huge houses on two-acre lots. Meanwhile housing and rental costs keep the Eastern part of the county under financial stress. Loudoun is the fastest growing part of the state, very well-off due to the preponderance of tech jobs and Federal retirees with pensions. Virginia stayed blue this time around, but the housing problem does not bode well for the party in one of its key strongholds.

If class politics is over, I really don’t know where to go. My only radical organizational affiliation — Democratic Socialists of America — has been tap-dancing around the question (for them it’s a question) of who should be president and control the U.S. Congress.

Politics has sort of been my life’s work, and now I’m adrift. Maybe I’ll get myself one of those electric keyboards and learn piano.