The obligatory post-election post

 No, I didn't vote.

You didn't think I was going to change my mind when the day arrived, did you? The choices before me were a little like those before Poland in late summer 1939: would you rather be occupied by Germany or the Soviet Union?

As I've mentioned before, a number of people in my own city had implored me to at least weigh in at the polling place on some local races, particularly for school board. And, indeed, those races, as was the case with school board races around the country, were ground zero for some key culture-war issues. And in our city, the not-with-my-kid's-noggin-you-don't folks lost to the progs. Not surprising. It's very much a flyover community: a manufacturing-based economy, high population of people whose families have been in the area since the nineteenth century, a tendency to vote Republican generally speaking. But it is also the world headquarters of a Fortune 200 company that is, as they all are, ate up with DEI and climate alarmism. Mainline Protestant churches, whose own congregations are bleeding membership to the point that one has closed its doors, have an outsized presence in civic affairs. So, count me dismayed but not surprised.

But let's broaden our scope to the national level. 

I'm not going to try to cover the angle so excellently dealt with this morning by John Podhoretz at the New York Post. I shall defer to him regarding the impact of the Very Stable Genius:

What Tuesday night’s results suggest is that Trump is perhaps the most profound vote-repellant in modern American history.

The surest way to lose in these midterms was to be a politician endorsed by Trump.

This is not hyperbole.

Except for deep red states where a Republican corpse would have beaten a Democrat, voters choosing in actually competitive races — who everyone expected would behave like midterm voters usually do and lean toward the out party — took one look at Trump’s hand-picked acolytes and gagged.

Okay, that handles that factor.

Why are the results still so messy two days out? Why hasn't the Arizona governor's race been decided yet? Why is a runoff for the Senate race in Georgia going to be necessary? Why was the Senate race in Wisconsin such a squeaker?

It's a reflection of our national disunity. The United States is a big, messy complex country that no longer has a common culture to bind it. Nothing rallies us around the flagpole anymore. 

DeSantis, of course, has proved himself to be the most successful Republican governor who has aspirations beyond his present position. He won handily. 

I would advise him to now focus on the more mundane victories he's racked up in Florida so far, such as property insurance reform. Yes, voters have indeed been on his side on the culture-war stuff, such as education, and even his dustup with Disney. But as he maneuvers onto the national stage, he's going to encounter the Left's vitriol big-time if he puts those issues front and center. 

Would I vote for him in 2024? That probably depends on how he handles himself over the next year-plus, both as Florida governor (he handled Hurricane Ian well and got right on this current storm as well) and as a presidential candidate, should he choose to be one. (Will he have what it takes to deal with what the VSG would certainly dish out?) If he comports himself well, I might be willing to overlook his endorsement of some of this cycle's losers.

Now, let's cross the border to the north and look at the state of Georgia. Georgia, it seems to me, reflects the national messiness I alluded to earlier. Brian Kemp has been a solid governor (albeit with a little of that gotta-be-on-my-party's-bandwagon mentality that I loathe). Brad Raffensperger has been likewise an exemplary secretary of state. He handled that hour-long-call with the VSG on January 2, 2021 superbly. But what is up with Marjorie Taylor Greene's district? There's clearly still a concentration of people in at least one place who didn't, to use Podhoretz's term, gag. But given the rest of the state's fairly level-headed voting behavior on Tuesday, I suppose it's to be expected that Warnock and Walker, both of whom are, shall we say, unpalatable to all except the ate up on the Left and Right, would be neck and neck.

So the whole thing gives us a pretty accurate snapshot of post-America in the present moment.

I'm just glad the eternal record book shows I didn't contribute to either kind of damage to our beleaguered land.