For a brief moment after Trump had won the first time, there was a viable reckoning, a mea culpa tour among intellectuals and journalists who promised to cover more of the country and feature more conservative voices. We, the intellectuals, failed you, the People. Lackadaisically, it lasted only for a few weeks [my original draft said "years" —no idea why editors changed it] before collapsing spectacularly in a cesspool of wokeism, COVID insanity, media censorship and deplatforming, gaslighting on inflation-triggering government spending, warmongering, and many other unseemly behaviors.

For classical liberals, it’s important to remember that this election result doesn’t constitute any kind of “win.” We still have a Leviathan government larger than anything the founders could have conceived of even in their wildest nightmares. The debt and deficit are both out of control (if anything about to get much worse under Trump, bar an Elon cost-cutting miracle); Social Security is still a mess, defunct in a few short years. Military adventurism is despicable, the southern border a farce, health an institutionalized disaster, the central bank unfit for purpose.

Either way, there is some soul-searching required among America’s left, the thought leaders at The New York Times, or the Democratic Party as a whole. The classical liberal should extend them every possible olive branch there is, and for the health of the republic, let’s hope they take it.