Cokie Roberts said something in the aftermath of Trump's victory which I consider to be the most insightful analysis yet about the election - I wish I could find it to quote it verbatim. She first painted a picture about the unlikelihood of a Trump candidacy - the lurid past, the horrific demeanor, the blatant racism, the bashing of veterans of war (wow, the bashing of veterans of war); Trump did perhaps a dozen things which would have doomed any other candidacy in recent political history; the serial lying, the childish tantrums, the instability and rudeness - it is an easy picture to paint, as I have done. She observed that, in spite of all of that against him, in spite of a hurricane of political winds against him, much of his own blowhard making, he still won.
Then she said the sacred words: "The people really do govern." That is a direct quote - we can ask her to verify it.
In the aftermath of the revelations about Russia's meddling, Cokie Roberts sounds naïve, doesn't she? That just makes her statement all the more brilliant.
What I take from the hacking revelations is this: It is getting harder, not easier, to hide. We chafe about corruption in politics - and we should - but as people are exposed more and more, it will become apparent which parties are corrupt.
No. It will become apparent that there are zero parties with nothing they might prefer to keep hidden. In the future it will be easy to embarrass people ... until the embarrassment becomes so common that, ironically, it will after that become hard to embarrass people. Human error is ever so common.
But true corruption? Screwing the little people to gain for themselves? How can they hide that? Will they bully us? Will we the people back down?
They - any subversive or seditious party - cannot take away by force our basic liberties: Free speech, free press, our vote. They can only rob us by propaganda and coercion. And, indeed, they might succeed for a time until citizens wake up to yet another morning of more pain requiring drastic change.
Then, as has churned on for centuries, Cokie Roberts' words will again ring true: The people really do govern. There will be more elections. Trump is on a short leash made by our founding fathers.
I suspect Cokie Roberts would disavow my next statement, but I am going to say it anyway. Conservatives pissed on their own good government and democracy when they refused to recognize the legitimacy of the presidency of Barack Obama. It is as if they feel they can take the law into their own hands and remain guiltless. They sowed the wind ... and now they have reaped the whirlwind named Donald Trump. Progressives should not make the same mistake. Indeed, we should not act exactly as conservatives and support their general cause of division and dysfunctional government. Obama - our leader - is exactly correct to support Trump in the transition. We are one team. We should pay attention to Obama. I suspect he understands and knows what he is talking about.
We will vote again. We the people govern. The Bill of Rights is a solid document. We should, of course, watch Trump like a hawk. But we make a huge mistake if we declare him the enemy. Indeed, we play into the hands of conservatives - we commit the unforgivable sin of our political enemies. Worse, we help them, we lend them aid in their vigilante cause against their own democracy. I recommend we yield to the will of the people, unite as much as we can, and more elections follow.
Hope is more than justified.