As the dust begins to settle and people are able to make room for action steps on the bench where our grief sits, and as I have been reading and listening and participating in several what-do-we-do now calls, I'm beginning to regain some faith in this country. 

Wednesday morning, it felt like Donald Trump's victory was all about rejection of the idea of a strong woman of color as president. I knew all along that this could motivate at least a quarter of the electorate, which is in fact pretty damn horrific. But on Wednesday morning, it felt like I had wildly underestimated that. 

But I actually don't think that's true. The buzz is really about economic voters. Somehow, a whole lot of people bought into the idea that Trump could manage the economy better than Harris. 

This is not based in fact, but as we all know, facts don't always lead to conclusions and actions based on them. 

Trump is really good at propaganda in the worst sense of the word. He blames his enemies for things he has done, makes promises he has no intention of keeping, and somehow gets people to believe he has all the answers. 

Inflation hit the Democrats really hard in this election. That we had less of it in the post-COVID recovery than pretty much any other industrialized country didn't matter to the people who felt like they were paying twice as much in the grocery store or at the gas pump. 

The gas pump part is really odd to me. For the last 6 weeks or so, I have been buying gas at less than $3 a gallon here in Massachusetts. That was certainly not true in the Trump years. But inflation is real! Housing, especially, has gone way up. And with supply chain and labor shortages as we emerged from the pandemic, prices on a lot of other things went up. We had lower inflation and more job creation under Biden than any other industrialized country, but it was still grim for those who had to figure out how to keep their families fed and sheltered.

The Democrats didn't do a sufficient job of pointing out that they have taken major steps to let people's buying power keep up with inflation, not least by creating an economy that provided more jobs than any president I can ever remember. And Trump was able to capitalize on this. 

Harris had some really good economic proposals that would create even more jobs while cleaning the environment and reducing our carbon footprint. Expect a lot of those jobs to go away as prompt dismantles the programs that put them into place. Expect prices to soar as he puts his anti-consumer tariff policies into place. Predictions from economists all over the spectrum put that hit at about $4,000 of extra costs to the typical family each year, and higher prices as businesses struggle to replace the workers--essential to our economy--whoTrump deports. Unless you are a billionaire, expect higher taxes to pay for the massive amount of incarceration and deportation. Those things are not cheap! Expect further giveaways to those who already have far more than their share while the middle class and the poor suffer tax increases and service cutbacks. He may think he is president for life, but if there is the chance to vote again, and if he is still in office by then (which I doubt), he will be a one-termer again. 

This still doesn't explain the disturbing phenomenon of a 13 million drop in the number of people who voted for a Democrat for president this time despite the lunacy that obviously awaits us under Trump. But it does at least make me think that people were voting on their economic self-interest as they perceived it, rather than a desire to roll back the clock on human rights inequality. And make no mistake, human rights and equality will be on the chopping block. 

But here's something that gives me a lot of hope. Wednesday and Thursday, I attended four different calls about how we move forward and how we work to block the worst parts of Trump's agenda. These calls were exciting and hugely attended. The one I went to yesterday had 140,000 registrants. If I'm not mistaken, that makes it the largest conference I've ever attended and one of the largest events I've been to in my 67 years, other than a few really huge public demonstrations with 800,000 to a million people. I'm attending another one this afternoon, much more niched. I imagine there will be a few thousand on that call. 

Remember that we have lived through bad times before. We lived through Joe McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, Bush II, and Trump I. We lived through slavery and wars. And now, with the benefit of all the organizing of 2017, 2020, and 2024, we are prepared for action. The actions will be non-violent and effective. The Democratic Party structure is involved. Harris's concession speech was a brilliant call to stay involved, to get back into the trenches. To recognize that we have power and that our power is not based only on who wins an election.

And how will you get involved?