This midterm blowout was the first step toward building a better country and putting the chaotic, shameful Trump Era behind us. But there’s a lot of work to be done, both on the ideological side and in terms of crafting a policy program. The morning after the revolution is always when the hard work begins.
And so the fight for the future of the Republican Party, and the political right in this country, begins in earnest.
Personally, what I’m reminded of most is that old saying, “This too shall pass” — and how we generally forget the point is that it applies in both good and bad times.
Abraham Lincoln, Wisconsin State Fair, September 30, 1859:
And by the successful, and the unsuccessful, let it be remembered, that while occasions like the present, bring their sober and durable benefits, the exultations and mortifictions of them, are but temporary; that the victor shall soon be the vanquished, if he relax in his exertion; and that the vanquished this year, may be victor the next, in spite of all competition.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! — how consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.” And yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.