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Jason Stanley offered this explanation for what’s happening to us and it’s been around for a couple of millenia: For 2,300 years, at least since Plato’s Republic, philosophers have known how demagogues and aspiring tyrants win democratic elections. The process is straightforward, and we have now just watched it play out. In a democracy, anyone is free to run for office, including people who are thoroughly unsuitable to lead or preside over the institutions of government. One telltale sign of unsuitability is a willingness to lie with abandon, specifically by representing oneself as a defender against the people’s perceived enemies, both external and internal. Plato regarded ordinary people as being easily controlled by their emotions, and thus susceptible to such messaging – an argument that forms the true foundation of democratic political philosophy (as I have argued in previous work).

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View this post on Instagram A post shared by George Clinton (@yolikegeorge) That’s George Clinton people!!!! Funkin’ for Kamala.! But back to waiting and hoping. Here’s a little list provided by Axios of the key races the campaigns are going to be looking at tonight. In case you need something else to wring your hands over: Strategists in both parties told Axios they will be watching key swing races in Eastern and Midwestern states that tend to report most of their votes on Election Day. Virginia: Polls close here at 7pm ET and the lion’s share of votes should be counted by the end of the night, according to the New York Times and FiveThirtyEight. Republicans believe a good result in Virginia’s 7th District, where Democrats are trying to hang onto the seat vacated by Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who is running for governor, will portend a good night for their party. Ditto for Democrats in the state’s 2nd District, where Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) is locked in a competitive race but is still seen as a slight favorite to win reelection.

That worksheet from Bolts is downloadable and printable here if you want to keep score tonight (and for the next few days.)

Jon Meachum in the NY Times: I thought I knew what we were dealing with. When Donald Trump began his rise to power in 2015, he struck me as a dangerous but recognizable demagogue. As a biographer of presidents, I tend to think historically and seek analogies from the past to shed light on the present. And so, for years Mr. Trump’s marshaling of fear, prejudice, resentment, xenophobia and extremism put me in mind of grievance-driven figures ranging from Huey Long to Joseph McCarthy to George Wallace. To me, Mr. Trump was a difference not of kind (we had long contended with illiberalism in America) but of degree (since the Civil War, no figure with such illiberal views had ever actually won the White House). Then he proved me wrong. His concerted efforts to overthrow the November 2020 election very nearly succeeded — tangible proof that he is in fact willing to follow through on the authoritarian threats he so freely makes. I now see him as a genuine aberration in our history — a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation.

I just didn’t want to believe it Mea culpa, I got this one very wrong. As someone wrote on twitter earlier: He was the worst President in history. And when he got voted out, he tried to stage a coup. Then he stole national secrets and sold the ones he didn’t store in the bathroom. He was convicted of fraud, found liable of sexual assault and convicted of 34 felonies. He is half a billion dollars in debt, owned by God only knows who, and the biggest national security risk the nation has ever had. But at least he’s not a Black woman. That was a bridge too far. She ran a good campaign, they did everything they could. Half the country just wants what Trump is offering: a strongman sideshow. The world is a much more dangerous place today than it was yesterday. The bad guys won.

I don’t have any idea Donald Trump has once more won the presidency. It’s as shocking as it was the first time and even more terrifying. We should have seen this coming from all the polling which showed that the race was tied nationally and in the swing states. Of course it was possible. But I think a lot of us, myself included, once again fell for the illusion that America is too fundamentally decent to elect someone like Donald Trump. We were wrong. In 2016 that starry-eyed naivete led to the deep despair that we all felt when Trump eked out a win over Hillary Clinton. And in 2020 we believed that dream was vindicated when Joe Biden turned the tables and eked out a win over Trump. And here we are again, caught in a swirling vortex from which we can’t seem to escape. The funny thing is that until recently I had assumed that the contest was going to be political trench warfare again and the result would be very close. It has seemed to me for a while that we’re in an ongoing war between two coalitions that can be defined as pro-democracy and anti-democracy and they have roughly equal political strength.

Be careful what you wish for, MAGA “Where do we go from here?” Digby asks this morning. She doesn’t know. Nor do I. Just as I don’t know how she had the emotional stamina to write it. All this time, I told friends last night, it seemed as if observers of the MAGA cult were studying the grotesque creatures of Looking Glass World. People such as Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and RFK Jr. Facing a second Donald Trump presidency, with J.D. Vance as heir apparent and a Supreme Court MAGAfied for the rest of my lifetime, it feels this morning as if Looking Glass World was, in fact, studying us. Except the image that came to mind wasn’t from Lewis Carroll, but Rod Serling. IMDB summarizes “Eye of the Beholder” from “The Twilight Zone”: Janet Tyler is in hospital having undergone treatment to make her look normal. It’s her 11th trip to the hospital for treatment and she is desperate to look like everyone else. Some of her earliest childhood memories are of people looking away, horrified by her appearance. Her bandages will soon come off and she can only hope that this, her last treatment, will have done the trick.