Is It Mourning Or Morning In America?

Regardless of your political affiliation or how surprised you were by the results last week, this two minute synopsis from CNN political commentator Scott Jennings details exactly why the election unfolded as it did:

“This is a mandate.

He’s won the national popular vote for a Republican for the first time since 2004. This is a big deal. This isn't backing into the office. This is a mandate to do what you said you were going to do.

Get the economy working again for regular working class Americans.

Fix immigration.

Try to get crime under control.

Try to reduce the chaos in the world.

This this is a mandate from the American people to do that. I think I'm interpreting the results tonight as the revenge of just a regular old working class American, the anonymous American who has been crushed, insulted, condescended to.

They're not garbage. They're not Nazis.

They're just regular people who get up and go to work every day and are trying to make a better life for their kids, and they feel like they have been told to just shut up, when they have complained about the things that are hurting them in their own lives.

I also feel like this election, as we sit here and pour over this tonight is, something of an indictment of the political information complex.

I mean, we've been sitting around here for the last couple of weeks, and the story that was portrayed was not true. I mean, we were told Puerto Rico was going to change the election. Liz Cheney, Nikki Haley voters, women lying to their husbands. Before that, it was Tim Walz and the camo hats. Night after night after night we were told all these things and gimmicks were going to somehow push Harris over the line, and we were just ignoring the fundamentals.

Inflation, people feeling like they were barely able to tread water at best. That was the fundamentals of the election.

And so I think that both parties should always look at the results of an election and figure out what went right and what went wrong.

But I think for all of us who cover elections and talk about elections and do this on a day to day basis, we have to figure out how to understand, talk to and listen to the half of the country that rose up tonight and said, we've had enough.”

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