Despite the Donald’s proclamation that election night was a victory for Republicans, the arc of the next two years will be limned by the hand of House subpoenas.  Everyone stained by Trump will now be forced to lawyer bigly up as Democrats dig into the President’s affairs (sexual, political, financial), hoping to unearth the Holy Grail of his tax returns.

In the end, painting the migrant caravan as an existential threat did little to hold back the blue wave that washed over our shores.  I guess it was a tough sell when it’s far more likely to be raped and murdered by the soldiers sent to seal off the Mexican border than by the immigrants themselves.  On Monday, National Guardsman Luis Onteveros was arrested for sexually assaulting a colleague while deployed on Operation Guardian Support.   Former airman Devin Kelley gunned down 25 parishioners in the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas while, only a fortnight ago, separated Marine machine gunner Ian David Long blew away 12 people at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, California.  Who we should fear, in point of fact, is angry white men (read: Trump supporters) who have, since 9/11, carried out the overwhelming majority of mass murders in the U.S.

Reflexively, Second Amendment zealots asserted the solution to be even more guns – 300 million is apparently insufficient – theorizing that the California tragedy would have been easily obviated had any of the six off duty police officers patronizing the bar been allowed to carry his firearm.  Their argument, predictably, glossed over armed Ventura Sheriff’s Deputy Ron Helus who was on scene and obtained little more than a dirt nap.

As Democrats doubled their number of scientists in Congress, there is renewed hope that climate change will no longer be ignored, or worse, denied on Capitol Hill.  Up to now it’s gone like this: After coal industry executive David Roberts was convicted for bribing politicians to drop superfund fines levied upon the Drummond Company, Trump hired his cohort, Otis Trey Glenn, as a regional administrator with the EPA in an effort to halt the cleanup from the other side.  In an untimely turn of events, Glenn was arrested yesterday before the plot could bear fruit.

As the above is but one microscopic example of how the Republican party remains the moral equivalent of pus, it cannot surprise that voters on the Right elected three felony indictees and a dead pimp.  Moreover, the looming Senate runoff election in Mississippi affords them the opportunity to reestablish lynchings in a state long famous for hanging black folks from trees.  Seeking to retain – via voter suppression, if necessary – the seat appointed upon Thad Cochran’s resignation, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith proudly boasted to supporters that if there was “a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”   While some may sweep this away as nothing more than colloquial hyperbole, the current zeitgeist strongly suggests otherwise.   To wit: Baraboo High School students in Wisconsin took time before prom to stand in formation and give the Nazi salute.  That the white nationalist parent who orchestrated the now infamous photograph is speciously claiming the boys were merely waving goodbye despite a well-chronicled culture of racism at the school evinces the unabashed hate speech emanating from the White House is being echoed on Main Street, U.S.A.  No doubt, then, that Walt Disney is beaming in his grave.

Democrats are befuddled as how to proceed; Krysten Sinema won in Arizona by running headlong towards the center while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won in New York after positioning herself somewhere between Chairman Mao and Robin Hood. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) took the latter tack when she compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Klu Klux Klan.  Alternatively, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) continues to bend over backwards to facilitate large chunks of Trump’s misbegotten agenda.  While the prognosticators are all over the map in regard to 2020, one thing is for certain; Democrats, as they always do, will circle the wagons and commence to shooting each other.