I thought democracy was supposed to die on November 8th?

Some friends and I had planned to meet on Manhattan's Upper East Side to toast what was supposed to be the death of democracy. We were to meet at an old Bavarian restaurant where we usually meet every month or so to catch up over beers and giant pretzels. What better place to raise a Hofbräu to a fascist putsch than a Munich-styled beer hall?

Alas, it was not to be. We had to reschedule at the last minute and, as it turned out, democracy didn't die after all.

The mechanics of the election went largely without a problem. There were a few instances of logistical or technical difficulties -- machines not working properly or poll workers not showing up on time -- but the voting process itself carried on rather mundanely. Armed insurrectionists did not intimidate voters; there were no suppression efforts to keep voters from casting their ballots; the absence of water being handed out in Georgia did not prevent citizens from exercising their rights.

With most all the votes cast and counted, democracy still stands. As it turns out, the center held.

The postmortems offered by the establishment media are starting to wind down. Between now and the December 6 runoff between Hershel Walker and the Reverend Warnock for Georgia's Senate, pundit postulating will certainly continue, and we can expect the apparatchiks and consultants of both parties to continue theirs for a while, engaged in bigger picture navel gazing as they are wont to do after elections go unexpectedly. 

What's interesting is that the media establishment's narrative was often about "red waves" crashing into blue shores despite the fact than any number of polls conducted by some of those media outlets themselves (notably the Washington Post and the New York Times) suggested a slight advantage for Republicans in the House and a toss-up of control of the Senate. This was pretty much as it turned out. Why the narrative framing was predominantly for a red wave is a subject for another time (conventional wisdom holding sway over current evidence? Past data privileged over present data? Scare tactics to drive voters to the polls?) but that there wasn't one was surprising because history didn't repeat itself the way we are accustomed to.

Putting aside polls and postmortems, the general takeaways from what happened with the election look to be simple.

By and large the electorate want their Democrats a little less woke and their Republicans a little less crazy.

The red wave talked about constantly in the establishment media did not materialize. It was more a spill of that last sip of rosé on the cast of Duck Dynasty's tennis whites. Or, as Stephen Colbert quipped, "It’s like what happens when you accidentally wash your Klan robes with your MAGA hat.” Apart from a few exceptions, most of them incumbents, the most rabid election deniers lost. While Democrats didn't fare as badly as feared, they did still lose the house. That's not a surprise; what's surprising is how. In a Democratic primary where voters chose more progressive nominees over moderates in a handful of House races that include Oregon, Texas and California, those candidates were defeated or are at risk of losing seats. A very narrow Democratic majority might have held for those, and the four seats turning Republican are in New York, one of the bluest states in the Union.

It seems that what people want is government to get to the business of governing and get away from the business of gaining fame by any means necessary.

Nobody likes inflation. I live in NYC and when a jar of mayonnaise shrinks from 32 oz. to 30 oz. and the price rises from $3.49 to $7.29 at my local grocery store, I'd like something to be done about it (what can I say... I love my Hellmann's). But people seemed to realize that politicians aren't the best people to look towards for help to fix economic problems regardless of Republican candidate histrionics. And none of us like crime. As I mentioned, I live in NYC. During the election Democrats running for office wanted voters to believe crime was a Republican misrepresentation when looked at through historical statistics. But comparing crime today to when it was its worst is like comparing a broken leg to brain cancer: its true one is worse than the other, but both are bad. Again, voters didn't look to politicians based on what they thought of an elected official's ability to prevent crime. Politics can set policy that impact both, but it doesn't really directly affect either.

Those on the left think that voters who don't agree with them are cracker ignoramuses who want to establish a jack-booted dictatorship because those people believe there's such a thing as gender, God, and a right to guns. The left thinks this because the media echo chamber they live in tells them so. Those on the right think that the voters who don't agree with them are elitist limousine liberals who want to destroy their way of life by turning their kids trans, take away their guns, stifle free speech, and close churches. They think this because the media echo chamber they live in tells them so. 

But when you look hard at what the left or right really think, about themselves and each other, you realize that you only think they think what they think because the media echo chamber you're in has told you so. It uses pundits and polls and "experts" to frame and rationalize the narrative, but once you realize that the media memesphere that any of us engage with is a collection of non-randomized highly decontextualized negative facts, you find that you really don't know the left or right actually thinks because you don't know your left from your right. There isn't "a" left and "a" right. There's just a bunch of people who aren't all bad or all good trying to live their lives. 

David Brooks said something last week on the PBS News Hour that caught my attention. He said that while surprised by the outcome of the election based on the media narrative, he shouldn't have been because when he went to Pennsylvania to talk with potential voters before the election, he found they were just people, going to diners and living their lives. Yes, there are bad actors out there who are twirling their mustaches trying to figure out how to ruin the world. But they are very few (and may or may not own Twitter). Most voters are people who can't change the whole world but can try to make their corner of it kinda nice. The version of what that looks like is not that different from anyone else's when writ large but can differ based on the particularities of region and culture. That's what the "center" is; the place where what most people want is the same. We've been soaking so long in a media marinade of concentrated differences that we can no longer see or smell or taste the foundational similarities of our citizenship and humanity.

It's my hope that this election provides a step towards a recognition of a center that has always been there but is systematically ignored through a dysfunctional primary system that promotes extremism and a media industrial complex happy to enable it. I want to see us move closer to what P. J. O'Rourke described in his last book, ‌A Cry from the Far Middle: Dispatches from a Divided Land:

“We may be on different sides of the fence, but let’s make that fence-top wider and better padded and go sit on it. Then, no matter if I’m of conservative ilk and your liberal stripe, we can have a neighborly chat.”

And so, a libertarian a Democrat and a Republican can raise their steins of lager, bring them to the center, and toast democracy working after all.