"You want people to laugh at him and mock him ..."

As the election dust settles, what does the great whirlwind mean for the ongoing project of making this a more just and democratic (small "d") country?

The historian of Eastern European autocracy and atrocity, Tim Snyder, is interviewing Democratic legislators for a podcast series, "Now We Act," discussing, in the wake of this breakthrough election, now what? These short programs can be found at his Thinking About... site.

I have to to confess this is the wrong medium for me; I don't have time to listen to so much talk. And there are no transcripts. Maybe Snyder will construct a book ...?

But I did appreciate that Aaron Rupar of Public Notice turned the tables on Snyder and interviewed him on what comes next, providing a transcript. Snyder is decidedly not just an observer and student of American politics. He's also a guy from Ohio with wishes for his country. Snyder knows what he hopes for ...

“It’s important to think not about what he’s going to do to us, but what we’re going to do to him.”

... When you win an election and have some kind of power and some kind of political and moral mandate, you have to go on the offensive. You’re betraying your constituents, you’re betraying your voters, and you’re also misunderstanding the moment if you don’t. So for me, the question after November is, what are we going to do to them?

It has to be things like investigating the soft targets around the president, preparing the way for prosecutions, deterring other oligarchic figures from being around Trump by showing there’s a cost, making him as lonely as possible, making things hard for him.

That is, for me, the fundamental issue — what we’re going to do to them, and not what they’re going to do to us. A lot of the problems we have stem from a version of obeying in advance where, sure, you oppose Trump, you’re against him, but you may put his power and emotions and mental state too much front and center as opposed to thinking, what am I going to do to make those powers less and that mental state worse? That is where Democrats ought to be in the autumn of 2026 and the first part of 2027.

Trump understands how to bully people who want to be bullied, which can take you a long way, but it can’t take you to a victory in a war. It can’t even take you to a victory in a trade war. It certainly can’t take you to dominating China — in fact, the reverse has happened.

So that 30 percent support or whatever he still has, that depends on him being seen as a strongman whose supporters still say, “He’ll find a way to figure it out. He’ll solve it.” You have to break that. This election may break it, but if it doesn’t, you have to keep pushing. You want people to laugh at him and mock him. ...

Now that scandal over Jensen Huang, Nvidia, Chinese spies, and Trump administration self-dealings breaks open -- when they've been knocked down, don't let our aspiring overlords get out of the muck they have mired themselves in ... That's the people's job now.