Our Somber Future

It’s a cause for relief, if not wild celebration, if, as appears likely as this is written, Democrats won both senate races in Georgia, thereby securing a less than razor-thin majority in the senate (50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris breaking tie votes on behalf of the Democrats). But Trump leaves behind him incalculable moral and institutional wreckage. As Diana Lithwick notes in a powerful and brilliantly written article in Slate this morning “leadership by distortion, untruth, and nihilism will be the new normal for some substantial portion of the GOP.”