Is there any hope for calm after the storm?
The political left and their allies in the media have been throwing everything they can against the wall in the hopes something will stick in delegitimizing President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office one week from today.
First it was election fraud. That was proven wrong. Then the electors were going to vote for someone else. They didn't. Then there was going to be a coup in the Senate when the votes were counted. That didn't happen.
All the while, the left has attacked every Trump nominee for a Cabinet office - not qualified, too rich, conflicts of interest, no government experience - as if nominees for nearly 230 years had been of the cookie-cutter variety and these are the first who aren't.
The latest is the alleged Russian hacking of unsecure Democratic Party operatives in an effort to throw the election to Trump. U.S. intelligence chiefs said despite whatever hacking may have been done, there was no evidence it made a difference in the election results.
Democrats know they don't have the votes to stop confirmation of the president's Cabinet nominees. They also realize budget mechanisms are in place that will make repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act a good possibility. And they know the sworn-in president is a signature away from ending any executive orders outgoing President Barack Obama signed when he didn't want to compromise with Congress.
So while they'd love to bring down a Cabinet nominee or save what they believe to be good legislation, their goal of the moment is to make voters - especially those in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, states Trump wasn't supposed to win - believe they were foolish to vote for the New York businessman, and encourage them to turn against him.
The problem with the left putting all their eggs in that basket is that Trump survived the same kind of onslaught in the Republican primary. Nobody believed he could win the party's nomination, but people kept voting for him. They voted for him despite his inelegant statements, despite his Twitter outbursts, despite his seeming lack of grasp on issues, despite his not-by-the-books campaign.
Even when every poll and every pundit said he couldn't win last fall, that he and Republicans were doomed in a landslide that also could sweep away control of the U.S. Senate and House, they voted for him.
They voted for him precisely because he wasn't politics as usual, because he took on the media, because he wasn't one of the poised and polished candidates who got them nowhere, because he said he would accomplish things they wanted to see get done.
So while the Beltway has its knickers in a knot over Wednesday's Trump news conference, and his refusal to be bullied by a CNN reporter, his November voters are not likely to be afraid of what's to come, but are loving it. They love seeing the media put down. They understand a businessman not wanting to see an empire he's grown have to be sacrificed for him to become president. They like it when Cabinet nominees aren't the same old retreads who served in a previous administration.
They're totally down with the "drain the swamp" analogy.
For us, we share Trump's impatience with a Beltway media that only wants to embarrass him and be critical of his moves, as compared to their kid-glove treatment of the outgoing president, but it's only natural for the media to want to tell the public anything and everything about a new presidential administration. And when the president-elect hasn't had a news conference since last summer and mostly communicates via Twitter, the absence of give-and-take only increases the desire for such dialogue.
We also get the president-elect not wanting to have to sell the business empire he's nurtured but understand how - despite the business being in a trust - decisions he makes as president could have an effect on his global empire. He, after all, knows what's in his portfolio and knows the most inane U.S. policy change can have a major affect on one of his properties. We can appreciate the steps he's taken so far to separate himself from his business, but we hope there's additional moves he can make.
For the moment, then, and probably well into his term as president, being out of the ordinary is not going to rattle his supporters. Indeed, the more he is persecuted by the left and the media - and that storm is not likely to weaken because of their partisan differences with him - the more likely his supporters are to back him.
Our hope is that, in being unpredictable, he does not betray their trust.