OK, so…now what?

Now, we have to focus on the long, slow reality of what we need to do to repair the damage, not on quick fixes.

Let’s get a few things out of the way. First of all, here are some things not to waste your time on…

The Electoral College are not going to violate their oaths binding them to their candidates en masse. It would require 37 electors to break their faith to even throw it to the House of Representatives(by abstaining), let alone give it to Clinton (by changing their vote to her). It’s not going to happen no matter how much you rant and rail and how many petitions you sign.

The Electoral College is not actually going away, nor is the manner of apportioning its electors likely to change anytime soon. Aside from the fact that it’s worked out pretty well for the GOP — soon to be the party in power — twice in recent memory, it’s in the best interests of low-population states to leave it the way it is.

The current two party system is probably not going away. I say “probably” because the last time we faced politics as divisive as these was the 1850s, which saw the death of the Whig/Democrat split and the eventual development of the Republican/Democrat split (albeit with social conservatism and progressivism reversed from its current allotment). Any reborn progressive movement has to be prepared to work within one of these parties to get anywhere.

So what do we do?

The progressive side needs new leaders, at every level. Nancy Pelosi has failed us. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has already saved us the trouble by getting out of the way as the head of the DNC, so we may see something new there. Chuck Schumer is kind of a putz, honestly — I don’t think he’s terrible, and he seems to genuinely care for his constituents in New York, but he’s not exactly a light in the darkness. Bernie was a great standard bearer but he’s an old man and not getting any younger — at the very least there needs to be a strong understudy in the wings, there.

Frankly, we need Obama not to shut up in his retirement; we need Michelle Obama not to shut up in her retirement; we need Elizabeth Warren to get even louder and prouder.

Most importantly, though, somewhere out there there had better be some names we don’t know yet who are just ready for the right moment to be noticed, because otherwise, we’re sort of running out of standard bearers!

We need to stop focusing on the Presidency as the only race that matters. The GOP has already been eroding progress in this country through their increasing control of state and local governments. If we don’t start reversing this trend it won’t matter who is in the White House or even in Congress. Just look at the damage done to Wisconsin!

We need to get a huge number of self-disenfranchised people participating. 46% of the electorate stayed the fuck home this year. I don’t care if that’s normal, it’s not good.

We need to find a fix for all the voter-suppression going on. This honestly probably ties back into focusing on local races. We’re not going to scratch voter-suppressing laws off the books if we’re not the lawmakers. Maybe that sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem, but we have to solve it.

As I’ve said before, we need to hold what I will charitably call “economic Trumpists” accountable. You know, the ones who say they didn’t vote for him because of bigotry or hatred or anything like that but because they think he’ll actually make the tra…er…bring jobs back [spoiler: he won’t], and that the hateful bigots will have to go through them to get to the rest of us.

Money where your mouth is, bucko. When Mike Pence starts talking about conversion therapy and Steve Bannon is promoting his white supremacist agenda in the White House, and neo-Nazis are spray-painting hate all over the place (which, by the way, is happening right fucking now as we speak), we need to remember every single one of these “yes-but” Trump voters and hold their feet to the fire.

We need to stop letting people throw our “toleration” back in our face. We do not tolerate hatred. We do not tolerate bigotry. We do not tolerate the point of view that any given human being is inherently inferior to any other given human being based on what they look like, whom, how many, or how often they fuck, whom they marry, or what they worship. We do not tolerate white supremacy, gay bashing, anti-Semitism, ageism, sexism, ableism, any of it. We do not have to tolerate it. Bigotry is not morally equivalent to pluralism. Ignorance is not morally equivalent to knowledge. Hatred is not morally equivalent to love. We need to draw the line and hold it, and not let them talk us into tolerating intolerance.

The other line we need to hold—and this one is going to be hard; it’s going to be hard like Julius tryin’ to be the shepherd, Ringo — we need to be angry. We need to stay angry. But we need to try very hard not to actually hate.

I’m not even sure I can practice what I’m preaching here, but we have to try, somehow, to light candles, and not bonfires. And when we win — and I have to believe we will eventually win, again, or else nothing is worth a piss — when we win, we need to turn around and do everything we can to make things better for everybody, including the people who really pissed us off this time around.

The work ahead is daunting, but it must not daunt us. We break it up into smaller pieces and we put one foot in front of the other and we just keep moving forward. When they get in our way we walk around them and just keep moving forward. When they try to block us from going around them we get enough people together and we walk right through them if we have to and we just keep moving forward. One step at a time. One thing at a time. Every little effort has to count.