The presidential election is over and with luck we won’t hear any rumblings about the next one for at least a year, I hope. However, in the last few days I did hear a talking head on one of the cable news channels utter words that sent a chill down my spine when they queried, “Do you think Gov. (Kathy) Hochul might run for president in 2028?”

Trump’s victory was hard to take for a lot of people. At several Ivy League schools it was reported that professors sympathetic to shell shocked students canceled classes or even changed the date when papers or class projects would be due. Other schools provided “safe places” where students could decompress over adult coloring books or Legos while sipping hot chocolate. At Georgetown University despondent students were served milk and cookies in a student lounge certainly an indication to me that Jesuit higher education isn’t what it was in my Canisius days.

While I have some sympathy for these types, it’s not because their candidate lost but because so many see Trump’s victory as the end of the world. Take it from me, it isn’t.

In all my years of voting my candidates have lost more than they have won. When they lose, I go to bed and get up the next morning and go on with my life remembering the lyrics from the song, “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall” based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that became the song written by Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher:

Into each and every life,

the rain is bound to fall

But too much of that has

started fallin’ on mine

Now into each and every heart,

some tears are gonna fall

But I know, and you know,

someday the sun is gonna shine.

Sifting through my emails this week I came across one from Hochul in which she shared a message she had sent to President-elect Trump, where she said in part “we will work with you on any effort that will help New York state. But if you try to harm New Yorkers or take away their rights, we will fight you every step of the way.”

I hope our governor is only engaged in her usual pandering to her progressive base and doesn’t actually believe Trump is going to declare a dictatorship on taking office. He didn’t do it in his first term, and he won’t do it now. To be frank, governor, he did far more in his first six months in office to make my life better than you have done in over three years as governor.

She also announced the launch of the Empire State Freedom Initiative, another one of those task forces that will be focused on “key areas where New York State and New Yorkers are most likely to face threats from a Trump Administration……” Come on governor, please cool the rhetoric. If you want the Freedom Initiative to be productive, have it find ways to “free” us from high state taxes and fees and silly counterproductive regulations.

While some Democrats have made constructive remarks about the current state of the Democratic Party and what it must do to again be relevant, progressive pundits on CNN and MSNBC have sought to blame someone or thing for the Harris debacle. They began accusing African American and Latino men of misogyny because they deserted their wives, mothers and sisters who voted for Kamala Harris to vote for Trump in larger numbers than in recent memory. This despite the fact that he supposedly treated them like trash. On “The View” Sunny Hostin seemed to balance things out by accident, blaming the Harris defeat on “uneducated white women.”

Other pundits bemoaned the fact that “the American people have given up on democracy” or warned the audience that “The nightmare returns.” To me these statements are both ignorant and childish and makes me wonder why supposedly well-educated intelligent people are unable to engage in critical thinking.

The ratings war was won by FOX averaging 10.3 million viewers from 8 to 11 p.m. followed by MSNBC averaging 6 million viewers and CNN with 5.1 million. The top broadcast network was ABC with 5.7 million viewers, followed by NBC with 5.3 million and CBS with 3.5 million. Viewership for all the news channels and broadcast networks dropped from 2020 when there were 71 million viewers to 56.8 million viewers this year with the biggest loser being CNN that lost 4.5 million viewers from 2020.

I suspect that the drop in viewers of the traditional election night coverage can be attributed to social media platforms where results were available and additional cable channels like New Nation, and Fox Business Channel.

I watched the election coverage on Fox News. Fox’s coverage was good but the analysis by a rotating band of “talking heads” became repetitive and at times confusing. I didn’t start watching the coverage until about 8:30 and by 10:30 p.m. with results indicating a Trump night and growing tired of anchor Brett Baier insisting that it wasn’t over yet and that there was much more to come, I started streaming a movie on Prime.

But of course, I was back in time to see Trump declared the winner at 1:46 a.m. and to see his victory speech. Then I went to bed and slept soundly.

Thomas Kirkpatrick is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com.