Donald Trump is over. Joe Biden too. A new era is upon us.

Since most of the mainstream media hasn’t noticed, there is no reason why you should.

You probably realize that Joe Biden is also finished, his once inspiring and oddly naive plan in shambles. Politics will be resetting itself. Panic will not help you or the country or your loved ones.

Florida Governor Ron De Santis will most likely be running for President and is a strong prospect for the Republican Party.  I bet that much of the same Democratic slate that ran in 2020 will be running again. Kamala Harris isn’t dazzling the world either.

Conservative journalists (as opposed to Fox News flunkies) have been reporting for weeks now that Governor DeSantis and Trump are now openly at odds with one another, sniping over why DeSantis won’t promise to run against his mentor and creator in 2024 and why they are so far apart on issues relating to Covid-19, the vaccination program,  and how the  Trump administration managed to blow it all.

DeSantis is an interesting and bright politician.

He came of age during the great Covid-19 lockdown mandate and vaccination wars. Oddly enough, Donald Trump suddenly finds himself face to the left of the party he dominates on Covid. But then, he has bumbled every political decision he has ever been asked to make.

De Santis is now. Trump stinks of then.

DeSantis is perhaps the second most popular Republican in the party at the moment, still well behind Trump but moving up fast.

There are all sorts of signs that Republicans think it’s time to jettison Trump and his loopy and conspiratorial agenda, and that DeSantis is on the right track.

Conservatives and many Republicans are unhappy at Trump’s insistence on still campaigning on the idea that the 2020 election was stolen. The man who inspired the  Capitol assault is as vulnerable a candidate for President as could be imagined. The most old and angry white men who watch Fox News are powerful in their own way but represent only a small fraction of the American electorate, something you might never know from watching the media.

Most Americans do not feel good about it.

Progressives and Democrats are in a complete panic over the idea that we are facing an immediate and bloody insurrection, but they miss another critical point: the Republicans and their sometimes unsavory allies don’t need to attack anybody; the Republican Party has the best and most potent friend any political party could have right now: The Biden administration.

Poor Biden is failing on every critical point of the times. People are unhappy with his leadership.

Yes, it’s not all Joe Biden’s fault. He is a nice guy, and he meant well. But the Covid pandemic, inflation, supply line breakthroughs, millions of unfilled jobs, closed schools.  billions of climate disruptions all seem like too much for any President to overcome.

People are afraid and weary and unhappy.

It doesn’t matter who’s really to blame. It matters who is in charge. The one in order takes the heat and the blame.

DeSantis is the first prominent Republican in 2022 to openly break with Donald Trump and refuse to stick his nose up his butt.

He isn’t governing or campaigning on a stolen election or Trump’s insatiable ego.

Trump blew it big in 2020, and he’s even more vulnerable now. Next to Trump, De Santis, a hard-right conservative, looks like George Washington. He may be infuriatingly arrogant, even extreme in some ways, but he doesn’t frighten people. A Yale graduate, he is more intelligent than Trump. And markedly less crude and vicious.

He chooses a few issues and focuses on them.

And he has his focus on the correct issues for people in America in 2022: he hates mandates, dumps on Dr. Fauci, and refuses even to consider lockdowns. Right or wrong, that’s precisely where the overwhelming majority of Americans are at the moment.

Even the most ardent Trump loyalists squirm at Trump’s vulnerability. Imagine all those horrific images filling up Facebook and cable news in 2024. Trump’s role in the capital riot will be a significant issue if he runs for office, perhaps the one that blots out all the others.

While many people are trembling about the future, politics never goes to the panicked, but always to the practical. Politics is not a moral trade but a ruthless and calculating business.

Trump is one of the most unpleasant and offensive figures in American political history. His very popularity is a window into the real American pandemic – the undermining of our democracy. We are a sick country, but not a doomed nation. There is a big difference.

As he continues to brazenly lie about the 2020 election and plot against everyone who has ever criticized him, he looks more and more like that sad old stereotype, a low-end William Randolph Hearst, once powerful, not railing at the world from his lavish Mansion, sticking to the bitter piteous story of how the world stole his victory from him.

Joe Biden, I imagine, will go back to Delaware and hang out with his children and grandchildren. Trump will be all alone with his boot-licking “friends”, railing at his growing enemies list for the rest of his life. No one else will be listening. That is Trump’s reckoning with justice – irrelevance and isolation.

Bitter old men in their 80’s and nothing to do, do not generally last long.

The Republicans have a perfect chance to sweep it all in 2024, and the biggest obstacle to them doing it is Trump, a sociopath, and egomaniac who always puts his interests ahead of his friends, family, his party, or the country.

It’s not a moral question for the Republican Party; it’s practical. He has to step away. Or their great victory may be taken from them.

The issue is now who has the best child care package, but who has the best chance of running for President and winning, and in the process, taking control of the Senate and the House of Representatives at the same time. That’s a harsh truth, but it’s the American reality.

Taking control of the White House, the Senate, and the House, and thus the entire federal judiciary is the dream of every one of the 80 million people who live on the right or far right of our political spectrum. And it’s within reach. The right Democratic candidate could alter that history, but as of now, nobody knows who that might be.

The New York Times reported just today that Trump had asked several advisers and loyalists this question: “I wonder why the guy (DeSantis) won’t say he won’t run against me.” Trump claims he practically invented DeSantis, and we know how he feels about people who challenge him.

Trump has suggested DeSantis is a wimp because he won’t say whether or not he has been vaccinated. Rather than fawning and folding, DeSantis is now criticizing Trump openly for his handling of Covid-19 at the very beginning. This is a sore point for the ex-president, who claims he invented the idea of vaccines and has gotten his shots.

Trump can’t handle being disagreed with, much like Freddy Krueger.

So his disagreements with the governor of Florida are ballooning into a full-fledged war. DeSantis has raised $70 million for his re-election campaign in Florida. According to the experts there, he’ll have plenty leftover.

Many Republicans are said to be looking for a way out of the Trump nightmare.  They tend not to give interviews to reporters, especially those who rarely leave their computers or desks.

DeSantis might well be the way out. He is famous and savvy, two things Trump can’t claim.

To me, Ann Coulter is one of the most interesting of the nasty far-right conservative columnists. She is exceptionally bright. Once a Trump supporter and loyalist, Colter wrote recently on Twitter: “Trump is demanding to know Ron DeSantis’s booster status, and now I can reveal it. He (DeSantis was a loyal booster when Trump ran in 2016, but then he learned our President was a liar and con man whose grift was permanent.”

Wow. That is a big deal.

Trump’s Chinese wall of slavish obedience seems to be crumbling.

Unless he can steal the national election – doubtful – he has never had much chance of winning in 2024. If Republicans can challenge him openly and survive, he has none.

Another good indicator. DeSantis is the new darling of Fox News as well as many far-right conservatives.

He’s on the channel several times a week, more than any other  Republican, including Mr. Trump. The signs are piling up. Yes, the Republicans are planning a coup, but it isn’t against the capital. It’s against Trump.

The most difficult challenge facing the Democratic Party is not Donald Trump. The real divide in America is not between Republicans and Democrats; it’s between rural Americans and urban Americans.

The Democrats believe that doing the right thing will bring them victory. The Republicans, as cold and cunning as Doctor Strange, believe that the right thing is anything that will bring them closer to success and power.

They are not the first politicians in American history to feel that way.

The Democrats keep setting themselves aflame by choosing moral policies most of the country either doesn’t want or can’t understand. The Republicans are committed to mostly inventing culture wars and whatever works, and so far, that is a magic formula for them.

There is no objective evidence that the Republican Party is planning or supporting an armed takeover of the U.S. government or that such a thing – a monumental undertaking – could even work.

They are taking over the government the old-fashioned way – winning some votes and stealing some others and slicing up the opposition into small pieces, and running over their bodies on the road. Marjorie  Taylor Greene is not in charge, and once she has outlived her usefulness, they’ll toss her under the bridge as well.

They don’t need to get themselves shot at.

It’s time for the people who call themselves compassionate and progressive to look beyond both Trump – boy, is he over – and Biden, he’s over too. The answers to our political system lie beyond both and will require sacrifice, hard work, and passion.

Hating Donald Trump inspires none of these things. He is not worth it. It’s a waste of time.

As the past few years have shown us, the future is not knowable or even mildly predictable.

A friend of mine told me a few days ago that she is considering buying a shotgun to defend herself against the insurrectionists when they come for her. She is a nurse and has nothing to do with politics.

I didn’t get way what I was thinking; she was upset enough, it was this: “Why don’t you skip the panic and the gun and instead of shooting some hapless wander through the heart, think of something useful you can do, like run for local office, find a candidate to support, or man some telephones.”I’m not good when it comes to pity parties – too self-serving.

She would have hated me for saying that.

It is genuinely disturbing and depressing to see what’s happening to our political system.

But it is not Armageddon, nor is it close to the end of our democracy. Once again, our media fails us by focusing so greedily and obsessively on the good thing, reality, or truth. It seems in recent years that they have no idea what is happening.

Panic doesn’t work. It isn’t healthy, and it accomplishes nothing. That’s why you’ll never see Mitch McConnell doing it. And why he never seems to lose.

Say goodbye to the remarkable Trump era; they’ll be writing books about it for years. I admit I will miss him. But speaking only for myself, I’m excited to see what lies beyond. Whatever it is, it is not in any way what I thought it would be.