Post-election despair was inevitable given the widespread lack of enthusiasm for our choices.

Broadcast media that gifted Donald Trump with limitless attention and abetted the DNC’s destruction of Bernie Sanders are concocting all sorts of explanations, including the pitiful theory that they were duped by the polls. Far more divisive is the pundits’ scapegoating of third-party voters, a statistical absurdity that should be easy to see through.

Pre-election harping on Jill Stein’s and Gary Johnson’s single-digit polling numbers painted their candidacies as hopeless and irrelevant. In the after-shock of the election, Hillary Clinton surrogates reversed course, blaming the third-party vote for her shocking defeat. The reality that third-party candidates’ election totals fell far below pre-election polling eludes those who now view those numbers as suddenly significant.

What a howl!

Have the people who created a presidential race between two “deplorables” learned nothing from their attempts to fool a downtrodden populace with nostrums upholding business as usual? What they should focus on is voter disgust with a political process that protects entrenched wealth while ignoring the most basic economic needs of so many Americans.

Where do we go from here? Does anybody really know? Much as we knew about Clinton’s plans for war, trade deals, and goodies for billionaire bankers, Trump lacks the long political tenure that would give us a window into his real agenda. We have only his recent words, including a mixed bag of plans revealed in his Gettysburg speech. A close look at this outline for his first hundred days should offer everyone a little discomfort, a little hope, and a lot of uncertainty.

Yes, he referenced the wall. But he also said he will work for repeal or at least revision of North American Free Trade Agreement. In a similar vein, his outline rejects the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which should please the most progressive partisans of the left. These are major policy moves that would have long-reaching and positive outcomes for American workers and help maintain the local economic and political autonomy cherished by traditionalists on the right.

Will any of Trump’s plans come to pass? Mitch McConnell has stated that Congress will support some of his agenda and reject the rest. Elizabeth Warren stated as much in an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show two days after the election. These bipartisan prognostications should soothe the lingering sorrow and angst expressed by Hillary’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders.

This is complicated. Bernie supporters mourned months ago and then moved on despite any sign of sympathy from Team Hillary; after the sadness and disappointment, Bernie votes sifted to all four candidates. Clinton drew significant support from “lesser-evil” voters who ultimately, reluctantly, hitched their wagon to her tarnished star.

Trump supporters resist categorization as well. We all know Trump supporters; they are as much “us” as any other group of people who darkened in a ballot bubble for a myriad of deep and complicated, and perhaps even reluctant, reasons.

Then there was the partial ballot election — thousands of voters who cast down-ballot votes but skipped the presidency. Another nuance of an intricate election scene. And let’s face it — almost half the electorate stayed home. Apathy or none of the above? We’ll probably never know. But the story of this election is certainly as much about those who didn’t vote as it is about those who did.

After the dust settles, there will be lessons for everyone — especially the global corporatists of both parties who know, deep inside, that Trump’s election was a populist repudiation of business as usual. If Democratic insiders like Howard Dean, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and most of The Congressional Democratic caucus are disappointed by Hillary’s defeat, so are establishment Republicans who endorsed her — Michael Bloomberg, Colin Powell, the Bush family, and a host of war hawks of the Brent Scowcroft ilk, among others. The lesson of these strange entanglements is that in terms of economic and foreign policy, ideological space between the two parties is shrinking.

Proceeding forward, we must all keep calm and carry on; the United States will live to vote another day.

Maybe the next round will be a more honorable one.

Renee Gravelle is a Dunkirk resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com