These thoughts are predicated on the expectation that Hillary Clinton won on Tuesday and will be the next president of the United States.
If she did not, this nation could be in even more serious trouble than imagined here. The unknowns with a Donald Trump presidency are simply incalculable.
Understand, a column that gets published the day after the election must necessarily be written before all the votes are in.
But you don't really have to know the outcome this time around to know the next president is in for a rocky start.
If it is President Hillary Clinton, there will be celebration by many, some representing generations of women who will know the first person of their gender to advance to the highest office in the nation. This is a truly historic moment in American politics.
Others in this politically divided nation, however, will greet the new president with chagrin, or worse.
Most challenged in that eventuality will be those in the losing Republican Party, whether or not they have held on to majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.
Credible projections on Tuesday were for a Republican-controlled House and, possibly, for a Senate with an equally divided membership and a Democratic vice president to break ties.
The exact split may not be known for days. At least one Senate seat may not be determined until a December runoff, if none of the candidates in Louisiana won a clear majority on Tuesday.
The point is that divided government will continue in a Hillary Clinton administration, even if she were to get a slight Democratic edge in the Senate.
Whatever the split, Republicans will have a party to rebuild after chancing the nomination of Donald Trump. But the building blocks must somehow include the voters who were so solidly in Trump's camp, many in Arkansas among them.
There may have been a tradition in this country that afforded the winning candidate, the newly elected president -- whoever he was and whichever party he represented -- some sort of political honeymoon.
Clinton, if she gets any honeymoon at all, will soon face strong opposition. Republicans will need to prove themselves not just to the party's rank and file, including those who couldn't stomach Trump, but also to the new Trump wing of the party.
The one point of commonality between those disparate wings is their dislike of Clinton and her politics.
Never forget that some Republican senatorial candidates went so far as to pledge not to confirm any Clinton appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, no matter how few justices might remain.
It is all part of a recipe for continuing dissension in the Congress and for an embattled presidency.
In fact, the campaign for 2018's mid-term elections effectively began today. And those elections may be pivotal to whatever legacy Hillary Clinton is ultimately able to build.
That's a rather dour, short-term perspective on where we are in our collective political lives. The long-term forecast could be worse.
It has to do with the impressions left on the children of America -- the future voters -- during this particular election. Part of the problem is their exposure to often crass, overly simplified criticism of the candidates in public media and maybe even online.
But it also has do with what children hear at home, how their parents or others in a child's sphere of influence talk about politics, about candidates and, more importantly, about the office of president and all those other offices necessary to the conduct of government.
Take a minute to ask the children, particularly the young ones, what they know about the candidates or about the office of president.
Maybe the children think Hillary is a liar and Trump a bigot, the frequently used pejoratives against each of these candidates.
Whose responsibility is that?
The importance of the election of a president might have been lost on children who heard rants and not reason.
Hopefully, the excitement of Election Day, the pronouncements of patriotism and donning those "I voted" stickers conveyed a different message than the negativity that came before.
We're all guilty of forgetting what impressionable ears may hear.
Even now that the votes are counted and the election over, remember that children are watching. Future voters are taking their first civics lessons at home. Would-be leaders are searching for examples to follow.
Remember, democracy is earned. And it is learned.
Commentary on 11/09/2016