When psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross sought a way to understand the grief process, she famously came up with five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

In the days since the Election Disaster of 2024, what’s emerged for me is a sense of hindsight. It’s not the “what if” phase of Kubler-Ross’ bargaining phase.

It’s more the wondering if certain events helped Trump win, were surmountable obstacles to his victory or didn’t matter as much as we thought they did.

I’ll give my ideas, but they certainly aren’t sure answers. Better political minds than mine, including yours, might have different thoughts about them.

But like the other stages of grief, we’re not going to get past this until we understand what happened and when it did.

So here are some things that happened – in no particular order – between November 7, 2020 – the day Joe Biden was declared the winner of that election – and November 3, 2024. There are probably others – if you think of some, I’m eager to see them.

1. THE HARRIS-TRUMP DEBATE

Kamala Harris wiped the floor with Trump in the CBS debate on September 10.

Don’t take my word for it. Polls conducted after the debate showed 60% or more of those watching believed Harris won that debate. She just seemed in control and, well, presidential – compared to his ranting about non-existent dog eating and telling us, after nine years, he had “concepts” of a plan to fix health care.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that after the debate, Harris and her supporters were absolutely convinced she couldn’t lose. How could anyone vote for that hot orange mess?

But polls show that most voters had made up their mind about who to vote for by Labor Day. That means the debate meant very little.

2. THE BIDEN-TRUMP DEBATE

How long into that debate did you watch until the sense of horror set in?

I think Biden has been a fantastic President – one of the two or three best of the 13 in my lifetime. Engineering the world’s strongest economic recovery from COVID, supporting Ukraine’s fight for survival, and just being decent and respectful.

But when he showed up at the CNN debate on June 27, he looked like an old man. He reminded many of us of our parents who suffered from dementia – the gaping mouth that indicates a blankness. On the other side, Trump was uncharacteristically restrained, letting Biden damage himself.

When that happened, some people wondered if there was some kind of coverup. Something similar to when Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, after which his wife and doctor virtually ran the country.

Was Biden president or was the country being run by his unelected advisers? And, if Biden wasn’t in charge, why weren’t the American people told?

3. BIDEN’S WITHDRAWAL

After the debate, actor George Clooney wrote a New York Times op-ed piece saying Biden couldn’t win re-election because of the way he’s aging. It was a tough piece from a Democratic Party stalwart and it shocked the faithful.

(An aside: Democrats should thank Clooney for being honest and having the party’s best interests at heart. I have no doubt today that Biden had no chance against Trump and that another nominee was the party’s only hope. That it didn’t work out is not Clooney’s fault.)

The withdrawal process was painful for all. But as even some of the non-Trump Republicans said, it showed that the Democrats weren’t a cult of personality and doing a responsible party needed to do.

 It took a month for Biden to see he couldn’t hold on. So he bowed out as gracefully – grace should be a part of his name – as he could.

Before he pulled out, there was speculation about what process Democrats would use to pick a replacement if he did. Biden eliminated that, fast – within an hour of his withdrawal statement, he endorsed his Vice President as his successor.

So here’s the question: Should Kamala Harris have become the nominee without any chance for those who voted for Biden in the primaries to have a say? 

I don’t know that there was a better process in late July. But maybe voters in November questioned why it came down the way it did.

4. AFGHANISTAN

The first thing that started to cut into Biden’s approval was the way the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.

The withdrawal was mandated by an agreement Trump signed with the Taliban providing for the removal of U.S. forces by May 1, 2021. When Biden took office, he agreed to honor the deal but to keep forces in the country until the end of September.

The Taliban wasn’t having it. Like the Vietnamese nearly a half-century earlier, they launched an offensive in July to take the country once and for all. The Afghan government collapsed like a cheap suit.

The withdrawal was chaotic. A suicide bomber killed 11 Marines trying to protect the Kabul airport and 170 civilians. Many of the people who had helped Americans during 20 years in the country were left behind. So was perhaps billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer-funded military equipment.

It looked terrible. It was a black eye for the United States. Trump, who hamstrung Biden with the withdrawal agreement, joined the chorus of criticism.

The embarrassment might not have been forgotten three years later.

5. COVID

What people seemed to forget was the nightmare of the pandemic.

When more than a million people died in this country. When no one could leave their homes. When schools and businesses operated remotely. When social activities ground to a halt.

Trump mishandled – I would say criminally – COVID. Biden had to bring the country back from under its shroud. He aggressively pushed the rapidly developed vaccine (Trump likes to claim credit, but, really, did he have a choice?) and had to contend with antivax and antimasking campaigns.

COVID is still around, but it isn’t as scary as it was four years ago. It seems not to have been a factor at all in this election – and maybe that was a mistake by the Democrats not to mention how much less danger there is today.

6. HURRICANE LIES

Two very strange hurricanes beset the southeastern U.S. this fall. They didn’t approach from the usual direction, westward across the Atlantic. They moved east, through the Gulf of Mexico.

So North Carolina and Georgia got belted – not along the shore, but through the Appalachians – and in no way were they equipped for that.

That’s understandable, and maybe – with climate change worsening – Kansas and Colorado should think about hurricane prep in the future. 

But the impact was worsened by the lying from Republicans. Trump said the Biden administration and FEMA weren’t helping the area recover because it supported him. The party’s greater idiots argued that Democrats contrived to direct the storm the way it went.

Whether people accepted the lies and voted against Harris, costing her some key electoral votes, is something to think about.

7. ELON MUSK

He’s richer than God, even after his Twitter/X debacle.

Elon Musk is worth billions of dollars. And, in recent years, he seems to have become a little unhinged – complaining about birth rates, about “wokeness,” estranging himself from his transgender daughter.

A perfect match for Trump.

Was the money he spent and the effort he put into promoting Trump a big factor in the election? 

All I know is I won’t look at Teslas the same way again.

8. ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Speaking of nutcases, meet Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr.

The son of a revered liberal icon and the nephew of two others started becoming a thing when he campaigned against vaccines. He’s a former environmental advocate also seems to have some weird encounters with animals – look up “Central Park bear dump” and “brainworm.”

Kennedy started the year running against Biden for the Democratic nomination. Then he switched to a third-party run and, when that looked like it might peter out, chose to endorse Trump – the antithesis of everything the Kennedy family has stood for politically since JFK.

By removing his name from most state ballots, he no longer stood as an alternative to Trump for people who wanted to reject both parties. So the only choice they had if they didn’t want either was not to vote – many of them may have taken that option. 

And once RFK Jr. endorsed Trump, enough of his small band of voters might have put him “over the top” – an appropriate term to use regarding RFK Jr.

9. STAR POWER

Trump had Kid Rock and Dean Cain. Harris had just about everyone else of acclaim.

From the sports world: Lebron James and Steph Curry. From the screen: Juiia Roberts, Viola Davis and Harrison Ford. From music: The Boss, Queen Bey, Tay Tay and JLo. 

As a result, Harris drew phenomenal crowds. Trump’s crowds diminished after hearing him speak for hours at a time. 

This all translated to Harris supporters and even some neutral observers to the idea that her campaign had momentum heading to the end.

But it might be possible that the celebrity endorsements had the opposite effect. Maybe they told people that these elitists in Hollywood and New York were looking to protect the status quo – and they voted the other way.

10. THE MSG RALLY

Conventional wisdom predicted the Madison Square Garden rally nine days before the election would be the final nail in Trump’s coffin. 

Especially after self-proclaimed comedian Tony Hinchcliff called Puerto Rico “an island of garbage.”

There were “jokes” about Black people, Jews and Muslims.

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod said afterward that the Puerto Rico comment might turn out to be the costliest joke in history.

Nope. 

11. IMMIGRATION

We are about to find out how serious people are about fixing immigration.

For years, Republicans and their allies in right-wing media have persisted in painting this menace of millions of people crossing the southern border illegally. For them, only draconian solutions exist: mass deportation and a wall.

Democrats believe such solutions are cruel – and unnecessarily insult Hispanic Americans who are already in this country.

Except that Hispanic Americans – particularly those who live close to the border, appear to have increased their support for Trump – despite the fact that he engineered the death of a bipartisan compromise bill for immigration reform. A bill that seemed like a sensible way to get this issue removed from the nation’s agenda.

Again, nope. If immigration was a key issue in this election, it favored Trump.

12. INFLATION

This seems to be the issue that might have had the most impact.

It’s strange how inflation works in politics. When prices go up faster, it scares people – especially those of us who live on a fixed income. I get that.

But what I don’t expect – but apparently others do – is that, when the inflation is controlled by the Fed raising interest rates, the prices that went up will go back to where they were. 

The price of a dozen eggs was 98 cents in 2000. In 2024, it’s $3. If eggs went back down to $1.50, which was what it was when the most recent inflation wave started, they will still be 50% higher than 20 years earlier.

In other words, price rises don’t go away. For anything. New cars once cost $400. Now they cost 100 times that. And that seems to scar Americans.

Inflation was inevitable after Trump’s mishandling of COVID, which caused supply disruptions throughout the world. That Biden and Harris get blamed for it, despite a remarkable effort to tame it, is ironic – and unfortunate.

13. GAZA

There seem to be two things Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu have in common: They don’t want a two-state to resolve 76 years of conflict between Israel and Palestine – and they do want Donald Trump to be President of the United States.

The current crisis started 13 months ago when Hamas terrorists kidnapped and killed scores of Israeli civilians in a brazen attack. The Israeli military responded with almost total war, killing scores of Palestinian civilians. The Gaza Strip is a sad, bloody, destroyed mess.

Biden – and his vice president – were stuck. It’s long-standing American policy to defend Israel. But when Netanyahu overstepped the line into brutality, it was hard for the U.S. to pressure him otherwise. And neither side seemed to want any form of cease-fire.

All this magically benefitted Trump, who also doesn’t think a two-state solution is in his best interest. All this weakened Harris among conservative Jewish voters and among Arab-Americans. 

Not sure it cost her the election. But it didn’t help.

14. BUTLER

When I see that 80% of American voters made up their mind about the election before Labor Day, I have to think about the attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania.

That happened on July 13. The gunman’s bullet or a fragment of it grazed Trump’s ear, causing him to bleed. Secret Service agents knocked him to the ground but, when the shooting stopped, got him back up. He walked away.

Did the fact that he walked away demonstrate some sort of manliness that appealed to voters. Did the shooting garner sympathy for Trump?

The fact that the Secret Service – a part of the Biden administration – appears to have bungled the incident didn’t help. Even if Harris and Biden had no control over it. 

Because, perhaps, in some voters’ eyes, they did.

15. CONVICTION AND PROSECUTION

Donald Trump is the first convicted felon ever elected President of the United States.

Let that sentence burnish in your eyes for a moment.

He was convicted by a jury of his peers of all – ALL – 34 counts of fraud regarding his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in 2016. 

That’s not to mention federal court indictments for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results and mishandling classified documents, and a Fulton County, Georgia, indictment to interfering in the 2020 vote count. Prosecutorial mistakes, a Trump-appointed judge doing his bidding and the fact justice grinds slowly no matter what the crime have kept those matters from being adjudicated.

There are thousands of men and women in prisons across the country who wish people view their criminal history the way they view Trump’s.

But maybe, if you’re a celebrity, they let you do it. Or at least voters might feel that way.

Because the convictions and indictments rolled off their backs. Hell, his lament that he’s being persecuted might have actually helped him.

It’s disgusting. And it’s something to think about.

16. HER

Finally – and I’m sorry this took so long – there’s one factor to consider that seems as though it’s grossly unfair. It’s the topic of animated discussion in my household.

For consideration: The United States is not ready for a female President.

I don’t believe that. Or I didn’t believe that.

We’re supposed to be a society that functions on merit, not biology. My daughter and I watched “The West Wing” with the idea that, if she wanted, she could be President (Actually, what she wanted was to write a TV show like “The West Wing,” which is great, too).

My wife says we’re not ready to accept the idea of a woman President. Not that there shouldn’t be one – she knows there are lots of qualified women. 

It’s that we – men and women – can’t handle the idea.

Then throw in the fact that not only is Kamala Harris a woman, she’s also Black and of South Asian heritage.

Somehow, a Black man slipped into the White House in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Depression. A lot of people never got over that. To my wife, another person of color in the Oval Office would have broken what exists of their brains.

——

So I spent my day writing this magnum opus about why. Why did Tuesday happen? How did Tuesday happen?

I’d love to hear your ideas about this. Is it any one of the questions, multiple questions or all of the above?

The question thing is going to be the stage of grief that lingers. But until we get past it, we can’t get over it – and we can’t begin to do what it takes to get Trump out of our lives.

The distraction strategy aimed at stopping Kamala Harris is most effective at drowning out her solid, commonsense ideas for solving a real crisis in America: housing.

This problem especially hurts young adults starting out in the workplace. It’s hard to take a job that would advance your career but doesn’t pay enough to cover the rent or the mortgage payment for a home.

But this issue spans generations. Many of my fellow retirees are looking to downsize or move to a place that’s more accessible to folks our age. That’s not an easy thing to find.

Just before the Democratic convention in August, Harris and newly picked running mate Tim Walz announced their housing plan. It is multi-faceted and seems pretty damn smart.

Among her proposals is an initiative to build 3 million new housing units. It would rely on providing incentives to homebuilders, including breaks when those new homes go to first-time buyers.

Harris and Walz also want to provide a $25,000 credit to first-time homebuyers. They want to crack down on housing industry manipulation – both in the purchasing of groups of homes as an investment rather than a life experience, and in the manipulation of rental markets aimed at driving up lease costs.

Many of their proposals have bipartisan support – if you remember that idea. Kids of Republicans who aren’t super wealthy need homes, too.

One thing I think a Harris-Walz administration should consider is a reallocation of real estate space.

You see it almost everywhere you go: Big office buildings emptied by COVID and teleworking. Storefronts, strip shopping centers and malls deserted thanks to the convenience of online shopping.

There is so much empty built-up space in this country. It’s not limited to cities  – like what I’ve seen first-hand in San Francisco and Minneapolis. In suburban New York, where I live, nothing looks as awful as a space that was once occupied by workers or shoppers.

Converting these spaces is going to take a lot of money. Think about it: Most offices don’t have water flowing through them – and people aren’t going to want apartments for which you share a bathroom and kitchen with your neighbors. Pipes ain’t cheap.

But sometimes we forget that we’re a country that’s especially good at solving problems. 

The technology Americans created is what makes it possible for everyone in the world to see what I’m writing right now. We can see a co-worker in Istanbul, buy a hat from a store in Seoul or order jambalaya from New Orleans.

The scene from “Apollo 13” when the NASA scientists create a way to reduce CO2 emissions using the available parts on the spacecraft should be our guide in endeavors like this – including and especially in something so precious as housing.

Because one of the reasons we’re seeing the declines in family creation that conservatives seem so worked up about is that young people have such a hard time figuring out how to make a go of it.

Solving a housing crisis won’t cause any massive shift. But it sure will help.

One final point: Homelessness remains a scourge in this country. It’s an embarrassment and a tragedy in the world’s No. 1 economy.

And while all of it is awful, the fact that people who have served the United States as members of the military find themselves on the streets or in the woods is shameful.

We’ve got the space. We need the know-how and the will.

That – not phony stories about people eating dogs and cats – is what American politics should be about.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the Harris-Walz campaign and elder care.

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Wow, did you enjoy the Summer Olympics that ended Sunday night in Paris?

I sure did. I didn’t nearly as much as a lot of you, but I got caught up in a bunch of the sports – particularly 3-on-3 basketball, swimming and sport climbing. My son has climbed at gyms in South Korea and Brooklyn, and his interest sparked mine in an event that I found riveting.

What also made it fun was the setting. Paris, like London in 2012 and Barcelona in 1992, is a great setting for the Games. The events are intertwined with the culture and history. (It’s one of the reasons why the IOC should give Tokyo another shot after the last games were screwed by the pandemic.)

The French people seemed to relish being hosts. It was a chance to show off what’s best about their country. Admit it, you and whoever you hang with have talked about visiting France at least one in the past two and-a-half weeks.

Here’s one reason for that: For all the political and social problems facing the French, the country’s face at the Games was Emmanuel Macron.

The French president had official responsibilities, uttering the mandated short sentence that welcomes athletes. 

But he also had symbolic responsibility as France’s head cheerleader. He was there when swimmer Leon Marchand won his fourth gold medal. He whipped off his jacket amid the tension as the French women just missed topping the Americans for the basketball good.

The athletes felt comfortable in France – and that inspired some iconic performances. The French seemed happy to have them. Macron had a little to do with that.

You know there has to be a counterpoint. But I’ll bet it has crossed your mind.

Four paragraphs up, I mention the official responsibilities of a country’s head of state – opening the Games with just a prescribed sentence. No big speech. Just “I declare open the Games of Paris celebrating the 33rd Olympiad of the modern era.”

Well, the next Games – as that folderol with Tom Cruise demonstrated – are in Los Angeles in 2028. And the President of the United States is expected to be there, kicking off the kind of celebration that Californians hinted at in the Snoop Dogg, Billie Eilish and Red Hot Chili Peppers performances.

So, on November 5, as if there wasn’t enough to think about, there’s this: Who will open the Games of the 34th Olympiad? And how will he or she set the tone for athletes from around the world?

If it’s she, I don’t think we have a problem. Kamela Harris is a Californian. She’s cheered on many of these athletes before. It’s likely that many of the stars of these Games, like Steph Curry, will support her campaign.

And that would set a positive tone for athletes around the world, including those from countries at loggerheads in one way or another with the United States. It’ll make it easier for Los Angeles to be the kind of welcoming host it has been twice before. 

Then, of course, there’s Donald Trump.

Think about all the things you’ve watched in Paris. Then, instead of inserting Macron or Harris, you replace them with Trump.

A little dissonant, eh? 

Can you imagine Trump playing second fiddle to the athletes? Would his ego allow that? 

Would he tell the world that he’s a golf champion, even if it’s on his course and under his rules? Would he complain loudly if Russian athletes were barred from carrying their nation’s flag for its aggression against Ukraine – or would he even try to force the IOC to lift a ban and invite Putin to the opening ceremonies?

Would he block athletes from Iran and China from attending? Would he badger a judge in a subjective sport who scored a white American athlete lower than an Asian or Black athlete from the rest of the world?

Would many of the American athletes want nothing to do with him? Would he embarrass them in front of the world by complaining that they’re disrespectful to him?

Would the Opening Ceremony celebrate the diversity of the United States? Would it be forced to go through a screening process by the Project 2025 yahoos that eliminates anything varying from the right-wing narrative? Could conservative athletes feel free to carry Confederate flags into the L.A. Coliseum?

Would Trump, if he’s not given the deference he believes he’s entitled to, even suggest canceling the Games or blocking federal funds to help defray some of the costs for Los Angeles, a place that isn’t likely to vote for him in 2024?

All of that stuff sounds crazy. But again, we’re talking about a guy who claims his opponent used AI to conjure images of people showing up at a rally that was broadcast live.

Right now, the United States, France and the rest of the world are basking in the afterglow of a successful Olympics. It obviously won’t last forever, but it’s nice while it’s here.

What should scare us is feeling the way the world felt on August 17, 1936, the day after Adolf Hitler used the Berlin Olympics to celebrate his Nazi regime. When Jewish athletes were blocked from participating by countries besides Germany for fear on not offending the host.

How we feel on July 31, 2028 will depend a lot on what we do on November 5, 2024. It’s far from the most important reason to consider our choices carefully.

But today does feel good – and that’s a powerful thing.