Oh my this is slow!

I would suspect the quacks don't tell you the whole story about the recovery from a spinal fusion. Given this is typical, I don't think the average person would do it.

The structure is good, solid, and straight. The muscle strength is good as well. The nerves, though. Nerves heal and adapt sooooooo slowly. Mornings are the worst and I really want to get off the chemistry, even though I'm no longer on the heavy stuff.

I see the quack again on Monday, hopefully to get cleared for physical therapy, an activity which I feel to be key to moving forward. I must admit this is really frustrating for me, so pardon the vent.

Now, the elephant in the room.

Yeah, he's back. Trump is back for another term. Not the outcome I was wishing for but now what we must live with.

He's not the biggest elephant, though. The biggest is the continued lack of effectiveness of the opposition. Again, it was theirs to lose and they accomplished that quite effectively.

How it is the opposition is still stuck in the past while the other people get it. The New Republicans have re-invented their party for the Information Age, a single figurehead, a strong clear message at a clear polar extreme, short sound-bites fired off repeatedly and often.

In order for the Dems to become a force, they need to get organised behind a single figure now, not in some primary run-off starting with a field of a dozen or so. Those days are over. They need to get a clear message together, a mantra. Blue ballcaps with "Foreward" emblazoned upon them. Then, with a clarity on the issues that a Millennial mum who drives the schoolrun in a shitbox Hyundai SUV and a 45-year-old plumber eating a Hungry Man dinner off an engine block in his living room care about. Lastly, the party needs to get behind that clarity on the issues. Unity, clarity, a figure, a mantra, all distilled down to repeated tweets and thirty second soundbites that fit the attention span of the electorate today in the Info Age.

Until they adapt to the new world, such as it is, and leave the politics of the 20th century behind, and until they offer something more attractive than Trumpist populism, they will continue to be a muddling mumbling ineffective non-force; large in number but un-united such that the power they could be wielding eludes them. They could be Trumpism's worst nightmare, but until they "get it" and re-invent themselves, they are just a huge albeit listless mob.

Trump didn't win. The Dems lost. Again.