For my fellow Democrats, the stages of electoral grief have begun. First, the pulverizing shock. Then, the deep confusion. Finally, the burning questions, spreading across cable news green rooms like wildfire.

How could anyone vote for him? What kind of country have we become? What went wrong? And what country should I move to?

We’ve gone from a campaign of “joy” to the vacant humming of the old R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” — except without believing the parenthetical.

It has been said that societies and organizations confronting crushing defeats ask two variations of the same question: “What went wrong, and whom should we blame?” or “What went wrong, and how do we fix this?”

I prefer to fix it. Here are my three steps for how Democrats can recover from Trump’s return to the Oval Office.

First, stop feeding into the narrative about the end of democracy. The most important guardrail will remain intact: the midterm elections, which are historically brutal for the sitting president’s party.

This year's election was a referendum on the Biden economy. The midterm of 2026 will be a referendum on Trump. There will be fewer people like Gen. James Mattis, Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. John Kelly — who were able to manage an erratic, impulsive commander in chief — in place this........

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