I was stunned and disappointed by the result of the 2024 presidential election. Kamala Harris was clearly the brighter, better qualified and more trustworthy candidate. Instead, the winner was a felon, rapist, liar and proven failure in his first term as president, someone who tried to overturn our constitution after his defeat in 2020.

A day after the 2024 votes were tallied, pundits and downcast members of the Democratic party responded in familiar fashion, by playing the blame game. Their list of excuses is as long as one of Donald Trump's ties. There may be a bit of truth in each excuse, but it doesn't matter.

There is no simple explanation for Trump's victory, especially since he lost to Joe Biden four years ago by more than seven million votes. Biden received 81 million votes, not because he was so popular, but simply because he wasn't Donald Trump. You'd think Harris would have won for the same reason. Now I'm wondering how one of history's worst presidents managed to turn things around and become the first Republican since 2004 to win the popular vote? (His margin, once nearly four million votes, was cut nearly in half by the time all West Coast ballots were counted.)

REPUBLICANS kept asking, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" Americans must have short memories, because a lot of them answered, "No!" I strongly believe that's the wrong answer, but apparently the price of bacon blotted out memories of Trump's mishandling of the coronavirus epidemic and the many thousands of Americans who died ... and the tax break Trump gave our wealthiest citizens and how much he increased the national debt and how every evening was spent tweeting ALL CAPS rants about everything imaginable.

Trump left the country in a mess; Joe Biden moved into the White House and cleaned it up. Biden did such a good job that Fox reporters frequently choked when they relayed news about our economy, which recovered faster than other countries after the pandemic. (Biden is owed a big apology, not only from Trump, but from members of his own party who treated him shamefully during the campaign.)

Anyway, in the land of road rage, people are impatient. Recent news about inflation was encouraging, but bacon still costs too much and Biden was blamed. Further, Republicans refused to believe other news — such as reports crime went down during Biden's presidency. GOP candidates kept insisting crime was up and the economy was down, though the truth was the other was around.

AH, WHAT is truth? Thanks to our ability to access news from a million sources, we can find support for any truth we choose. People used to say there are two sides to every story, but now there are at least ten sides and an equal number of conspiracy theories.

There's no disputing these truths: Inept congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado were victorious in the recent election. So they will continue to provide comic relief in the House of Representatives, though I expect Greene will not heckle Trump during next year's State of the Union message.

Speaking of comic relief, Trump selected Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, a suspect sex trafficker, to be his attorney general, and Pete Hogseth, a Fox host, to be secretary of defense. Reminds me of Caligula, the Roman emperor who supposedly appointed his horse, Incitatus, as consul.

OBVIOUSLY, Democrats hitched Harris to the wrong issues, such as overestimating how many women were furious about the Republican position on abortion and Trump's role in choosing Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe versus Wade.

Meanwhile, Trump scared people into thinking sex-change operations really are conducted in public schools and an army of killers and rapists was pouring across the border. I think the campaign's most effective television commercial was the one about a murder committed by an illegal alien, a murder that, according to the commercial, was the fault of Kamala Harris.

Also, people dislike Democrats for being too preachy and too woke (though I'm not sure anyone knows what that means. But if you find yourself being lectured about your use of pronouns, it's a safe bet the lecturer is a Democrat. Trump realized a majority of Americans don't want transgender women to compete against athletes who were born female. Many Democrats agree, but remained silent, strengthening the feeling their party is a pawn of the LGBTQIA community.

WHILE we can agree people should be treated equally and enjoy the same protection under the law, there are instances where common sense should be the primary consideration. Comedian John Oliver, on his HBO series, made it clear he believes — and his data suggests — this is a bogus issue, but it also is an emotional one. And some track and swimming events, on the middle and high school level, bolster the idea that sometimes a trans girl can turn a race into a farce.

Which gets me to one of the most ridiculous stories to surface recently — the Food and Drug Administration forcing Costco to recall 79,200 pounds of butter because the label neglected to mention the main ingredient: milk.

Common sense says we all know butter is made from milk. And while the FDA was created in 1906 while Republican Theodore Roosevelt was president, chances are most people would say this particular recall is something only a Democrat would enforce.

I'M SURE Trump would agree, since he thinks our country has far too many regulations, and for that he blames Democrats. He's certainly complained a lot that regulations, among many other things, have ruined shower heads, washers and toilets.

Trump has long reminded me of Italy's Benito Mussolini. In looking for something nice to say about the World War Two dictator, people usually fall back on that well-known line: "He made the trains run on time."

Perhaps, years from now, people will say this about Donald Trump: "He made toilets flush one time."