Well, though things on the national level turned out very poorly, and, frankly, potentially dangerously, I remain pleased to live in Colorado.

Nationally, to my continued amazement, both as a former Democratic congressional candidate, county party chair and as a retired political science professor at the Air Force Academy, the Trump win was both decisive and puzzling. As I noted in earlier columns, it appears people either had to disbelieve the massive evidence, from many sources (including Trump-appointed judges) of his corruption in business (Trump University, for example), his serial adultery, his stunning willingness to lie and his vindictiveness (such as his withholding, as president, of disaster aid to blue states), to say nothing of his bigotry and misogyny, or they had to accept all that evidence of his depravity and just didn’t care.

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I honestly don’t know which one was more important, but millions of Americans voted against their own pocketbooks (tariffs) and international justice (Ukraine is doomed). I’m old enough to remember when the Republicans were against the Soviet Union and then Russia, and we were not a nation that snuggled up to dictators, a role President-elect Donald Trump is clearly keen to play.

But I’m not going to talk about that.

Rather, I’d like to focus on what happened here in Colorado. Over the years I’ve often written about Colorado as a bellwether state, a state that tends to show the national future in its election results and policies. And some good things did, in fact, happen in Colorado on Election Day, albeit of course coupled with disappointments, but for the moment, let us again be glad we live in the Centennial State.

Exit polls show Coloradans are very happy with how our elections are run, and are confident in the results. This is vital in a republic and is a very good sign. Frankly, there never has been significant elections of voter fraud, either here or nationally, in spite of what certain trouble makers yelp about. A couple of mail carriers were just arrested for apparently messing with 16 ballots, and it is important to note they were almost immediately caught, and the problems corrected.

We don’t know yet for whom they were trying to “fix” votes out there in Mesa County, but that doesn’t really matter, in that a tiny fraud effort was made and it was immediately detected. The system does, in fact, work.

I recall back in my 2008 campaign I asked the then-Secretary of State about voter fraud in Colorado. He replied in his four years they had found exactly 12 cases of “voter fraud,” and each one of them were elderly Republican women who moved to Florida without telling Colorado, and they ended up voting in both states by mistake. Again, the errors were immediately caught and fixed.

With minor changes in a few districts, our state legislature remains firmly in the hands of Democrats, and with a terrific Democratic governor, that bodes well for the next few years. The results for other offices suggest democracy is still working, at least out west here. Our newest congressional district, CD-8, one which was drawn with the actual hope it would be highly competitive and not an easy win for either party, confirmed its true competitive nature when the Republican just edged the Democrat who was elected two years ago. I rather suspect this seat will be traded back and forth quite a bit, and that is a good thing for our state.

I’m pleased voters rejected Prop 131. Though ranked-choice voting is an interesting idea and might be a smart change to make in the future, the way 131 was structured, and in particular the way the advertising (backed by a multimillionaire who often throws millions of dollars into the political arena in support of his pet projects) was deceptive and obfuscating. I’m glad voters saw past that language and did not agree to eliminate party primaries, as such a system would be open to quite a bit of manipulation by party bosses and, well, multimillionaires, I think.

I’m pleased Adam Frisch did as well as he did in CD-3, perhaps indicating that district might shade a tad purple in the future, as it was in the past. Oh, and I must comment briefly on CD-4, where current CD-3 U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert and her carpetbag won the right to represent a district she has lived in for a few months, over both GOP and Democratic candidates who lived there for decades. I suspect Rep. Boebert is part of the Trump phenomena, in which radically deficient and whole unqualified candidates can sweep into office on a faux-populist message.

It is disappointing turnout in 2024 was lower than in 2020, though even these lower levels still place Colorado well up there in turnout by state nationally. Huzzah for vote by mail.

Nonetheless, many of us remain disappointed and frankly surprised Trump won and won across the board. Perhaps a trip back to our nation’s founding might help you frame how you may be feeling, and I’ll close with this:

In 1792, in a note to George Washington, Alexander Hamilton (a personal favorite of mine — HamiltonLives.com) Hamilton offered his thoughts on what the nation might one day face in a demagogic leader.

Hamilton said:

“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits — despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

It’s almost as if Hamilton met Trump. Hamilton felt the then-new U.S. Constitution would protect our liberty even from such a leader. I agree. Remember our system is set up to temper the worst actions of a tyrant, and we will survive the next four years, as long as we remain vigilant.

Beware of the whirlwind.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.