I unashamedly confess to never being prouder -- or more surprised -- than I was Tuesday when voters overwhelmingly rejected four more soul-deadening years of evil.

I had all but given up on the grand American experiment in self-governance. But today, I am prouder than ever of its people, who unmistakably chose good over evil at the ballot box.

Before expounding further, however, I must warn against resting on our laurels. The same people who despise Donald Trump, who employed every devious means to destroy him, who even tried to kill him, are still with us. And, if anything, their rage is greater now. On Election Day America won perhaps its greatest battle since Midway. But the battle won, the war continues.

Nevertheless, I actually feel the pain of the leftists and the woke and the Marxist fellow travelers, who today agonize over the election results. As vote-counting began, I too was in the depths of depression, resigned to Kamala Harris defeating Donald Trump and all the horrors that were sure to follow.

It was excruciating, but I figured a holy God certainly must have had enough of our land, where 70 million babies have been murdered in the womb, where sexual depravity has been elevated to a faux constitutional right, where Marxist ideology has supplanted Christian morality. Where despotic tyrants run the government, oblivious to the true human rights they trample. Who am I to dispute God’s judgment against such evil?

God surely had seen enough, I grudgingly told myself. I braced for His judgment to arrive in the form of a Democratic Party landslide. I’d prayed for months for His mercy rather than His judgment. But I understood God is sovereign, and my meager desires aren’t about to change His mind. What he desires shall come to pass. And America circa 2024 certainly didn’t take Him by surprise. Just as certainly, we deserve His wrath. 

As votes were counted, I truly already felt the pain. Then what God always had intended from all eternity past came to pass. Mercy for a nation of fallen sinners. Praise the Lord!

To God all the glory, for sure. But the Lord uses people to bring about worldly blessings, and on Tuesday last, He used 72 million of them to turn my feared Democrat landslide into an historic Republican rout, returning the wrongly persecuted Donald Trump to the White House, along with majority control of both houses of Congress.

My every prayer for the election was answered, save for California, which for some reason God chose to leave largely in Satan’s hands. But He’s sovereign, and His ways are not our ways. After all, He allowed the Biden White House to wreak havoc for four years. His reason? Perhaps to persuade Americans of the difference.

The election upshot was glaringly apparent even to the unlikely: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” said socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who votes with Democrats.

Nevertheless, despite a mainstream legacy media slavishly faithfully to the Democrats’ party line, despite a unified assault on normalcy by the woke and nearly every recognizable name in the culture, despite a multitude of “practical” reasons to go along to get along, people still rejected the message.

Despite all those elitist voices demanding we fall in lock step with the long march to woke-Marxist utopia, what prevailed decisively -- and overwhelmingly -- was Common Sense, rooted in good old-fashioned conservative Christian values. I’m ashamed now that prior to the counting of votes I short-changed my fellow Americans’ ability to sift common sense from the extravagant promises of collectivist ideology.

A healthy majority of voters recognized the options were starkly different:

The Democrats’ way: “This is what we demand people do.”

The peoples’ way: “This is what we demand government do.”

Big loser: government that wants people to be its subjects.

Big winners: people who want government to be their servant.

Harris refused to explain how she would differ from President Joe Biden. Consequently, she was unsurprisingly incapable of persuading voters that she would not repeat his authoritarian tyrannies, from lockdowns to censorship to the weaponizing of every branch of the federal government from the DoJ to the EPA.

Moreover, Harris is ignorant of how economics work and advocates harmful central planning. Hallmarks of Marxism.

Still, President-Elect Trump needs to review his own history. On winning his nearly impressive first term in 2016, Trump naively underestimated how imbedded and aggressive the deep State would be in sabotaging his administration. This time, completely ridding his administration of swamp creatures must begin on Day 1. To counter Biden’s executive orders to “Trump-proof” the federal bureaucracy, creative management might be employed. Transfers to a desk job in Guam?

Richard Nixon lost a bid for the presidency, like Trump, then won election eight years later. But Nixon ignored the fact that those who wanted to be rid of him were still around, still in power. They eventually got Nixon with a conspiratorial prosecution for Watergate, arguably a Deep State conspiracy that saw former CIA operatives likely self-destruct in a second-rate burglary. The Deep State brought Nixon down, make no mistake about it. It’s all documented in Geoff Shepard’s books.

It’s time the Stupid Party wise up too. While our prayer is that Trump learn from his mistakes, such as thinking lifelong bureaucrats would have his back, so too must the Republican Party learn from its, such as ignoring interests of people they represent. If the GOSP (Grand Old Stupid Party) doesn’t learn, the people they betray will leave it, and a grand opportunity will be missed.

Meanwhile, voters should note our own lesson from Tuesday’s political miracle. Columnist Gary Bauer advises: “Unless we’re ingrates, we need to be Christian citizens to save America. We also need to fervently pray. God helped David to defeat Goliath. But there still needed to be a David to go and fight the actual battle.”

I’ve thanked God almost hourly since Tuesday for answering practically every word of my prayers leading up to the election. Now, let’s see about California, hm?

Mark Landsbaum is a Christian retired journalist, former investigative reporter, editorial writer, and columnist.  He also is a husband, father, grandfather, and Dodgers fan.  He can be reached at mark.landsbaum@gmail.com

Image: Gage Skidmore