The architect of American cruelty for the 21st-century is now the White House Chief of Staff. That changing of the guard today from Susie Wiles to Stephen Miller unleashed an internal cautionary rant that’s been steadily building for the last 24 to 36 hours. This extra-long quip is the tamer version.

I got teary-eyed on Tuesday night, celebrated on Wednesday and woke up Thursday still happy but in search of detailed exit poll results. Anyone in politics or a career that is politics-adjacent wants to know why the outcome is what it is, even while soaking the figurative champagne stains out of election night clothing.

The declaration that the Trump era is over began Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning social media posts were talking about how MAGA is dead. I believe the former has begun, but I wanted data to back up the latter. There were solid reasons not to take it quite that far. Just looking back on the last exceptionally-historic election in this country is enough to know how wrong the American public can be in its interpretation of election results.

During the 2008 election, several friends put up a hand for me to talk to because they did not want to hear my prediction that the country was going to see some kind of scary repercussion for the election of Barack Obama. I felt certain of that even while the primary battle with Hillary Clinton was in full swing.

I was raised by a woman who could not get out of the Deep South fast enough once she had her high school diploma in hand. I was raised by a woman who often shuddered at the mention of cotton, such was her visceral reaction remembering having to pick it. My mother made her way to a suburb of New York City, where she subsequently raised me as a Connecticut Yankee, and repeated to me more times than I can count that she would take Southern racism over Northern any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

“At least with a redneck, you know exactly where you stand,” she would say. “But in the North, people will tell you how much they believe in your equality but then fight against you moving into their building or your child going to their school.”

I grew up more blessed – even privileged – than probably the vast majority of the grandchildren of Black cotton farmers. But I certainly endured enough racism in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and heard about even more of it in the lives of my parents and grandparents, for me to brace for the backlash to end all backlash at the election of a Democratic Black president. The first time I heard the phrase post-racial America I said out loud to the talking head on my television, “Oh, come on!” When I heard it repeated by an acquaintance, all I could do was muster a polite smile, and say, “I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

And now we know that, of course, it was not true. Now, we live in a country that responded to the election of a Black president with the election of Donald Trump not once but twice. And the second time, they knew who he was. They knew what he’d done, and they knew what he still wanted to do. And it was either exactly what they wanted as well, or it was something that they could go along with, so long as he reduced the cost of eggs and deported Latino gang members. They have been empowered by his racism, lawlessness and cruelty that is a feature not a bug. Is that empowerment deflated because of Tuesday’s results?

Happiness that Democrats will be a check on the president’s powers for the next two years is a warranted and joyful thing. We can look forward to an exercise of the power of the purse helping to restore democracy, law, perhaps even the Court. An immediate future with behavioral contingencies on any funding for ICE, the reopening of USAID, the removal of the Secretary of Defense, no confirmation of any new Justices, and an immediate halt on any personal Trump construction project all come to mind as plans for 2027.

That said, Donald Trump is still in charge of the Executive Branch for the next two years – and that includes “running” a Justice Department that may or may not seek to indict people as the result of House investigations and having continued power over immigration and far too much over foreign policy. There is also no Democratic supermajority that can override a veto. Democrats will need to negotiate with Republican Senators who may have their own agendas to pursue. We just don’t know what this extraordinary victory will look like in practice.

So, as I scoff at the appointment of the new White House Chief of Staff, I will take my lumps for appearing to cut short the celebration and focus a realistic eye that some might call cynical. I have always known success to be a result of opportunity fused with preparation. The opportunity to right the ship is finally here. Let’s prepare for all the necessary fights without losing sight of the ones that may not yet have ended in victory with Tuesday’s results.

The power of Trump has been diminished, yes, but I find it hard to ignore that fewer than 50% of white voters (49%) voted for Democrats. Only 6% of those who identify as Republican voted for Democrats, and 3% who identify as MAGA came over to the other side and voted blue. Is MAGA dead or did it just stay home? And if it only stayed home what does that mean for power and influence going forward?

We should celebrate by all means. The country deserves it! But we shouldn’t do it for very long with blinders on. Left-of-center Americans got high on an historic victory once and assumed the current occupant of the Oval Office could never be elected. Was any lesson taken from that?

As we settle into the first weekend after Election Day, I offer an observation with this tame cautionary rant: The evidence strongly suggests that we are not at the end of an era, just the beginning of the end. And there is most definitely a difference.