The election is over. Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States.

Now what?

Many Democrats believe American democracy is about to end. Trump will abolish the U.S. Constitution and assume absolute control of the country.

Then again, maybe things aren’t quite as bleak as all that.

Certainly, now that the Senate, presidency and maybe even the House will all be in Republican hands, progressives won’t get everything they hoped they would had Vice President Kamala Harris prevailed.

Gone are progressive hopes for packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Senate filibuster (I wonder if that’s something they still support given they lost control of the Senate), dismantling the Electoral College, increasing control of the federal government over health care and free enterprise and diminishing the right of American citizens to free speech.

Perhaps most disappointing for progressives is that their stated goal of passing legislation that enshrines the right of a woman to end the life of her unborn child whenever she wishes is likely to go unfulfilled, at least for the time being.

But not to worry, in two years the House and Senate will again be in play, and four years from now we will all be voting to elect a new president.

Then again, maybe we won’t. If Democrats are right about Trump, he will soon declare himself “president for life” and we’ll all be calling him “Dear Leader.”

Oprah Winfrey warned in the days leading up to the election, “It is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to cast a ballot again.”

I imagine the depth of despair Democrats are feeling right now is only exceeded by the anguish being felt by the ayatollahs in Iran.

Democrats did everything they could to destroy Trump.

They impeached him … twice. They had him charged with myriad crimes in two federal courts and two state courts — all at the same time.

Democrats and their mainstream allies in the press worked breathlessly to turn Jan. 6 into a national holiday, and they have told the American people ad nauseam that Trump is a fascist, a kindred spirit to Adolf Hitler.

It reminds me of the line from the movie “Gladiator” when Commodus laments to Maximus, “What am I going to do with you? You simply won’t … die.”

Well, Trump isn’t dead (not that it hasn’t been tried), and he just won a second term in the White House.

As flawed a candidate as Trump was, Democrats really need to do some soul-searching. How could they lose to such a man?

The reason is, a growing number of people in this country simply do not want what the Democrats are peddling. What progressives represent is repugnant to huge swaths of the electorate. The American people can see where the left wants to take this country and they want nothing to do with it.

The average American understands that a criminal justice system that is more focused on enabling criminals to re-offend rather than holding them accountable for their actions is not in the best interest of anyone — including the criminal.

The average American favors reasonable restrictions on abortion and understands abortion-on-demand denies the humanity of millions of unborn children. According to the Guttmacher Institute, over a million American children were killed by abortion in 2023. That’s the highest it’s been in more than a decade.

Abortion advocates can call that “health care” and “reproductive rights” all they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that with every abortion the life of an unborn child is terminated.

Americans don’t want Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. They’re sick of “woke” and tired of hearing about microaggressions. They know what a woman is, and that it is wrong for those pretending to be women to compete against their daughters in sports.

They’ve had enough of failing public schools that keep doubling down on an outdated educational model that simply doesn’t work anymore.

And they’ve had it with an immigration policy that welcomes with open arms anyone who happens to make it to the southern border, and then rewards them with a suite of benefits that even illegal immigrants find hard to believe.

The truth is, Democrats know their policies are unacceptable to most Americans, which is why Harris pretended she wasn’t a progressive. Whether it was fracking, defunding the police, EV mandates, open borders or criminal justice, Harris expected Americans to believe she experienced one epiphany after another on all of these issues.

Progressives didn’t mind that she was lying because they knew Harris didn’t mean what she was saying, but what they failed to realize was that most Americans knew she was lying, too, and voters didn’t buy it. It’s why she lost the election.

The question now is, will Democrats realize they are not fooling anyone with their dishonest campaigns and take the hint voters just screamed in their ears by moving away from their radical colleagues who are leading their party ever closer to irrelevance?

I don’t think they will. People on the left think they’re superior to the average American, both morally and intellectually. They are not going to be told by a bunch of unsophisticated rubes how to run the country. Well, the rubes just elected Donald Trump president. Democrats ignore them at their own peril.

Trump won the election because he brought together a multi-ethnic working-class coalition of supporters. That fact should be terrifying to those running the Democratic Party.

As for Republicans, well, they now have an opportunity to govern. I pray they do so well.

I also pray Democrats won’t feel obligated to do everything in their power to prevent that from happening.

We’ll see.