It was wishful thinking and our lust for payback getting the better of us. That’s what’s coloring our disappointment this morning. We wanted the repudiation we ordered delivered all in one massive go. Alas, repudiation of All Things Trump and All Things Republican will be delivered in pieces — for assembly later. It may be like a set of IKEA instructions — meaning, we’ll put a major piece on backwards then have to disassemble the thing in order to fix it (but we will). We, together, will fix it. But, first — we have to take a deep breath. We have to look at the Big Picture. We have to be a little more patient still.

When Kobe Bryant was a young player, he had a bad habit of trying to take over games. Sometimes it worked and Kobe’s one-on-five heroics got the W. But more often than not, whatever the team was doing ground to a halt so that Kobe could try and be the hero he hadn’t been called on to be. Yet. Later in his Lakers career, with age, discipline and experience in his pocket, Kobe got better at not doing that. He involved his teammates more aggressively — and (surprise, surprise) when they returned his confidence in them with points or assists, it took pressure off of Kobe and allowed him to operate with more freedom — producing more and better results.

Remember what our game is here — what we’re doing on the fly while the game is on: we’re trying to reverse a coup d’etat that’s already well on its way to succeeding. We’re trying to do this with Russia interfering massively in real time. We don’t even know yet from where all the disinformation is flowing. We don’t know why Democratic hopes of retaking the Senate got dashed so spectacularly. The Democrats, as of right now, could still have control of the Senate (they could get to 50-50 with Kamala Harris being the tie-breaker). All that means — in terms of the game — is that the first two years of the Biden-Harris admin will be a little harder. At first.

Here’s the part where, if we just wait for the game to come to us, we’ll have the repudiation we want — and the nation needs. Make no mistake — the 45% of this country who still adore Trump need to be repudiated. Their values need to be repudiated. Ditto their racism, bigotry, misogyny, ignorance and willingness to herd immunity themselves and us into the graveyard. And we don’t know yet in what ways Mitch McConnell and the RW money manipulated the results.

Let’s not be naive. Mitch knows where the game’s headed. His mandate — from the RW money — is to put that off for as long as possible the inevitable socialization that a diverse America will demand. The Republican game is permanent minority rule — a kind of slavery-on-the-down-low where a few rich white guys own everything and the rest of us work our whole lives just trying to tread water, never owning a thing in the end.

Mitch also knows that with Joe Biden as president and former prosecutor Kamala Harris as veep, the Department of Justice will return to the business of dispensing justice (rather than acting as Trump’s consigliere). That — right there — will be when the game looks toward us. Mitch worked his bony white ass off to keep the Senate from falling into Democratic hands because that’s his last move to stave off checkmate. It’s how he hopes to protect all his judges. It may work — at first.

But, as the newly rejuvenated DoJ begins to look into everything the Bill Barr DoJ refused to look into, things around Washington, DC will get uncomfortable. Guys like Mitch — with his new six-year term — won’t be protected like they used to be. Mitch will have to answer for everything he did in the lead up to 2016’s election — you know, how Mitch refused to let We The People in on the secret that Russia was actively engaged in subverting the election’s results. Mitch will have to answer for lifting the sanctions on Oleg Deripaska — the Russian intel officer responsible, in part, for subverting the 2016 election.

When placed under oath and question relentlessly for hours, weakling Mitch will fold. So will every other Republican back in power. Without Trump using executive power to protect them, the Republicans will have a massive problem. We’ll dunk on them relentlessly. Rather, the Truth will. And that’s when the score will start to run up. Mitch won’t serve his six years — unless we count the time he serves in a federal prison.

The game will come to us. We’re not going to win it in the first thirty seconds like we dreamed of. Nope. We’re going to have to play the whole game.

But we are already on the road to winning it. And then we’ll win the game after that. And the one after that — until the whole season is done. When we look back, in time, we might even forget how much of a struggle it was. Yeah, we’ll remember, it wasn’t easy, but, when the game eventually came to us?

We nailed it at the buzzer.