“Progress was all right. Only it went on for too long”— James Thurber

And that, Mr Thurber, is not something we want to think about, let alone admit. But, post-election, how about we focus on the mood of the country. What are people thinking? What are they feeling? About the present. About the future.

Polls can sometimes be a useful indication — polls that are taken going to an election and coming out. But, apparently, there were none conducted this time around. At least none that were made public.

Nevertheless, the result itself gave us some indication. Almost half the registered electorate — 45 per cent — chose to not even participate. The Progressive Labour Party government was re-elected with just shy of 50 per cent support from those who did vote. The rest of the electorate divided their votes among those who stood in opposition.

That’s a pretty good sample of public opinion, which should be neither ignored nor overlooked; most especially by those who trade in politics.

It may also be the key to understanding the mood of the electorate — and by extension the country.

The February election numbers at the very least show marked disengagement from the political process. The reasons for that may be varied. None of them good. Or positive. Disenchantment and possibly even disillusionment with politics spring immediately to mind.

We know well some of the comments:

“Why even bother to vote?”

“It won’t make any difference anyhow.”

“They are all the same.”

“Nothing changes.”

Those justifications, er, explanations, are familiar enough and those voters have a point, up to a point. Take the Throne Speech debate, for example. The winning PLP government first set out its agenda for the coming parliamentary year. The Reply from the Opposition presented a critical evaluation and advanced its own ideas on what is wrong and how to fix it. But the Opposition lost the election. It has no power to implement a thing. The Government rules.

Debate? If you listened, it tends to have all the variation of storylines on the long-running soap The Young and The Restless. Predictable and so much of the same old, same old. And here I leave it to Y&R fans to decide which party is more like the Newmans and the other like the Abbotts.

What ultimately matters is what the Government is going to do — and on matters that are of everyday concern to voters and their families. The cost of living tops their list: whether it be the cost of groceries, electricity, petrol, mortgages, rents and healthcare. The list is long. Price increases impact family budgets monthly, if not weekly, if not daily. Anxiety about making ends meet is real.

Now it is the failure to deliver on these key issues that appears to be fuelling politics elsewhere. We are living in “The Age of Grievance”, according to The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. That’s the title of his book in which he traces why the temperature in politics keeps rising.

The reason in part, he concedes, is because voters are looking to their politicians to deliver on the difficult when there are often no easy or readily available solutions. Further, it gets worse, too, not better, when those very same politicians make promises that they can’t keep, won’t keep, and ultimately don’t keep.

Any parallels aside, Bruni is of course talking about politics in the United States, not here. On the other hand, not to be overlooked is that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold, Bermuda included. And there is plenty of sneezing going on in Washington these days. Look no farther than Canada. It is more like coughing, the hacking variety.

Bermuda may not be high on the list — right now — but there is no reason to think we will be totally immune when plans are made to make America great again. Neither can we be sure what form or shape any action may be taken that affects Bermuda, whether directly or indirectly. We have been alerted already to one potentially harmful step to our shipping lines and food supply: extraordinary port fees for ships made in China, regardless of who they serve.

Economic anxiety in Bermuda is heightened and representations on our behalf in Washington have been undertaken. There is cause here, and opportunity, for a new kind of political action — united and cross-party. We’ll see.

Certainly, no one wants to hit the alarm button yet, but prudence dictates that while we work for the best, we should also prepare for the worst. On that score, the forthcoming Budget Statement on May 2 should be a good guide.

Meanwhile, better to count those chickens after they hatch and not before?

• John Barritt is a former elected member of the Bermuda legislature where he served for 18 years. Dialogue is welcome. John may be reached at jbarritt@ibl.bm