Call it deja, deja, deja, deja vu, all over again, again.

The same fingers pointed, the same circular firing squads assembled, the same blame assigned, and, most of all, the same words spoken each time we Democrats suck wind.

The irony is rich, faintly echoing what a long-ago political mover and shaker said on camera during one of my first video directing forays: “when are we gonna learn, we are we gonna wise up?”

The answer is maybe never.

There’s also the same sadness that comes with seeing America following its crueler angels. 

De Tocqueville opined that “self-interest, rightly understood” is the true strength of American democracy.” He, of course, totally blew off Shakespeare, who equally famously mentioned, “your greatest strength begets your greatest weakness.”  

Along with: “it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”

Good luck dealing with the tyranny of the next two-by-four.

Still, there’s always mortui vivos docent — the dead can teach the living. So, instead of being glued to the screen, watching the nightly news horror show, maybe we focus on where we go from here.

Long ago, the remarkable business theorist Kenichi Ohmae coined the phrase ‘degrees of freedom” to describe how an organization can use strategic innovation to outmaneuver its competition.

He offered up what he called “3C’s — Customer, Corporation, and Competition — as a framework.

It’s not perfect for the political context, but it’s pretty damned close: understanding the customer; understanding where the company can be most effective; seeing and acting on the “untapped spaces” the competition might have missed. 

Try this on for size—

We stop treating deep-pocketed coastal elites as the “customer.”

We understand that the role of a verdamnt political party isn’t to hand out orange slices at halftime or participation trophies after the 4th quarter. 

It’s to do what it takes to win. Sans all the ideological horseshit, “nobler-than-thou” distractions, and micro-segment pandering.

And last, but far from least, we realize that at this point in the 21st century, EVERY election is a “change” election.  

The United States is simply too big and too fragmented with the all-too-powerful economic forces so badly imbalanced that promising everyone a “fair shot” sounds more like offering a moon shot.

I’m sorry, but Kamala, for all of having played pretty close to error-free ball, should have taken the lesson from then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey who, way back in ‘68, failed to run hard against the President-LBJ’s record.

That was 56 years ago.

If there’s a consolation here, and believe me, it’s ain’t no prize, it comes from Twain’s exquisite “history may not repeat, but it does rhyme” charmer.

Ergo the planned mass deportations, right about the same time in the couplet that brought us Muslim bans.

Ergo, the attempts to gut the Affordable Care Act we know are coming. Likely, the balance of the social safety nets on the menu, as well.

Ergo, the fact that events, as always, will overtake this administration, just as it did Biden’s.

All of which presents a singular opportunity to regain the initiative. If we grasp the opportunity.

If we turn déjà vu into déjà new.