In the days after Donald Trump won in November, columnists assessed the coming carnage and made resolutions.

The next-day thoughts of Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times were headlined: “My Manifesto for Despairing Democrats.”

Kristof walked through his 14 prescriptions, impressive in bulk and insight. My favorite Kristof point might displease the “we-should-always-go-further left” crowd.

“Too often,” Kristof wrote, “Democrats in safe districts in New York or California stake out far-left positions that hurt Democrats in Ohio or Georgia, damaging the causes we believe in. America is a centrist nation, and just because Trump takes extreme stances does not mean we should.”

My own postmortem column offered personal resolutions. It included a plan to watch less televised political talk and avoid scathing second-guessing of Kamala Harris.

Searching for something — anything — positive, I suggested local readers take solace in how many thoughtful, compassionate people inhabit Madison and how they can lean on one another.

That was five months ago, and most of those I encounter today think things under Trump are going worse — much worse — than they imagined.

Which brings me to today’s topic, which is schadenfreude.

Defined as “pleasure derived by someone because of someone else’s misfortune,” schadenfreude isn’t a term most would aspire to have associated with them.

But hey, in truth, many of us cannot help but enjoy watching some Trump voters squirm.

There are the professional-class Republicans who held their noses and voted for Trump for tax cuts, for dismantling safety nets that they do not need, and for removing government regulations that shrink their profits.

Wonder what they think now as Trump clownishly upends the world’s economy, risking a recession or worse, because of his longtime fixation with tariffs as part of his narcissistic art-of-the-deal persona.

Then there are Trump voters of modest means who believed his campaign promises. For example, Trump said before the election: “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the price of all goods.” And this: “Prices will come down. You just watch. They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast, not only with insurance (but) with everything.”

Results thus far have been the exact opposite.

So how are the rest of us to feel about that?

I will admit it. I enjoy the shock I hear in town hall meetings from many voters in Trump country. Yes, Trump is every bit as phony, ignorant, and mean-spirited as many of us thought.

Many may consider this a bad look.

“The single-most unattractive and politically destructive trait of Democrats today is schadenfreude,” veteran journalist Ron Fournier wrote in a Substack essay earlier this year. “The Democratic Party won’t be the supermajority party … if one of our animating principles is to revel in pain of Trump voters.”

Clearly, political independents desperate for lower costs and more jobs — seem deserving of empathy.

And hope for the future lies with them.

Trump’s net approval rating among independent voters recently fell to an all-time low, mostly due to the economy, CNN reported. The percentage of independents who disapproved of Trump’s overall performance was 22 percentage points greater than those who approved. On the economy in particular among those voters, the net negative view of Trump was 29 points, compared to a one-point positive view in January.

The path to a Democratic comeback clearly must begin on a foundation of populist pocketbook issues around prices, jobs, and the security of programs like Social Security and Medicare.

But back to this question of schadenfreude and Trump voters. Hayes Brown of MSNBC wrote about it at length after the election.

“The schadenfreude that others are feeling or anticipating seems as hollow as the beliefs that Trump supporters projected onto him,” Brown wrote. “As I see it, the problem with taking solace in the suffering of others in this case is that it still requires the suffering of others.

“I understand the desire to see people endure consequences for their own actions. But it simply ignores the very selfish reality that in this scenario, we’re all suffering too.

“The hardships that Americans will face should Republicans succeed in decimating the social safety net will be immense. There’ll be no comfort that some of the people crashing to the ground thought they were only voting to have that net taken from others,” Brown wrote.

The introduction to his essay read: “There’s little comfort to be had in knowing the hammer of the president-elect’s worst policies will also fall on some of his supporters.”

Hmm. Not sure I entirely agree. Let’s review.

Trump’s second administration began with ruthless, random layoffs across the federal workforce. Later came Trump’s attempt to humiliate the president of Ukraine, a war hero who past presidents and military veterans — think Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Bush (both of them) — would have admired.

Then came Trump’s lieutenants unwittingly leaking national security secrets to a magazine journalist. Next came the stock-market-crashing barrage of bizarre tariffs interrupted by a pause that enabled an insider trading opportunity for Trump’s cronies. And all along that timeline have been illegal deportations, attacks on due process and the rule of law.

So how did Trump voters so delude themselves?

“The common denominator is an ongoing refusal to take Trump’s own words at face value,” Brown wrote. “Many of his supporters only believed what they wanted to believe and with a wave of their hand dismissed the most brutal or authoritarian of his promises.

“There likewise appears to be a broad assumption among many of his voters that if Trump’s policies produce negative results, then they, their businesses and their loved ones (would) somehow be part of the exception, not the rule.”

Given that, if Trump voters now suffer some “negative results” at his hands, well, I can live with it.