I’ve been thinking a lot about the reaction — well, my reaction — to Trump’s wins in 2016 and 2024. Very different this time than eight years ago. I suspect I’m not alone.
Then I was, as the Brit’s say, “gobsmacked.” Synonyms run to the “S” section of the alphabet: shocked, surprised, staggered, stupefied. (Also mortified.) I wondered in 2016 what had become of us, and — more importantly — what would become of us, of our nation and world.
After Linda and I caught our breath and she had put her Suffragist whites back in the closet, we went on high alert. One sign was our shift from being occasional viewers of the PBS Newshour, to being every-night devotees. Every evening, “religiously” as they say, we turned to Judy Woodruff and her colleagues to hold our hands and alert us to new elements of peril.
Now? Well, for openers I wasn’t surprised Trump won. It was not, as in 2016, either unthinkable or impossible — it was quite likely. Given Kamala Harris’s strange fizzle after the high-point of the September debate, it was almost inevitable. Here we go again, I thought.
But now, rather than going to Defcon 4 Hyper-Alert, we more or less stepped back. We put some distance between ourselves and the news. We treasured the holidays, time with friends and family. As the night’s lengthened we, uncharacteristically, slept in, perhaps asking our unconsciousness to do the processing. Or maybe we’d just been exhausted by all of it.
What to make of the difference between then and now? Does the marked difference in our response mean we have sunk into apathy, despair and resignation? Maybe. But I don’t think so.
I would liken it to the difference between the freshman and sophomore years of college, or between the first year of a new job and a second or third year. First years of anything you are high energy, trying to figure things out and impress, over-functioning, and hyper-alert to external signals, whether real or imagined. Second, and subsequent years, not so much. You’re calmer, taking a longer view and you know more about the lay of the land, where to expend energy and where not to.
Then in 2016: High Alert!, Join the resistance! All hands on deck! March with Women!
Now in 2024: Wait and see. Pick your battles. Try to understand why Trump had now, on his third try, actually won. And why he gained support in nearly all demographics.
Neither in 2019, when Harris first ran, nor again in 2024 could I figure out why Kamala Harris wanted to President, or what she wanted to do or accomplish. Her campaign was a re-run of 2020 with the main argument being how awful Trump is and would be. And this time she was saddled, however unfairly, with the incumbency tag.
It also mattered that the Democrats appeared out of touch while Trump looked right, at least in part, on the issues uppermost on people’s minds. While the Biden administration had thrown a ton of money at stuff, the near term result was a ballooning deficit and inflation. And the open borders dream of the elite proved out of touch with conditions on the ground.
The Democrats have given us three consecutive Presidential candidates without sufficient electricity to light the national Christmas tree, let alone a political movement.
I would also add that the villification of Trump, the so-called Resistance, along with the widespread incidence of Trump Derangement Syndrome, has proven counterproductive. Rather than helping us to understand what’s going on, it has obscured things. Is that to say that Trump doesn’t pose any real threats to democracy or the Constitution? No. But being outraged, with a fair bit of self-righteousness thrown in, isn’t a useful way to understand a complicated new reality.
So now we wait. The next four years could be a disaster, something that makes Trump 45 look not so bad. Maybe all the cries of “fascist” and “authoritarian” will be proven true. Or there could be some actual positives, whether because of or in spite of Trump.
It seems to me likely that this administration, like most, will be mixed bag. And, also like many others flush with victory and holding the White House and both chambers of Congress, Trump will be tempted to overreach, which will bring push-back, whether in 2026 or 2028, or both. I could be wrong. Lord knows, I’ve been wrong about Trump plenty in the past.
Many have fretted about “normalizing Trump.” I get it. The guy is no philosopher-king. He is crude and ignoble. As Lloyd Bentsen said to Dan Quayle, “You’re no John F. Kennedy.” Trump is, in terms of style and smarts, no JFK. Weird hair to boot. But do remember that beneath the alluring glamour and wit of JFK, and the good hair, he was also the President who got us into Vietnam. You never know how it will go.
I suspect that “normalizing Trump,” as in seeing him for as what he is, an outlandish figure on the often wild and unpredictable landscape of American politics, may be our best move.
Really don’t get the point. You want to lecture us about “isn’t a useful way to understand a complicated new reality”, but clearly don’t pretend to have a clue what’s coming.
Is this an emotional counseling article? Some insight I missed here, into policies to expect from the clown cabinet? Just needed another run at beating up liberals and other literate people for getting Trump elected?
Charles Krauthammer, who was no fan of Trump as evidenced by numerous scathing reviews of the Donald’s character flaws, nonetheless years earlier wrote an interesting commentary on Nixon in which he offered that what mattered most was what Nixon would do, and not who he was. Policy, not personality. I would suggest that many Americans voted for Trump based on policy considerations and are swallowing his personality like a detestable medicine that they know they must take to get a cure from the melodies that they see are afflicting our country. Presidents are historically judged based on their reactions to the problems and crises they face. I’m afraid that Biden will be judged poorly because he has caused problems vs really solving any. Harris appeared to be a continuation of that and Trump was a lesser of two evils who at least offered some hope of improvement in policy on things important to Americans like the border, the economy, spending, etc.
Complicated new reality? Not really. Maybe I can help.
1. In a democracy, the majority are our masters.
2. Education works, broadly speaking, and the less educated tend to make poorer choices in elections. White voters with no college degree went for Reagan over Carter 61% to 39%, the beginning of a decline in American politics that we may never recover from.
3. Christians unfortunately have over the same period gone the same way as the less educated.
The 2024 election is simply illustrative of what’s coming, unless America can, to put it crudely, grow a brain. We are going to have to think harder, and better. The idea that it’s somehow the “elites'” fault for this is condescending nonsense. The people who are responsible for the Trump administration’s actions for the next 4 years are the people who voted for him. If those people can’t do better, America is sunk.
The challenge is considerable. The white voters with no college degree that elected Reagan represented two thirds of the electorate, but by 2008 they were only 4/10. Partly because there were more non-white voters, but also because a substantial increase in college education.
But the political factions that prey on the uneducated and Christians, are also becoming far more effective. Social media, whatever the cause, people are voting for Trump, who 40 years ago would never have fallen for it. You yourself, Anthony Robinson, with stuff like that “the open borders dream of the elite”, among other right wing straw men.
The American people are going to have to beef up on rigorous critical thinking, and lighten up on faith and tribalism and other cognitive impediments. Or else. Keep an eye on Washington state, one of the less severely cognitively afflicted. As long as there are islands like this, there’s hope.
You state your opinions as fact. For example: ‘The less educated tend to make poorer choices in elections’. I guess you were probably fine with it when working class voters without college degrees were a big chunk of the Democratic Party. Now that many of them have moved away you characterize them as ‘making poor choices because they’re uneducated’. -Right in line with ‘deplorables’ and ‘garbage’. What you richly illustrate is the elitism of college-educated Democrats who think that anyone who sees things differently than them isn’t as smart as they are and is simply persuaded by propaganda, which, of course, they aren’t subject to since they are more educated any by inference are ‘smarter’. I don’t believe you will find any greater nexus of leftist propaganda than a college campus…
Maybe you thought America took a great path with Ronald Reagan, but I look at things the rising income inequality, unsustainable environmental priorities and ever deepening societal divisions, and I see a poor choice.
Maybe you think the clown cabinet assembled by the amoral sociopath president elect as a sign that we’re finally on the right track; I see poor choice. I see the statistics on who voted for these people, and they speak for themselves.
Christian virtues (column 1), the antidote to the seven deadly sins (column 2).
1) chastity – lust
2) temperance – gluttony
3) charity – avarice
4) diligence – sloth
5) patience – wrath
6) kindness – envy
7) humility – pride
The Left does not ‘do’ introspection, do they?