Dem
47
GOP
53
Several items above address the general notion that the people who voted for Donald Trump are likely to be among the main victims of his policies. This has occurred to many of our readers, too:
M.P. in Portland, OR, writes: Obviously, like the bulk of your followers, I lean pretty heavily left and except for 7 years in childhood Midwest misery, have always lived in deep blue states... and I'm less than thrilled this morning and will grant some of the other outlets I follow, in hindsight, when I stated "we're so screwed" back in July when Biden dropped out, I was correct (and did Harris really have a clear path, ever?).
That said, I have a few takeaways:
- Many, if not most of the people who voted for Trump are going to be precisely the ones who will suffer the most. It's obvious if they don't like inflation NOW, they truly have no idea what we'll be looking at in about a year. Honestly can see us full bore in a recession, too—and that's assuming he doesn't di** with oil prices.
I am, also, mean enough to actually find comfort in this.- Your pieces on blue states pre-emptively Trump-proofing themselves—and Trump might be a creepy cult fascist, but he's an incompetent one—also gave me a great deal of comfort, then and now. I keep sharing them with others. As you note, lots of decentralization/states' rights in terms of power, as well as people who WILL riot, protest, forge their own path, etc.
- Naturally, I agree with your views on Gavin Newsom, who, given how capricious our electorate is, could very likely not just win, but win in a walk in 2028. Interestingly, The Bulwark, through Wonkette, was wailing just this morning, "Dems need their own DeSantis"....umm, we have that, but way better, in Newsom (with a few runners up in Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, still Mayor Pete, potentially Wes Moore...). I'm just gonna quietly retreat to my corner, do some resisting and muse who his running mate might be, so as to keep me warm at least until 2026.
D.M. in Delray Beach, FL, writes: Looks like my predictions of an overwhelming Trump victory were not far off (and I'm an Independent who voted Harris but could see the writing on the wall a mile away). Today the commentariat blamed Harris's appearance on The View as the source of her failure. Frankly, this Monday morning quarterbacking is bunk. That moment was a blip. Meanwhile the list of otherwise-political-career-ending moments from the Trump side of the ledger were legion. The difference? Trump's followers will walk on a lake of fire for him and have done so since the beginning. They see a world that has left them behind and they blame the government for doing so.
You scoffed earlier this year about Trump bringing up NAFTA. There's a reason it is called the "Rust Belt" and that all swung heavily Trump's way. While globalization ultimately made individual Americans insanely richer, vast swaths of America were decimated and they know who to blame: gub'mint.
If Trump and the Republican agenda actually DID something for these people (other than pay them amazing lip service), I might not feel so terrible about the election result. The sad part is that none of these people will be helped by this decision. We are all about to suffer (save the millionaires and billionaires). And it had nothing to do with a flubbed sentence on The View. There are 30 years of rage that are bottled up. Trump was just the person willing to tap into it.
J.T. in Charleston, WV, writes: The thought I keep coming back to is: When Donald Trump won in 2016, there was a very common attitude among liberals of "the US has lost its mind, this is a deviation we need to return to the mean from." Biden campaigned, essentially, on that idea and eked out a win in 2020, seemingly validating the "temporary insanity" viewpoint and heralding a return to rationality.
But now Trump comes back in 2024, doing better than ever (against a candidate who by all rights should have done better than Biden did, but didn't), winning in an election that, pollsters aside, wasn't even really that close. What if Biden's win in 2020—a year blighted by a global pandemic and with a candidate still very much benefiting from the afterglow of Obama at the time—was the deviation and Trump is the new mean? Maybe in a timeline without COVID, Trump was "supposed to" win in 2020—maybe we would have had President Pence in 2024. As things stand the odds now look good for a President Vance in 2028 (if not before due to succeeding Trump early in some fashion).
The main thing that gives me some measure of hope that this is not just the default mode of the U.S. forevermore is that the country survived 6 years of Nixon followed by the one term of Biden-like Carter, then 8 years of Reagan, who had (and still has) a Trump-like cult of personality. But Reagan's own proteges didn't have the charisma he did and one more term of "Reagan lite" gave us two terms of Clinton when the Reagan enthusiasm faded. There was still damage done but at least it had an end point.
Maybe a second Trump term was necessary all along to get back to business by just letting the infection run its course—which is no comfort at all to those harmed along the way, but maybe there was never any way to avoid that harm given the electorate that exists.
And, maybe the lesson for the Democrats and Democrat-leaning centrists is that charisma and personality (like Bill Clinton's and Obama's, even a repugnant charisma like Trump's, as long as it resonates with enough voters) carry the day over qualifications and experience like Hillary Clinton's and Kamala Harris', and they should bear that in mind when casting primary votes from here on out.
A.S. in Black Mountain, NC, writes: The shock and awe America is about to experience in the next 4 years is unimaginable for me. The dream of the America I thought existed is gone. And the worldwide effect will be enormous. The anxiety is just beginning. I need to look up the stages of grief.
B.G. in Palo Alto, CA, writes: I can't help but wonder if Biden's biggest mistake of the past 4 years wasn't inflation, or stepping down too late, or not refusing to step down, or whatever, but instead simply re-normalizing normality. Making many Americans forget how dysfunctional, erratic, incompetent, and crazy Trump was as president. Enough swing voters therefore weighed economic or other concerns higher, giving Trump his critical edge.
It seems we're all going to re-learn that lesson again over the next 4 years, and probably more so, with the guardrails removed and an administration of mostly yes-men and crazies. I can only hope: (1) we somehow manage to avoid World War III, and (2) the crazy is so strong this time that people remember in a way we won't forget again.
D.E. in Lancaster, PA, writes: I want to share two responses with you.
First, from someone famous, Jimmy Kimmel, whose voice broke with tears while saying this: "It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for the poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on Social Security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO, for the truth and democracy and decency. It was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him. And guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him, too. You just don't realize it yet."
Now from someone not famous, one of the sales reps where I work (unfortunately not his words verbatim but damn close) on why he was choosing not to be devastated by the results: "I refuse to give any more power to that orange fu**ing a**hole and serial rapist!"
I'm not there yet. Don't even have a map on how to get there. Don't know if I can even try.
All we can add to this is that, in his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln's main argument was that the Civil War was unavoidable, something the United States had to go through. Maybe, as J.T. in Charleston observes, the only way the Republican Party (and, with it, the American political system) will bounce back to something normal is if Trumpism is taken to its logical conclusion. (Z)