Well I got that wrong. I expected a blow out (325-213). I certainly didn’t expect to lose all swing states. I failed, but last night so did America.
We’re waking up in a world that I did not expect to be living in. Somehow, after all of crimes he’s committed, the violence he’s caused, the vile rhetoric he’s used, and the abhorrent promises he’s made, Donald Trump has retaken the White House. It’s evident that this country didn’t learn its lesson in 2016 and thought it would be a good idea to give the leader of an insurrection the keys to the federal government once again.
To date, 71 million people have given Trump a second chance. This time it’s different. He isn’t the outside candidate, a change candidate who will “drain the swamp” in DC. He’s a man with a vendetta, a hit list. He won’t fill his cabinet and staff with lifelong bureaucrats, it’ll be filled with loyalists. There won’t be a Mattis, Tillerson, or Mnuchin on his staff. There will be neo-Nazis, and Christian nationalists in powerful positions, dictating policy to remake America in their preferred image.
There’s not a single Trump voter who doesn’t know what they voted for. They voted for retribution. They voted for a man who let a deadly pandemic spread more than it should have. A president who oversaw an economic collapse because of it. Yet they expect gas and milk prices to come down. If anything, we’re in for a world of even more hurt as he enriches his billionaire friends and lets the middle class suffer.
He’s vowed to be a “dictator on day one,” and with a sympathetic court, that he installed, ruling that he’s immune from prosecution for “official acts,” I fear that will be four years of an iron fist, if not longer.
Make absolutely no mistake, it can happen here. We aren’t special. The guardrails are gone.
There were so many anomalies last night that it’s hard for me to reconcile that this is the outcome. Missouri and Arizona both approved amendments to protect abortions and Nevada moved one step closer to adding protections to its constitution, yet all elected Trump, the killer of Roe. A national abortion is on the table now.
North Carolina rejected an extremist MAGA candidate for Governor and elected a Democrat, but Trump, the MAGA kingpin won the state. I’m having a hard time understanding the psychology of these voters.
What went wrong?
It’s far too early to conduct an autopsy on the Harris campaign. We won’t have a clear picture on the campaign’s shortcomings for some time, if ever. It could be messaging on the economy, not distancing herself more from Biden, not reaching the right audiences on the correct platforms, or simply she wasn’t the preferred choice of Democrats.
One thing is clear from looking at the numbers, she couldn’t capture Biden voters. She’s down 15 million from Biden’s 2020 election. As of now, Trump is down 3 million from his 2020 results, but still holds a substantial lead in the popular vote. The Democrats will have to understand why these voter sat this election out.
Looking at the data it’s also clear that this country is shifting to the right. In Democrat strongholds like New York and Illinois, the party slipped. In 2020 Biden won New York State with 60.9% of the vote, Harris won with 55.5%. In Illinois Biden won with 57.5% of the vote, Harris 51.3%. These are troubling signs. I’m not entirely concerned about these states becoming swing states, but there is major cause for concern when liberal Manhattan drops from 86.7% to 80.8% for Democrats. The messaging isn’t resonating with voters.
An uncertain future
What we do know is that the future of this country looks bleak. Deporting immigrants will collapse our agricultural industry and with it our economy. Proposed tariffs will trickle down to consumers and we’ll be paying more for imported goods. Justices Thomas and Alito may decide to hang up their cloaks only to be replaced by even more radical 40 year old versions of themselves, repealing the Affordable Care Act will kill millions, ignoring climate change will endanger us all.
I’m terrified for women who will have to endure a world with no healthcare protections, for immigrants, legal or otherwise, who will be deported back to countries they don’t remember, for the LGBT community who will have their rights curtailed, for the Jews in this country who will be targeted by emboldened Nazis, for the Ukrainians fighting to defend their country, for the Palestinians that will lose aid from the US, for everyone who wants a democratic society.
He has a mandate. I thought last night would be a repudiation of Trump and the MAGA movement, but if anything it’s stronger than ever. I don’t know where we go from here, but we’ll figure it out.