There is No Escaping the Enormity of the Election…Or Its Import

I received a number of emails in response to my last post, “Democrats! Stop Blaming Harris!” with some attempting to explain or rationalize away Trump’s victory. Two in particular stand out. 

One reader pointed out the surprising approval rating numbers going into November 5, with Harris’s net unfavorables at 2.7% and Trump’s at 7%.  That means almost half the population viewed Donald Trump favorably, which might be a reason for his victory, but does not account for why so many Americans seemed oblivious to his vile, hateful rhetoric, the judgments against him for both fraud and sexual assault, his role in inciting one of the worst incidents of domestic terrorism in the nation’s history, his promise to use the powers of his office to take revenge on those he perceives as enemies, the small army of Republicans, both civilian and former military, who deemed him a threat to national security, and all the other disqualifying facets of this loathsome man’s legacy.

Another pointed out, “Americans’ real incomes rose 6.4% from 2017-2020 but rose only 1.4% from 2021-2024.  That’s a very material difference.  I still do a double-take when I see chicken breast costs $8.59 / pound vs.$ 4.99 five years ago, and I don’t have to worry about making the rent or mortgage at the end of the month.”  He added, with some disgust, that those voters seemed to be saying, “I’m pissed about the cost of chicken so let’s give the rapist another chance!”

There is more substance to this argument, and it is one that many Democrats have grudgingly embraced, but it does not explain why Americans viewed a man with a string of failed businesses, six bankruptcies, multiple judgments against him,  a history of fraud and of stiffing working class contractors, someone who would be wealthier than he is now had he invested the huge fortune he inherited from his father in T-bills—minus DJT, his ultimate scam—and whose economic plan was derided by virtually every expert, as the savior of the economy.

And that leaves out that the two cornerstones of that plan—which is much vaguer than was Harris’s—seem to be tariffs and mass deportations, both of which will raise, not lower, prices.

Then there is the increasingly popular, “If only Biden had dropped out earlier,” lament, made by, among others, Nancy Pelosi, who should know better.  That implies that had there been a primary season, the nominee would have been different with a different outcome.  And who would her winning nominee have been?  Gretchen Whitmer?  Josh Shapiro?  Pete Buttigieg?  Gavin Newsom?  Oh sure.  A woman, a Jew, a gay man, or Joe Hollywood…they would have strolled right on in.

Finally, there is the observation that progressives and their woke agenda doomed Democrats in what has become a national anti-woke backlash. 

Oddly enough, this is the argument that is the most persuasive, but it cannot be viewed in a vacuum.  It implies that more than 70 million Americans deemed the threat of a trans woman competing in a college swim meet or the listing of favored pronouns in an email to be greater than that of a man who courts dictators, has clear aspirations to be one, and treats this nation’s most vital secrets as toys to be trotted out to impress fawning guests at Mar a Lago.

In the end, all these lead to one place—that the United States has devolved into a nation of the spoiled and the ignorant, where large segments of the population are slaves to social media, elevate absurd conspiracies to reality, watch instead of read, are taught nothing about their government or their history—they have no interest anyway—are made to believe they deserve to have anything they want, and who tune out any input that threatens the comfort of their pre-existing views.

The best hope for change, many suggest, is that Trump will blow up the economy in a manner that will be most devastating to his supporters—he may blow up other things as well—and Trump loyalists will then lose that loyalty and the country can begin to recover.

Economic cataclysm is certainly a possibility—Trump is incompetent as well—but whether his voters will desert him even then is not so clear.  About twenty years ago, a reporter journeyed up from New Orleans to deeply rural Cajun country where the economy had been decimated by environmental mismanagement.  The well water was not fit to drink because the soil above the water table had been poisoned by industrial waste.  Those interviewed were well aware of what had happened and were equally aware that Republicans opposed the initiatives Democrats were promoting to begin to counteract the devastation.

So…were they going to abandon the Republicans and vote Democratic?

They were not.

Given the transparency of Trump’s racism and misogyny, there are also those who insist that, regardless of their stated reasons for choosing him, the economy or anything else, the real spur was a vote for cruelty and hate.

I disagree. Instead, it seems to me that many of Trump’s voters were not so much actively embracing cruelty and hate as much as being willing to turn their eyes from it.  In some ways, that is even more damning.

In March, I posted, “George Orwell, Donald Trump, and Benjamin the Donkey,” giving something of a synopsis of Animal Farm, one of the most brilliant and important books in the English…or any other…language.  Then I wrote, “Orwell is asking, ‘Who commits the greater evil, those who perpetrate it or those who have the power to effectively resist but stand idly by while evil is perpetrated?’” 

That question could not be more appropriate today. 

The March post was directed at the Carl Icahns, JD Vances, and Peter Theils of the world, but with this election the same must be asked of the tens of millions of “ordinary” Americans willing to overlook women dying because their doctors cannot abort a fetus to save their lives, migrants being herded into concentration camps, similar to what America did to those of Japanese ancestry during World War II—for all I know, Trump may reopen some of them—trans people being beaten, killed, or driven out of the country, and a slew of other injustices that Trump and his minions will happily inflict on those too weak or vulnerable to deter them.

These are hard truths to digest for Americans who love their country and mourn what it has become.  But if we are not clear-eyed about where we are at, we will be as unequipped to begin the long, hard road back as we were to foresee the speed of the descent.

And a long and hard road it will be.