By returning Donald Trump to the White House, the people of the United States have embarked on a new era in the country’s history.
Rejecting the politics of healing and growth offered by Vice President Kamala Harris, voters delivered a surprisingly strong mandate to a former president who has promised sweeping changes in his second term.
Trump has committed to dramatically reducing the size of the federal government, a Draconian overhaul of U.S. immigration policy, rewriting health and environmental regulations, and major shifts in U.S. foreign policy.
If implemented, Trump’s plans could represent the most profound shift in the structure and direction of the U.S. government in the modern era.
Indeed, if Trump moves forward with plans to use the resources of the U.S. government to punish his enemies and to restrict fundamental freedoms from free speech to who you may choose to marry, if he launches a round-up of millions of immigrants who he throws into concentration camps or purges the federal government of all who are not loyal to him, he may change the nature of our system to a greater degree than any leader since the country’s founding.
Contrary to the predictions of many commentators—including me—Trump achieved a striking victory. While it seemed Harris had all the momentum heading into Election Day and that Trump was floundering, offering hateful and sometimes incomprehensible rants before spotty crowds, the results that came in Tuesday night revealed a different reality. Trump gained strength in many key states and among a wide variety of groups including, as he had predicted he would, among Black and Latino men.
While Harris’ campaign was praised for its execution and while Harris herself was garnering support from an unprecedented number of GOP leaders and celebrities, she was unable to overcome the disaffection of many voters for the record of the Biden Administration. The degree to which her loss was also, like that of Hillary Clinton to Trump in 2016, reflective of misogyny and, in the case of Harris specifically, of racism, is hard to measure. But it is equally difficult to discount these factors.
As many shocked observers noted on social media, the Harris loss once again proved that even the most damaged and dangerous male candidate imaginable was preferable to more American voters than a far more talented, intelligent, and capable woman. It does not reflect well on the American electorate.
That said, what made the Trump win over Harris even more shocking than that over Clinton is that this time around, American voters had a lot more history to draw on. They lived through Trump’s first term, his two impeachments, his mishandling of COVID that resulted in hundreds of thousands of needless deaths, his failed coup attempt on Jan. 6, his lies, and his convictions and indictments in diverse criminal and civil cases.
They knew that historians had already voted Trump the worst president of all time for his failures and abuses during his first term. They could read his plans as laid out by many of his once and likely future aides in the “Project 2025” blueprint for a more authoritarian society.
What is more, voters knew that thanks to a perverse ruling by the Supreme Court, Trump would become the first president to enter office shrouded by virtually complete immunity from prosecution for any of his acts.
And they said, yes, please, sir, may we have some more?
Indeed, given Trump’s performance during his first term and what he has promised for his second, Tuesday’s election results could only be seen as an act of national lunacy, of profound self-destructiveness. The role that racism, sexism and—for the billionaires who Trump sees as his core constituency and partners in this endeavor—greed play in the election outcome also suggest that as with Trump himself, the insanity is made more dangerous by its interplay with deep flaws in our national character.
For those shocked by the outcome, however, there is a responsibility to try to understand it and then, as quickly as possible, to get over the sadness, anger and disorientation it may have produced and begin the work carved out for the opposition in a democracy. Having said that, a disoriented Democratic Party may also find that a challenging role to play.
As of this writing, Republicans had also regained control of the Senate and control of the House of Representatives remained up for grabs. If Democrats regain control of the House and Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker, he will effectively become the leader of the opposition and he will assume an absolutely critical role in Washington.
If he does not, opposing Trump’s initiatives or seeking to negotiate with him is going to prove very challenging indeed. Naturally, should Trump embrace more autocratic policies—perhaps perceiving that he has a mandate to do so given his clear electoral and popular vote victory—fulfilling the role of the opposition may become trickier still and perhaps even dangerous.
Nonetheless, because Trump’s views and those of his supporters are so potentially dangerous and divergent from those of very nearly half of the American people, his presidency seems likely to usher in not only a radical new approach to governing in this country, it also may necessitate new levels of creativity and resolve among those who would resist or reshape his efforts and seek to ensure that our next president conforms to the values and principles on which the United States was founded.
