November 8: Called. It.
In which,Donald Trump pulls a Grover Cleveland.
Called. It.
You don’t need me to tell you there was an election this past Tuesday. And you certainly don’t me to tell you who won but, if you need a reminder, it was this guy:
At the end of last year, I made four predictions related to Election 2024:
There would be concerted election interference from America’s enemies, China and Russia specifically.
Nailed it. Even Iran got into the action this time around.
Joe Biden and the Democrats would come out the losers on November 5, 2024.
And how!
Donald Trump would be the next Grover Cleveland.
There would be election violence.
Did not have multiple assassination attempts on Trump in mind or Russia bomb plots, but violence there was.
That being said, I’m really thankful that none of the above plots reached full flower, and widespread violence has so far been absent from this election.
There’s still time though, for the losing side to work themselves into a state of existential panic, though.
Since making those predictions, I’ve largely spent the year filling in the details, and the early post mortems indicate that, sure enough, the race came down to the kitchen table issues that Biden, then Harris, and the Democrats in general just couldn’t get around.
So, it was an issues election, sure, but I’m not entirely sure it was just the issues that explained such a sweeping Republican win.
Just to recap, Republicans have largely run the boards, winning
The Presidency
The Electoral College
The popular vote
All seven battleground states
The three “Blue Wall” states
The Senate
A majority of governorships
A majority of state legislatures
While we’re still waiting on final results from several House raises, the Republicans appear quite confident that chamber will be added to the ‘W’ column as well.
But wait, there’s more:
Trump and Republicans continued to make gains with most key voter demographics, improving almost across the board with most voter blocs through the 2016, 2020, and now 2024 elections.
The scope of the victory, given the closeness of the polls in the last week may seem surprising, but only if you’re Vox and the like minded who saw this election only in terms of Donald Trump and preserving democracy. “Why, oh why,” they wonder, “does the rest of America not see the truth, or worse see Donald Trump as authoritarian and don’t care?”
Well, aside from the fact that Donald Trump has already been President and did not turn America into the Fourth Reich, even when given the chance when Covid lockdowns rolled around, let’s do a brief rundown of how Democrats approached the race:
The collapse of the Democratic coalition
They replaced the guy who beat Donald Trump with a candidate who was largely unknown and unpopular and gave her less than four months to overcome those two handicaps while weighted down by the many failings of the Biden administration, some of which she contributed to.
But it wasn’t just the Democrats or Joe Biden that failed. Harris-Walz failed too.
Despite clear signals that voters were concerned about the economy and illegal immigration/border security, Harris-Walz followed the Biden administration’s lead, adopted a “PR Politics” approach and chose to either a) downplay those issues or b) argue they weren’t as bad as people thought, and were in fact good for the country.
This fundamental disconnect between the Harris-Walz ticket and the voters was a disconnect between Democrats and voters more broadly that Trump’s inroads into the Blue Wall and the blocs of the vaunted “Obama coalition” clearly indicate.
Call it hubris, call it stupidity, call it an echo chamber, call it realignment, whatever it was (and it was all of it), Democrats had a reckoning coming and those chickens have now come home to roost.
I could go on about the election results, but there’s so much ink being spilled on that and where we go from here, I don’t really want to add to that noise. Rather, let me offer some thoughts on some of the underreported elements of this Election that make it historic in ways other than Trump winning, and then we’ll do some managing of expectations.
Trends to track
Young men of all races and backgrounds broke hard for Trump. Why? Joe Rogan. Elon Musk. And not just these guys, but the independent media space both of those names have become synonymous with. What looked like a silent Trump campaign in the final weeks was really a pivot to independent media. That pivot worked brilliantly. The idea of mainstream media gatekeepers being the chief avenue of political messaging is now well and truly dead.
The realignment is now entrenched and it was the GOP that adapted faster than the Democrats. As Scott Waller, Darren Guerra and I discussed on my podcast last week, this question of “Who got the memo on realignment?” would be answered in the election results. Fair to say that it was, and initial reactions from Democrats and left-leaning media outlets suggest it may take a while before Democrats correct course. Really, Dems, you shoulda been reading The Liberal Patriot. Those guys called it!
Kamala Harris made a huge pitch to voters on protecting abortion access, but that issue just did not resonate the way it did in 2022 in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs ruling. State-level abortion measures yielded mixed results indicating the issue has lost salience for voters, justifying Trump’s instincts to step back from pro-life messaging in the GOP platform and general campaign, which I also discussed with Matt Anderson on the podcast.
Furthermore, tough on crime bills and election integrity laws fared very well at the ballot box, further demonstrating voter rejection of Democratic policy positions.
Managing expectations
OK, so Trump 2.0 it will be, but is it going to be a rerun of 2016-2020? No. Hell no. How can it be? The country, and indeed the world, are in very different places.
The economy
First, Biden-era inflation and deficits are going to act as weights on the economy. Yes, markets boomed and rival currencies dropped against the dollar at the news that Trump won, and the Fed cut rates. All good news, but it’ll take more than that to address to get America off the highly addictive drug of cheap credit. Elon Musk has already hinted at harder economic times before better times come. He’s exactly right. That’s usually what a detox looks like.
The border
Second, Trump is dead serious about mass deportations of illegal immigrants and this will likely form the first major confrontation between the Trump administration and the Democrats, and thus be a first major test of whether or not the Democrats will adapt to the realignment (hint to Dems, Hispanics voting for Trump should tell you something about how this bloc is viewing the immigration situation).
The Trump administration
Third, Trump’s administration will look and behave a lot differently than the first one, so there hopefully won’t be the sense of undisciplined chaos this time around. The first one was emblematic of a political newcomer distrustful of the existing party apparatus. That dynamic is largely gone, and Trump’s new Chief of Staff is apparently someone who commands bipartisan respect.
Foreign policy
Fourth, on the foreign policy front, Trump will have a much more challenging landscape than his first go around, but is also going to be looking for quick resolution to some existing conflicts. Both Harris and Trump sent “get to the ceasefire before I’m in office” messages to Benjamin Netanyau, and Russia is sensing a ceasefire opportunity in Ukraine with a change of leadership in America and a new offensive going in Ukraine. Trump may get his ceasefires, but they’re unlikely to bring any substantive peace. China, at least, seems eager to strike a conciliatory tone.
Opposition relations
Despite the generally conciliatory concession speech of Kamala Harris, there’s every indication that Democrats are dusting off the “Resistance” playbook in anticipation of running back Trump’s first term based on the premise that Trump+Project 25 = American Fascism. That is not at all based in fact or reality, and is unlikely to win back lost voters, especially if voters perceive such opposition to be preventing policy implementation they support. I guess we’ll get some sense of this come the midterms.
Bottom line, Trump understands his mandate. It’s not to institute the Fourth Reich, and he has no intention of doing so. Democrats would do well to recognize this and approach the second Trump administration as a “normal” presidency.
Field notes
A mass attack on Jews in the Netherlands is stirring fears of growing antisemitism.
Ukraine has made contact with North Korean troops on the battlefield.
Post-election violence continues to surge in Mozambique.
The governing coalition in Germany has collapsed and a snap election may be in the offing.