by David French in the NYT (thanks to Put B.)
There is no mystery about what happened Tuesday night. Unlike 2016, when the anticipation of Hillary Clinton’s victory turned into the shock of defeat, every smart analyst I know not only thought Donald Trump could win in 2024, they also knew he could potentially win in a blowout. In every election, he’s outperformed his polling, and we knew it could happen again.
There’s also no mystery as to why this happened. Even before Joe Biden took office, it was clear that Trump retained his hold on the Republican Party. After Jan. 6, it was Mike Pence’s approval rating that plunged among Republicans, not Trump’s. Once Trump escaped conviction in the Senate for a second time, he was always in the driver’s seat to be the next Republican nominee.
That meant he was the only alternative option for voters who were still dealing with the consequences of inflation or alarmed by the surge of migrants at the border or concerned about wars abroad. Warnings about democracy or consternation over the state of international alliances were just too downstream from their lives.
They also remembered better days from the first part of Trump’s first term. The combination of that memory and Trump’s projections of authority and confidence appealed to them. Democracies are always vulnerable to demagogues, never more so than when they’re tested by economic uncertainty at home or chaos abroad.
But I’m less interested in why Trump won than I am in exploring what opponents of Trump should do next. I’m already seeing evidence of despair. There’s a combination of exhaustion (it’s been more than nine years since Trump announced his first run for president) and a feeling of futility (Trump is stronger than ever before).
There’s a temptation to retreat. If you have a stable job, a good family and good friends, you can check out of politics. After all, politics can be painful. It’s not just the pain of loss, but also the pain of engagement itself. MAGA is extraordinarily cruel to its political opponents.
But despair is an elite luxury that vulnerable communities cannot afford. If Trump was telling the truth about his intentions — and there is no good reason to think he wasn’t — then he will attempt a campaign of retribution and mass deportation that will fracture families, create chaos in American communities and potentially even result in active-duty troops being deployed to our cities.
He may betray the men and women who are fighting and dying in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine. He will pardon Jan. 6 rioters and pursue his political enemies. He will exempt himself from the rule of law, and order his attorney general to drop the criminal cases against him. And he will flood the public square with lies and deception.
As I was thinking through the election results, two imperatives came to mind: defend the vulnerable and speak the truth.
Trump’s plans are not self-executing. From mass deportation to punitive legal actions, there will be numerous opportunities to challenge him. America is still a Madisonian democracy, and the other branches of government will have their say. There is a role for legislative resistance, even in a Republican-dominated Congress. The filibuster still exists.
And no one should think that the federal courts will simply rubber-stamp Trump’s worst abuses. Although I’ve disagreed with the Supreme Court’s rulings on Trump’s eligibility for the presidency and presidential immunity, it’s also true that they’ve rejected MAGA legal arguments time and again.
In addition, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, federal courts are required to give less deference to Trump’s executive actions. Many liberals were angry at the decision, believing that it needlessly hamstrings executive agencies. But now that same decision will help keep Trump in check. He actually has less legal discretion to put his policies in place through the regulatory state than he did during his first term.
But it’s not enough to delegate the defense of the vulnerable to lawyers and legislators. The United States is in the midst of an epistemological crisis. The combination of partisan blindness and online algorithmic curation means that millions of Americans now live in their own bespoke realities. Millions of Americans are engaging in politics awash in conspiracy.
A key reason Trump retained his hold on the Republican Party, for example, is that he persuaded Republicans to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. That lie was his only chance for a comeback after his loss. Otherwise, he’d fade from political relevance like other one-term presidents before him. He leaned into the lie, Republicans believed it and now his comeback is complete.
At the same time, we’re awash in animosity. As we saw in the closing days of the campaign — especially in the rally at Madison Square Garden — Trump and the MAGA base viscerally detest Trump’s political opponents. One reason Republicans are so susceptible to conspiracies is that they’ve been taught for years that Democrats are fundamentally evil, that they are capable of anything in their pursuit of power.
Telling the truth means combating deception and misinformation, but it also means publicly defending the dignity and humanity of the people and communities who are the object of Trump’s wrath. It means resisting malice when we encounter it in our churches and communities.
Telling the truth also requires knowing the truth. And that means being open to hearing difficult facts. It took too long — way too long — for much of the Democratic Party to understand the incredible difficulty of absorbing the migrant surge of Biden’s first term. Too many Democrats scolded Americans for raising concerns about the obvious effects of Joe Biden’s age.
Also, while it’s important to counter Trump’s lies about crime rates and the economy, it’s also important to empathize with people who are facing genuine economic hardship or facing dangerous disorder in their communities and be responsive to their needs.
To oppose Trump does not mean defending or embracing the status quo. Ever since Trump secured his hold on the Republican Party, his opponents have faced a terrible dilemma. Criticize the establishment, and you strengthen the only viable political alternative, Donald Trump. Yet if you focus your fire only on Trump, you communicate to millions of Americans that you don’t see many of the problems that are making their lives more difficult.
On the Sunday before the election, I wrote a piece arguing that no matter the outcome — even if Harris won — the present moment was a reminder that the progress of American democracy and justice was not guaranteed. America has made immense strides toward fulfilling the promises of its founding, but it’s also proven to be capable of decades of terrible backsliding. We are not guaranteed to live in times of progress.
Early Wednesday morning, when I was considering how to respond to Trump’s victory, a single sentence came to my mind — shorten the darkness. It comes from Apple TV’s adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s famous “Foundation” series, and it teaches us that there is still great purpose even in the face of chaos and defeat.
The election is over, but our democracy endures. The end of the campaign signaled the beginning of the next phase of the fight to preserve the American experiment. We can grieve the loss, but the period of mourning should be short.
There is work to be done.
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