The American people have spoken. Last week, a majority of voters — nearly 75 million as of this writing —elected a man who attempted to overturn the last presidential election and incited a mob to breach the U.S. Capitol.
A convicted felon and known sexual predator who admitted on tape to grabbing women’s genitals is now the face of our country, our ambassador to the rest of the world.
A man who insisted during a presidential debate that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors’ pets in a small city in Ohio, an online conspiracy theory easily knocked down by journalists.
A man who misled supporters saying he would fix it all (high food and housing prices) by promising to impose tariffs broadly on goods coming from other nations and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, whom he called vermin — policy actions many economists agree would jack prices up, not lower them.
After surfing a wave of white grievance and a festering animosity for critics for nine years, Donald Trump will again inhabit the White House as the leader of the “free” world, although he refers to certain Americans as the enemy within.
It is a new America, which feels a lot like the old America, just worse.
Don’t get me wrong. Donald Trump didn’t single-handedly win the presidency. The Democratic Party itself deserves some of the blame.
What would have happened if President Joe Biden had decided to bow out of a second term and let Democrats choose a nominee for the 2024 election through the primaries? What if Vice President Kamala Harris had had several more months to introduce herself to voters instead of conducting a sprint presidential campaign? What if the Democrats had paid more attention to Americans’ anger over inflation and done more than pay lip service to people’s financial pain, especially the working class? None of this is a knock on Harris. She did well in the three months she had to make her case to the American people, especially with what she was up against: Not only was she hoping to become the first woman U.S. president, she contended with racial bigotry and misogyny. Because racial bigotry and misogyny have always been a part of our national character.
Would the Electoral College map look any different had Democrats made different decisions?
We’ll never know.
What became clear in the days after the election is that Donald Trump gained support in 90% of the counties across the country, up from 2020, the last time he ran. Even in New Mexico he performed better than expected, losing the state by six percentage points rather than the 11 when Biden ran in 2020.
The question is why such a dramatic shift? People are going to be sorting that out in the coming years.
One thing is clear: Democrats will need to enter a season of serious reflection and analysis to understand what Trump’s decisive victory means for the party going forward, including how they can appeal to more Americans, especially the working class.
Now as we all wait to see what is in store for the country with Trump in the White House again, I recall an observation by legendary newspaper editor H.L. Mencken about democracy.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Unfortunately, I fear a lot of Americans living check to check are about to gain first-hand knowledge of Mencken’s warning about getting what you wish for.
Trip Jennings started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle, before working at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut where he reported on many stories. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth, a nonpartisan, nonprofit media outlet.