1 week Ago
The voters have spoken. Former president Donald Trump has not only won a solid majority in the Electoral College, he seems destined to win the popular vote, and by a substantial margin — the first time he will have accomplished that feat in his three presidential campaigns. Bitterness among Democrats will now confront triumphalism among Republicans, as the country struggles to pick up the pieces after a campaign harshly colored by apocalyptic warnings on both sides.
Once again Trump has proven his political resilience and defied predictions on the left that he could never win a majority of the American electorate. Pundits and historians will wrestle with the forces that led to his victory, but in the broadest of terms, it seems clearly rooted in a post-pandemic unease about the state of the world, the economy, and the nation’s very character. Despite his strongman bluster and bullying nature, a stubborn majority of voters — fairly or not — associated Trump with economic prosperity and global stability.
What Democrats viewed as a threat to the nation’s democratic character, Republicans embraced as an unwavering leadership to guide the nation out of chaos and decline. It will be easy to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris for running a button-downed, cramped campaign that failed to answer voters’ concerns about her abilities and policies. And indeed, perhaps she could have spoken more forcefully about stemming the migrant crisis, about resolving the Middle East war, about acknowledging the shortcomings of the Biden administration, and about the ways she might have done things differently.
But it is impossible to know whether any of that would have made a difference. It seems equally fair to credit her with running a vigorous and mostly uplifting campaign amid the disinformation, bigotry, and character assassination she endured daily. She faced extraordinary headwinds that even the most flawless campaign would have struggled to overcome: a deeply unpopular and visibly frail President Biden who declined to get out of the race until too late, leaving Harris too little time to help Americans know her better; inflation driven mainly by pandemic shutdowns, supply chain bottlenecks, and the war in Ukraine; a broad loss of faith in the assumption that the United States was the dominant power in the world.
For Republicans, this will inevitably be a time of feeling vindication and jubilation against a Democratic Party they have come to view as arrogant, entitled elitists. But they would do well to not overplay their hand. They, as much or more than Democrats, should also be prepared to insist loudly that the president-elect set aside the warlike rhetoric aimed at their fellow Americans, resist calls for political persecution of his enemies, and oppose his gleeful pledges to disregard the law.
Whatever deportation policies Trump puts into place, his victory should not open the door to extramural intimidation or even violence against law-abiding immigrants, legal or not. Urging Republicans to oppose violence against their neighbors and support the Constitution does not seem an unreasonable ask. Neither does holding Trump to his late-campaign pledges to leave abortion to the states and to protect women.
Meanwhile, the independent institutions of American democracy — Congress, the judiciary, the press — need to be ready to stand up for democratic norms if Trump attacks them, as seems likely. It would also not be unreasonable for Republicans to insist that Trump start rebuilding faith in the American electoral system that he did so much to undermine. The very same system that he claims was rigged against him when he lost in 2020 this time around elected him with a relative lack of disruption.
He should begin telling his supporters that the system worked and resist his party’s temptation to disenfranchise the urban and minority voters who opposed him. For their part, Democrats should think hard about the substantive reasons Trump prevailed. Filter out, if you can, the bluster and bigotry, and it is possible to discern Trumpian notes that clearly resonated with many voters.
The decline in American manufacturing. The need to forcefully counter an assertive China. The frustration of communities struggling with the cost of uncontrolled migration.
The futility of trying to exert American military power everywhere in the world. The dismay with a reflexive progressiveness so dominant in American universities and cultural institutions. The feeling that they have been left behind.
This will not be easy to do after an election result that, for many Democrats, seemed a rejection of all that they hold dear about their country: its democratic institutions; its commitment to civil rights; its legacy as a haven for striving immigrants. Overcoming their bitterness in order to see the legitimate hopes, aspirations, and humanity of their Trumpian neighbors is going to be difficult. But they should also recognize that the surest way back to power will be to win over some of those neighbors, not to shun them.
At some point, when both the grieving and elation die down, Americans on both sides will need to decide that they are ready to come together again as a single nation. They will need to relinquish the instinct to retreat into perpetually warring fiefdoms. The genius of the founders was that they created a system meant to accommodate conflicting factions and to bend in the winds of history without snapping.
But nothing made by man is unbreakable. The time to prevent the breaking has arrived. — Boston Globe.
