This time, Americans elected Donald Trump with their eyes wide open

For many of the Americans who are not supporters, hurts. Deeply. More so than before.

The common thread I’ve heard from American progressive friends is the sense that while Trump’s election victory in 2016 was a shock, this one was more frightening to them — and more depressing because this time, no one can claim to be surprised by what Trump is or what he winds up doing. This time — after the impeachment trials and the child separation policy and the events of Jan. 6, after his criminal conviction and a civil trial that found him liable for sexual abuse, after a campaign based on mass deportations and promising to weaponize the government against his opponents — everyone had gone into this campaign with their eyes wide open.



They believe their fellow citizens know full well what Trump is about. And they voted to return to it. Clearly there’s another side: Trump voters themselves, more than half of the electorate, who are overjoyed and feeling a sense of triumph today.

Biden was deeply unpopular, and Trump’s following, now familiar from his rallies and years of reporting, is made up in large numbers of less educated and rural Americans — people who feel the changing world of urban sophisticates is leaving them behind. People who feel they’ve struck a rare blow against the powers that be by electing an untameable angry man to lead them. There are more of those voters than ever before, and their electoral endorsement is stronger now than in 2016.

Votes are still being counted, but as of Wednesday afternoon Trump appeared to have won the popular vote ( ) for the first time in his history as a candidate. In states that supported him in the past, such as Texas and Florida, his margins grew larger. In states that have never supported him, such as New York and Virginia, he narrowed the gap.

There are seven states considered battlegrounds, and by Wednesday, Trump had won five of them and led the vote counts in the other two. He flipped the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that Joe Biden had won in 2020. He also flipped Georgia and held North Carolina.

He was leading in Arizona and Nevada. As of Wednesday afternoon, he had secured 292 electoral college votes — only 270 are required to win — and it seemed possible that he could reach as many as 312, which would exceed the 306 votes he got in 2016 (and the 306 that Biden won in 2020). What’s more, Trump’s Republican party flipped control of the Senate, taking a 52-43 edge with five races still to be called .

Control of the House of Representatives remained up for grabs Wednesday, but Republicans held 201 seats — 17 shy of a majority — to the Democrats’ 184, with 50 races still to be called. Even considering the issue Democrats thought might be decisive for them, access to abortion, many voters who agreed with them clearly voted for Trump, who has bragged about appointing the judges who overturned Roe v. Wade.

In Missouri and Montana, for example, majorities of voters passed ballot measures enshrining abortion protections in their state constitutions, but roughly 58 per cent in each state marked the same ballots for Trump. Any American progressive engaging in DIY punditry, trying to dissect the results and reassure themselves about the motives of their fellow citizens, could look at the dismal polling numbers for Biden and the economy, and the “wrong direction” sentiment across the country, and say this was always going to be a “throw the bums out” election. That given those fundamentals, a generic Republican candidate might have won even more decisively.

Given the unique nature of Trump’s appeal to some non-traditional voting blocks and the political “realignment” some say he has inspired, it’s not clear if this is true. But even if it is, Trump is not a generic Republican. He is, in the view of Democrats and many others, uniquely objectionable.

The Democrats, indeed, made that the central argument of their campaign. Trump tried to overthrow the government! His former chief of staff says he’s a fascist! He is a convicted felon! And still, a majority voted for him. There is every reason to believe that this time around, Trump will be more effective at accomplishing his more extreme goals than he was in his first term.

Last time, he was unfamiliar with Washington and appointed experienced politicians and military leaders who often thwarted his attempts to defy the rule of law . He has promised to learn from that mistake. This time, he will have a Supreme Court majority which has already ruled that, as president, he’d be immune from much prosecution.

He will have a Senate majority. It appears possible he’ll have a majority in the House of Representatives too. And so, what should we expect from those Americans who did not support him, those feeling so bereft at the verdict of their fellow citizens? In 2016, Trump’s election inspired near-immediate and widespread resistance: the , the legal and protest backlash to his immigration restrictions, the “never Trump” bloc of Republicans who mobilized against him.

There was something energizing to many opponents about the shock of the 2016 election. No doubt some activists and political opponents will try to mobilize again, and in the days and months to come they may succeed. But what I am hearing in the immediate aftermath of the election is something less hopeful.

It is exhaustion. And it is despair. By now, the threat they see posed by Trump is absolutely clear to everyone.

And Americans elected him by an even larger margin. Eyes wide open..