What Just Happened?
Part the Second: Why Donald Trump Won
Having offered my thoughts on the reasons for Kamala Harris’s loss to the Prince of the Golden Escalator, I turn now to the reasons why Donald Trump won.
Let it first be stipulated that Trump ain’t no nice guy. Full disclosure: I voted for him. But I don’t kid myself. In many ways, he’s a bad man. In this assessment, I was far from alone among those who cast their ballots for Trump. And that’s a good place from which to embark on an analysis of why he won.
It Wasn’t About Trump: True, the MAGA base turned out for their champion. But Donald Trump wouldn’t be president-elect but for the fact that a lot of other Americans, with a variety of views on him, some decidedly negative, also voted for him. What was up with that?
Most of those voters have no great affection for Trump. Many of them actively dislike him for his vulgarity, his mendacity, his mercurial temperament. But the issues they cared about—inflation, the border crisis, law and order—were the issues that Trump was hammering home. They compared what he was saying to the dismal record of the Biden Administration and the vacuity of the Harris campaign. Their conclusion was that Trump could hardly do worse.
The Luck of the Devil: No American politician in modern times has been more fortunate in his enemies than Donald Trump. No sooner did Joe Biden seat himself behind the Resolute Desk than he set about laying the groundwork for a Trump restoration. First, Biden broke the border. Then he went on an inflationary spending spree. Then he engineered the Greatest Airlift in History, also known as Joe’s Afghanistan Skedaddle. And then, amid the politically radioactive fallout from all these blunders, Biden began to lose his marbles. And what did the Democrats do? They tried to cover up the President’s accelerating decline.
In short, the case for Trump was made by those who hate him most.
Bratgirl Bad: For just a moment, however, the Dems thought they’d dodged a bullet. When Biden imploded during his debate with Trump, they gave him the bum’s rush and elevated Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket. The Promise of Joy beckoned. But Harris turned out to be a large-caliber dud. I’ve already detailed her many deficiencies, so there’s no need to list them here.
A Theory of Relativity: Yes, it could be argued that Trump too was a lousy candidate. Compared to whom, though? Sure, Josh Shapiro could have beaten him. Or Gretchen Whitmer. Or Gavin Newsome. But if Trump was a lousy candidate, Kamala Harris was lousier. He didn’t have to be better than some member of the Democratic Party Dream Team. He just had to be better than her. And as things turned out, that wasn’t too much of a stretch.
Lawfare Lunacy: Bar only the Biden Administration’s gross incompetence, nothing did more to facilitate Trump’s restoration than the criminal and civil proceedings in which the Left tried to enmesh him. That those cases were politically motivated was only too obvious, and with the passage of time fewer and fewer people took them seriously.
No one was fooled by the pretense that the federal cases against Trump were in the hands of an “independent counsel”: It was obvious to all that the Biden Justice Department was going after the President’s political rival. In the various New York state cases, the bias was laughably obvious, and when Alvin Bragg obtained a conviction on thirty-plus bogus felony counts—Trump’s campaign got a big boost. At the end of the day, lawfare didn’t even muss his hair.
Fascism Follies: The charge that Donald Trump is a toxic amalgam of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Vlad the Impaler was always fanciful, and its credibility dwindled with every repetition. But though hardly anybody outside the fever swamps of the Left bought this narrative, the comrades persisted with it. An apotheosis of sorts was achieved when Michael Beschloss, former historian of the American presidency turned MSNBC pundit, claimed that if elected, Trump would prevent historians from writing books. Let’s just say if there’s a case to be made that Trump has authoritarian tendencies posing a threat to “our democracy,” that kind of crazy talk is not the way to make it.
Demography is Destiny: Remember the theory of the emerging Democratic majority? Well, a new majority has emerged, all right. It’s a populist rainbow majority, fed up with the Rule of the Saints. Those voters delivered a stark and unmistakable judgement on Democratic progressivism: Take your post-nominal initials, take your pronouns, take your snobbish elitism, take your patronizing attitudes—and shove the whole package.
There were political, economic, and cultural dimensions to this decisive turn away from postmodern progressivism. Though the results aren’t in yet, it appears that among American Jews, 10/7 and its aftermath changed many minds. Hispanic Americans reminded the CRT gang that they’re not just “brown people” or “Latinx,” but a diverse group of proud Americans. Even Native Americans went with Trump, by a better than sixty-forty margin.
The Greatest Show on Earth: So much, then, for the environmental factors that facilitated Donald Trump’s victory. But the lion’s share of the credit goes to the candidate himself. For all his flaws Trump’s instincts guided him into the winner’s circle. He gave voice to all the simmering discontents that Democratic progressivism had long refused to acknowledge—and he did so with the panache of a showman. The effectiveness of his McDonald’s campaign stunt was made all the more obvious by the sour, fuming way that Democrats and the media responded to it. When Joe Biden toddled out to denounce Trump supporters as “garbage,” Trump showed up in a garbage truck, wearing an orange safety vest. Again his opponents fumed—but most Americans got a kick out of it. Whatever else may be said about him, Donald Trump knows how to put on a show.
What will happen after he strolls back into the Oval Office remains to be seen, of course. Election-year rhetoric and campaign stunts are one thing; governing is something else again. In an earlier article I opined that whichever candidate won on Election Day, it would be a misfortune for America and the world. I stand by that assessment. The choice presented to Americans in 2024 was between bad and worse. They decided that while Donald Trump is bad, Kamala Harris would have been worse. Now comes the reality check.
I'm not sure what you mean by "bad man", but Trump was given to hyperbole-best this, worst that and making promises on taxes that likely won't happen and are, in my opinion, bad. No tax on tips, overtime and just maybe social security.
Trump is a bad man because he attempts to do what he says he wants to do. That's got to scare the hell out of the regulatory state.
It's beginning ot look like Ole Slow Joe took his ouster with an FU to the Democrat Party with his quick approval of Karmeller followed up by a double bird with his garbage skype in the middle of Harris rally outside the White House.
Now all we have to discover is that there are Republicans with the guts to govern on what they campaigned on.
Bob