TRUMP'S COUNTRY?
Strongman politicians don't need to seize power through force, and voters may have just unknowingly ushered one in through democracy.
By Matthew Eadie — Nov. 10, 2024
AS THE NATION GRAPPLES WITH attempting to understand what took place on election day so quickly and decisively that it seemed to shock even the most knowledgeable and politically competent experts, the country and the democracy that lives in it appear frozen in disbelief.
Regardless of party affiliation, it's hard, if not impossible, to argue anyone truly expected the comprehensiveness of Tuesday's results. It was not an election Donald J. Trump eeked out by a few thousand votes in a handful of Pennsylvania counties, but instead, was an overwhelming shockwave that could be felt early in the evening at Democratic election night watch parties across the country.
It never felt or looked safe for Kamala Harris. From the first exit polls rolling in just before poll closures in the first states, American voters began declaring their mandate.
But did they actually? Not exactly. It was actually far closer than it seems. But why doesn't if feel that way?
The American people were clearly and fundamentally unhappy with an incumbent administration, even those who may have voted to continue it or something similar, plagued by a myriad of economic issues and they many more were prepared to declare an end to it. But very rarely in this country's 248-year history has so much uncertainly plagued the nation. What will a second Trump administration look like? Will he deliver on his promises? What happened to the Democratic Party? What happened to the Republican Party?
The answers all remain fundamentally unclear. They will for some time. But what is not shadowed by the dark clouds looming over nearly half of the country is the palpable fear of what could be to come.
This year, in some ways unlike others, Trump did not shutter from his positions when called out. He doubled down on them again and again. He justified them and promised to execute them. And on Tuesday, a broad and expansive coalition of support backed them. Many unknowingly indicted themselves in his endeavors and many more willingly cast aside nearly 250 years of American democratic achievements rejecting such blatant calls for authoritarianism.
His victory was decisive. Not because of broad and sweeping support for the ideological values he and his inner circle have contrived — But instead because of a fundamental failure of a Democratic Party to understand why people feel the way they do. For months, voters told us how they felt, and for months, Trump told us what he'd do if given the power to execute his agenda. The Democratic Party failed to listen to the voters for years, and so on Tuesday, enough of them turned around and handed Trump the keys to the kingdom.
In reality, the election played out not much different than many models projected it to. The polling remained close in the final month of the campaign and the results mirror many of the projections. The most likely outcome, according to experts, was a 300+ electoral vote, swing-state sweep by one of the two candidates. That's precisely what happened.
What's clear is the results beyond the presidency show is that the election was not as much of a mandate for Trump as it is a referendum against Biden and the establishment Democratic candidates. Candidates who for too long have appeared focused on a standard neoliberal agenda instead of on fundamental working-class improvements. We've seen time and again the party push out true progressive economic ideas for liberal platitudes and vague, moderate economic "reforms" that don't address the underlying and systemic issues working-class Americans have repeatedly said they have. Ignoring legitimate grievances with a neoliberal government will not win you an election with an engaged frustrated electorate.
Now, more than ever before, Americans are caught up in the sphere of politics. This is likely thanks to social media, and for many people who for so long pushed politics aside as uninteresting (young people, mostly), Trump's appeal to conservative macho-man media was a driving force of his victory.
For Democratic media strategists and party insiders stuck inside the DC beltway, it may seem silly. Anyone who's been online in the past four years knows, however, that virtually every voting-age person is now well-versed in social media. People watch YouTube, listen to podcasts and aimlessly scroll through X and TikTok. And at every turn on those platforms are appeals to populist conservative ideologies, especially for men. Media ecospheres covering hobbies young men have — Workout vlogs, video games, sports, male 'day-in-my-life' videos, history, technology, investing and financial advice — are all dominated by conservatives. Very seldom (unless you're looking for it) do you come across progressivism in those spheres of media.
And for women too, growing spheres of trad wives, homemakers and religious evangelicals are influencing beliefs of politically vulnerable and uneducated young people.
But the root of the problem doesn't fall on individual people for failing to deliver an alternative type of media. Instead, there's a deeper reason for why exactly media communities are dominated in such a way.
It falls back to 2016 and Trump winning his first term. He gained so much popularity because he was a 'populist' figure. A figure who spoke against the Republican establishment of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio (at the time), Scott Walker and all the other neoliberal conservatives who's styles dominated the Republican party since the 1980s.
In return, the everyday voters felt like both parties – The establishment Democrats dominated by the Clintons and eight years of Obama, and the establishment Republicans mentioned above — didn't speak for everyday people. And moving toward Trump was evidence of that distaste. Because he was the only one offering any sort of answer as to why working people felt the way they felt. Although, certainly a dishonest and inflammatory answer. It was an answer.
The Republican party adapted. Slowly, over the years and as terms expired, establishment Republicans who dared speak out against Trump began either losing their seats or retiring, while many more Republicans who opposed his rise in 2016 jumped on the Trump train to save their political careers. Rubio, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham. The list goes on.
Today, the party is dominated by MAGA insiders. Very few, if any, elected officials are willingly standing up to Trump in support of the "old" Republican party.
But in all this, the Democratic party seemed to double down on the idea that Trump's rise was simply a fluke. And instead of adapting to the evident popularity of populist rhetoric, whether from the right or the left, the establishment decided to continue its neoliberal approach to voters as a response to Trump's rhetoric.
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By 2020, the sanity of the country was in a free fall. Trump was unable to fully govern how he promised, in part because of the natural constraints of Washington, which he failed to take into account when preparing for office, but also because of a failed midterm election in which engaged and horrified midterm voters rejected a further push to the right two years prior. Eradicating Social Security, destroying the Affordable Care Act, banning people of certain religions from entering the country and appointing religious conservatives to courts was not popular among midterm voters.
The reality is the voters were likely to reject Trump in 2020 because of the state of the country and the environment it was in. A global pandemic forced millions into isolation, thousands more dead and a racial justice movement that galvanized support among liberals and progressives alike.
Trump was likely to lose the 2020 election regardless of who the Democratic nominee was, whether it be Biden, Bernie Sanders, or someone else. Because Trump was, like Biden was this year, an unpopular incumbent during a tumultuous time for American voters. That environment would set any political figure up for failure, and it has an incumbent reelection effort across the globe.
But in the years since Trump's electoral downfall, as he tucked away at his Mar-a-Lago club, plotting what he'd hope to be an eventual return, both parties began planning for a world without Trump.
The Republican party, in part because of midterm and general election defeats, thought (wrongly) that the post-Trump Republican party had arrived. But the problem with that though process was not that voters wouldn't accept it, because they certainly would, but that the Republican party had been purged of Trump critics. Even someone like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who poised himself as the future of the party, was only elected and reelected governor because of his staunch support of the former and now future president.
DeSantis failed at convincing a party that had indebted so much to Trump over four years that he was more capable. And as the 2024 election cycle neared, Trump began to appear as the clear candidate with the best chance of beating what had become an extraordinarily unpopular incumbent, and aging, president.
While all of this was happening, Biden was sitting in Washington attempting to rebuild a liberal consensus, convinced his victory in 2020 was not a rejection of Trump but an endowment of him instead. That the country was prepared to move forward, away from Trump, and back to a time of political normalcy.
But in launching his reelection campaign, bumpy, unclear on its vision and awfully indecisive, the president appeared unprepared to take on Trump again. He ran, in 2020, as a bridge candidate, preparing the nation for a new generation of leadership after his first term. But announcing his run for reelection forced the Democratic establishment behind him. It forced any potential presidential hopefuls — Vice President Kamala Harris, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — to back him. And it stole a potential primary election in which voters could decide the future of the party.
By March, concerns about Biden's age were prevalent of every corner of media, both mainstream and social. Discussions surrounding it dominated Fox News and CNN alike, and reporters' again and again questioned the White House, asking "Is President Biden up for the job?"
The repeated answer, "Yes, he's sharper than ever before, just watch him," was obviously not true, and by June's historically disastrous debate, the party had reached a breaking point.
Clear that Biden could not defeat Trump, who is nearing 80 himself, much less effectively campaign day in and day out, flying across the country, meeting voters, making calls, giving multiple speeches each day. But Biden defied the calls to step down, and remained in the race for another month, forcing Democrats to splinter in their support for him and erasing any sliver of a chance for a true primary.
So by the time Biden finally stepped down, the party's only real hope at success was to turn toward the person who could quickly and effectively pick up where he left off.
Kamala Harris certainly didn't run a perfect campaign. But the reality is, no Democrat could defeat Trump in 100 days, let alone one who was the sitting Vice President of a woefully unpopular incumbent. The state of the economy, although improving, was baked into voters' minds, and running on a strategy of telling voters they were essentially wrong about the economy just wouldn't fly for average Americans who's grocery bills did increase in the past four years.
Fonder memories of pre-Covid were still fresh in voters' minds, and the reality is Trump was the president during that time. Whether it could be awarded to him or not is a different question, but voters, many of whom are unengaged and ill-informed about the inner workings of Washington, let alone the American economy, simply wanted their lives to be cheaper. Trump promised they would be.
The Democratic establishment, however, was doubling down on Harris' campaign. That embracing disillusioned Republicans and highlighting successes of the Biden administration was the correct strategy. They were grossly wrong.
Voters were clear in their mandate on Tuesday — Establishment politics run by wealthy coastal elites telling people how to think is a thing of the past. Democrats aren't running against Romney anymore. This isn't 2012. Romney was an embodiment of establishment politics. Trump, at least through perception, is not.
Success for the Democratic party will come through changing both their messaging and their policy. This election was a clear indication that average American voters view standard Democrats not through their economic policies, or lack thereof, but through their support of social issues. The party has continued to embrace virtue signaling, segmenting portions of the electorate through focus-group tested surveys and Washington-based liberal strategists, forcing unpopular social phenomenons down average voters' throats.
A big question in the past few days is why Latino voters moved toward Trump. They've been moving toward Trump every election since 2016 and the answer is fairly clear. Latino voters really dislike illegal immigration. But the Democratic party seemed shocked by the shift, directing messaging to Latino voters aimed at stoking fear in them that Trump will deport them and their families. In some cases, Latino voters do have family members in the country illegally. But overwhelmingly this is not the case. They are voters, Americans and have been in the country for generations.
It's not to say the Democratic party should abandon its fundamental morals and principles, in fact, it should embrace them. But it should do so only coupled with ecmonomiclly progressive reforms that will improve the lives of everyday Americans. It is clear those policies are popular. Nearly every time economic progressive policies stand alone on the ballot — or when a candidate focuses on them when they run — they win. But when the perspective of the American electorate is that the party is more focused on not offending each other, implementing confusing virtue signals and playing identity politics at every turn, they don't seem like the party of common sense.
In turn, the Republican party, despite its blatant disregard for the rule of law, racially charged policy and overt rejection of institutional norms that have governed the country successfully for nearly 250 years, appears to be more focused on improving Americans' lives and lowering costs. Even if, and likely so, the ultimate end goal is not to do that and instead to enrich their own elites, isolate the country and create a more conservative country.
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Another key mistake the Democratic party seemingly made is a misunderstanding of who their support was in the Obama era. Obama's appeal was that effectively communicated a message the the Democratic party was the party of the working people. He did so promising economic improvements, and end to the Bush-era wars and American-focused manufacturing. Obama was, as Biden was in 2020 and Trump this year, running against an unpopular incumbent during a crisis, which helped differentiate him from other establishment candidates on both sides who didn't appeal to working people who yearned for change. Change. That was literally his whole slogan.
To be fair, the perceived "crisis" the country is facing today is far different from that of 2008 or 2020. Much of today's crisis is manufactured by conservative media, which as mentioned above, has developed into such an ecosystem that repeats falsehoods pushed by Trump and his inner circle.
The economic crisis was real, of course, but the country is on its way out of it. But the social crisis that exists in the minds of the MAGA movement and conservatives alike, that this time bled into the the homes of millions of moderates deciding whether or not to support Harris, Trump or no one, is something that Democratic party must realize if they want to regain trust of everyday Americans.
The liberal boogyman that MAGA has created is a fantasy of colorful-hair communists radicalizing children, Kamala Harris funding transgender sex-change operations on prisoners, and then putting them on soccer fields with girls. It's bussing mythical hypothetical violent illegal immigrants over the border, registering them to vote and releasing them into the streets to prey on women and children. It's all the things that could raise eyebrows of normal, everyday working people who would, understandably, hear about these things and say "what the fuck?" But at a minimum it's a complete fantasy and at a maximum a gross over exaggeration. The party, and the candidates, failed to deliver that message.
It's impossible to truly know how another candidate would've done had Harris not been the nominee and had Biden not run for reelection to begin with. It's in theory, possible to say Harris would've won a primary had there been one. But it's probably more realistic to say she would've lost. The reality is Harris was an incredibly unpopular incumbent Vice President and an unpopular candidate when she ran in 2020 — although she didn't even actually make it to 2020 because of that.
It's not to say her popularity didn't rise over the three month campaign she did run. Of course it did, and many Democrats who didn't have great opinions of her before certainly had their minds changed over the course of the campaign. But it wouldn't be fair to ignore that the Democratic party spent over $1 billion on this campaign. Part of that most certainly was aimed at increasing Harris' popularity among voters who had a negative opinion. It worked in some aspects, but for voters who weren't paying close attention to Harris until the end, more focused on the policies and the issues themselves, they felt she largely missed the message.
Part of that is because she was forced to put together a campaign in just weeks and much of the platform remained a mystery to voters as the campaign dealt with figuring out how to separate the candidate from Biden, where (politically) to run and all the logistical aspects of a presidential campaign. They missed the mark on some and along the way, forget to tell people why Harris was so different from the person over half the country had a strong distaste for.
The answer to the question eventually came through, sort of, but not clearly enough and not in enough time to make an impact on voters who were simply unhappy with the state of the economy, and with that, the country.
But one of the most important things to realize in the results of this election is that turnout wasn't actually as high as it was made out to be. Harris will likely end, when all the votes are counted, with the second most votes of any Democratic presidential candidate of all time — second only to Biden in 2020. These results indicate that Harris didn't do worse than Clinton in 2016, but that the large swaths of voters who were inspired to kick Trump aside during the botched response to COVID and the racial justice movements sweeping across the country, weren't inspired enough by a candidate who they viewed not much different than Biden.
From the reaction on social media and on TV in the days after the election, most Democratic strategists speaking about the issue seem to be realizing this. Most voters seem to recognize this. It wasn't solely about Harris (Although misogyny certainly plays a role in a shift right for some white, Black and Latino men) or the campaign she ran.
Republicans, however, don't see it that way — Or at least they aren't admitting it.
The Republican party is framing this election quite differently. Instead of taking their wins for what they are, they're indicating the victory is a note from the American people that voters approve of Trump's policies, writ large. This is simply not the case and can be disproven by simply looking at the results themselves, where over 70 million Americans rejected them. Some are circulating maps of red arrow shifts to the right across the country, but again, with the context of fewer voters in general, the graphic holds less weight.
But with power stretching across three branches of government and two houses of Congress, the results could be sweeping. Trump, in his eyes, has been given a mandate from the American people to execute his vision for the country. To begin mass deportations, to consolidate power among a and loyal small few in Washington, to appoint loyal and willing accomplices to posts throughout government. To continue his fascistic tendencies and violent rhetoric against marginalized communities, even those who voted for him in some cases. These are all things he lacked the power to do in 2016 because of his inexperience in government and because of the built-in safeguards established over 240 years. But now with a Senate full of MAGA, and a House full of MAGA, and a court full of MAGA and a government full of MAGA, the guardrails lack their structure.
This lack of a safety net is what his former staffers warned the country about for years. They were the safety net. The established Washington insiders who knew how to get stuff done and knew where the line was, albeit the line was much further away than liberals would wish it were. He had, in 2016, people who were willing, at times, to stand up to him and hold him to account. He purged those people throughout his first administration. And he admitted, shockingly, that his biggest regret was not knowing who to hire the first time. He vowed in a second administration, he wouldn't hire those types of people.
So we should expect so guardrails. No one willing to stand up to him if he approaches the line. No one to question his judgement or his decisions. He seeks loyalty in his staff and expects it from his supporters. And he believes the American people have given him the thumbs up.
He told us what he would do if given a second opportunity. There is no reason not to believe him.
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