It was clear, going into this election, {that a} nation damaged sufficient to elect Donald Trump as soon as is unquestionably damaged sufficient to take action once more. Anybody who didn’t assume so was deluding themselves. And but, his commanding victory over Kamala Harris continues to be a shock to the conscience. We all know how dangerous Trump was in his first time period, and he is made clear how a lot worse he’d be in a second. However the voting public gave it to him anyway.
Not solely did Trump maintain onto his base of assist, regardless of his parade of infinite private and political scandal; he expanded it, showing to make features in blue strongholds like New York and amongst voting blocs which have historically been seen as reliably Democratic, together with Hispanic and youthful voters. He didn’t do it by softening his message, or broadening his enchantment; he plated up much more poisonous slop than he did in his earlier campaigns, and hundreds of thousands of People determined they needed one other serving to.
In contrast to his 2016 victory, by which he prevailed within the Electoral Faculty regardless of dropping the favored vote, Trump’s 2024 win can’t be dismissed as a fluke of the system or pinned on James Comey or Vladimir Putin or Hillary Clinton not going to Michigan. Certainly, Trump is on monitor to win the favored vote, the primary Republican to take action since 2004 and solely the second to take action since 1988. He didn’t luck into the presidency this time; People selected this.
Not all People, in fact. Almost half the citizens forged ballots in opposition to him—and much more might need if Democrats weren’t dealing with brutal international headwinds for incumbents, or in the event that they hadn’t weakened their very own electoral prospects by way of a sequence of blunders and misreads that shall be argued over within the days and weeks and months forward. Trump’s success, on this regard, is an catastrophic strategic failure by the Democratic Occasion.
However the mandate Trump and the Republicans got Tuesday—and it is a mandate—can also be an announcement about what America is itself. It was potential, in 2020, to hope that Trump was an aberration. However in 2024, it’s exhausting to not come to the conclusion that the nation is rather more right-wing, rather more cynical, and rather more nihilistic than many people want to imagine.
It’s price combating to alter that—and nonetheless potential, regardless of the facility Trump is about to inherit and the methods he’s pledged to wield it. However we’ll must reckon with the truth of the place we truly stand. Way more of the nation is Trump Nation now.
