Leroy N. Soetoro
2024-11-16 22:47:21 UTC
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/06/donald-trump-election-
humiliated-his-foes-00187812
Donald Trump didnt steal the 2024 election. He has won it clearly and
comprehensively.
Democrats warned that Trump and his supporters are prepared to hijack
democracy. Now they must ruefully acknowledge another reality: The Trump
movement, no matter how much this appalls opponents, is a powerful
expression of democracy.
Vice President Kamala Harris may have been an imperfect candidate the
postmortems are vigorously underway on Wednesday morning but she
delivered the essential Democratic argument perfectly well: The Trump
Era was something to be scraped off the national shoe.
Instead, there will be another helping placed on the national plate. His
adversaries dont have to pretend it tastes good. But, for now, they
need to eat it.
It is not Harris alone who must reckon with the reality that Trump
responded to the national mood more credibly for a larger share of
Americans than she did. (For now, he is on track to win the popular vote
as well as a solid Electoral College victory.) Trump is anathema to a
solid majority of college graduates, including to large numbers of
conservatives and traditional Republicans. These voters send their
children to campuses where Trump revulsion is an article of faith. The
news media broadly concluded that the gravity of Trumps threat to
American norms including the fact that he is a convicted felon meant
doing away with weasel words like misled and instead flatly called him
a liar and a would-be despot.
Tuesday night gave an answer to how much the politics of denunciation
would dilute Trumps support. And it posed a new question to his
opponents: Now what?
2024 surely must persuade the last doubters of something that was
evident to Trump partisans from the moment he first sent his
presidential ambitions aloft in 2015: He is not simply a celebrity
candidate but the leader of a political movement.
The distinction is important. Conventional politicians can see their
careers wilt in a moment before controversies and setbacks. Movement
leaders rare figures in American history draw their energy from deep
wellsprings of cultural identity, grievance and aspiration. Like a
hurricane over tropical waters, they actually grow stronger from
controversies and setbacks.
Lets illustrate the difference in typologies right here. Trump lost the
2020 election and was impeached for interfering with the peaceful
transfer of power, and all along never lost his grip on the Republican
Party. Harris is now awaiting only the right moment to publicly
acknowledge that she has lost the 2024 election. At the moment it looks
likely she will not win any of the seven main swing states. How many of
the Democrats who embraced her 48 hours ago will be ready to back her if
she decides to run again in 2028? Almost certainly she is a one-and-done
proposition.
That Trump represents a movement rather than a flukish convergence of
circumstances is what politicians as astute as former Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell missed about him.
He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, McConnell said of
Trump in the hours after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The
quote, from the book This Will Not Pass by my colleagues Jonathan
Martin and Alexander Burns, made plain that McConnell thought Trump was
done and that establishment Republicans like himself did not need to
do anything more to facilitate the process. The Democrats are going to
take care of the son of a bitch for us.
Well, no.
McConnell will hear no taunting from me. A month after the 2020 election
but a month before the riot, I wrote a column entitled, Relax, A Trump
Comeback in 2024 Is Not Going To Happen. After January 6, a political
operative I respect who had been skeptical of the column when it
published called me with a word of praise: Well, that was one of the
smarter columns you will ever write. Actually, it will count as one of
the dumbest.
But I did have a theory of the case for my view. It was that Trump
represented a particular American type of politician from George
Wallace to Joe McCarthy or, more benignly, Ross Perot. These figures tap
authentic currents of grievance against elites and politics as usual.
They typically have moments when they streak like a comet across the
sky, causing conventional politicians to cower and tremble. Then these
populist renegades rapidly fade away because they dont really resonate
with the deeper dimensions of American character.
In this view, the enthusiasm for such figures is the equivalent of a
trip to Las Vegas. People get wild for a weekend, and even do things
that might cause them shame in other circumstances. Then they return
home to their ordinary lives.
What this election shows is that, unlike what McConnell and I once
believed, Trump profoundly does resonate with deeper dimensions of
American character.
What is now a central part of this character is what I have called the
Contempt Paradox: People are drawn to Trump and the contempt he
expresses toward his opponents, especially liberal politicians and the
news media, precisely because of the contempt he draws in return. This
is the through line of his politics.
The implications are stark. For a significant portion of his supporters,
he didnt win in 2016 in spite of his notorious remark to Access
Hollywood about grabbing women by their private parts, or in 2024 in
spite of his election denialism. He won in some measure because of these
things and the indignation they inspired.
Now, however, there is a new challenge for Trump. Much of his political
energy comes from victimhood the perception that he is valiantly
fighting back against entrenched forces. How does that work now, in
light of the reality that he has unambiguously bested those forces? A
movement politician has made himself the first politician to return to
the White House after losing it since the 1892 election of Grover
Cleveland, who was distinctly not a movement politician or a cult of
personality.
We are in for a new chapter of Trumps career, and a new chapter in the
American presidency.
--
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.
The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and
eradicated.
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
humiliated-his-foes-00187812
Donald Trump didnt steal the 2024 election. He has won it clearly and
comprehensively.
Democrats warned that Trump and his supporters are prepared to hijack
democracy. Now they must ruefully acknowledge another reality: The Trump
movement, no matter how much this appalls opponents, is a powerful
expression of democracy.
Vice President Kamala Harris may have been an imperfect candidate the
postmortems are vigorously underway on Wednesday morning but she
delivered the essential Democratic argument perfectly well: The Trump
Era was something to be scraped off the national shoe.
Instead, there will be another helping placed on the national plate. His
adversaries dont have to pretend it tastes good. But, for now, they
need to eat it.
It is not Harris alone who must reckon with the reality that Trump
responded to the national mood more credibly for a larger share of
Americans than she did. (For now, he is on track to win the popular vote
as well as a solid Electoral College victory.) Trump is anathema to a
solid majority of college graduates, including to large numbers of
conservatives and traditional Republicans. These voters send their
children to campuses where Trump revulsion is an article of faith. The
news media broadly concluded that the gravity of Trumps threat to
American norms including the fact that he is a convicted felon meant
doing away with weasel words like misled and instead flatly called him
a liar and a would-be despot.
Tuesday night gave an answer to how much the politics of denunciation
would dilute Trumps support. And it posed a new question to his
opponents: Now what?
2024 surely must persuade the last doubters of something that was
evident to Trump partisans from the moment he first sent his
presidential ambitions aloft in 2015: He is not simply a celebrity
candidate but the leader of a political movement.
The distinction is important. Conventional politicians can see their
careers wilt in a moment before controversies and setbacks. Movement
leaders rare figures in American history draw their energy from deep
wellsprings of cultural identity, grievance and aspiration. Like a
hurricane over tropical waters, they actually grow stronger from
controversies and setbacks.
Lets illustrate the difference in typologies right here. Trump lost the
2020 election and was impeached for interfering with the peaceful
transfer of power, and all along never lost his grip on the Republican
Party. Harris is now awaiting only the right moment to publicly
acknowledge that she has lost the 2024 election. At the moment it looks
likely she will not win any of the seven main swing states. How many of
the Democrats who embraced her 48 hours ago will be ready to back her if
she decides to run again in 2028? Almost certainly she is a one-and-done
proposition.
That Trump represents a movement rather than a flukish convergence of
circumstances is what politicians as astute as former Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell missed about him.
He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, McConnell said of
Trump in the hours after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The
quote, from the book This Will Not Pass by my colleagues Jonathan
Martin and Alexander Burns, made plain that McConnell thought Trump was
done and that establishment Republicans like himself did not need to
do anything more to facilitate the process. The Democrats are going to
take care of the son of a bitch for us.
Well, no.
McConnell will hear no taunting from me. A month after the 2020 election
but a month before the riot, I wrote a column entitled, Relax, A Trump
Comeback in 2024 Is Not Going To Happen. After January 6, a political
operative I respect who had been skeptical of the column when it
published called me with a word of praise: Well, that was one of the
smarter columns you will ever write. Actually, it will count as one of
the dumbest.
But I did have a theory of the case for my view. It was that Trump
represented a particular American type of politician from George
Wallace to Joe McCarthy or, more benignly, Ross Perot. These figures tap
authentic currents of grievance against elites and politics as usual.
They typically have moments when they streak like a comet across the
sky, causing conventional politicians to cower and tremble. Then these
populist renegades rapidly fade away because they dont really resonate
with the deeper dimensions of American character.
In this view, the enthusiasm for such figures is the equivalent of a
trip to Las Vegas. People get wild for a weekend, and even do things
that might cause them shame in other circumstances. Then they return
home to their ordinary lives.
What this election shows is that, unlike what McConnell and I once
believed, Trump profoundly does resonate with deeper dimensions of
American character.
What is now a central part of this character is what I have called the
Contempt Paradox: People are drawn to Trump and the contempt he
expresses toward his opponents, especially liberal politicians and the
news media, precisely because of the contempt he draws in return. This
is the through line of his politics.
The implications are stark. For a significant portion of his supporters,
he didnt win in 2016 in spite of his notorious remark to Access
Hollywood about grabbing women by their private parts, or in 2024 in
spite of his election denialism. He won in some measure because of these
things and the indignation they inspired.
Now, however, there is a new challenge for Trump. Much of his political
energy comes from victimhood the perception that he is valiantly
fighting back against entrenched forces. How does that work now, in
light of the reality that he has unambiguously bested those forces? A
movement politician has made himself the first politician to return to
the White House after losing it since the 1892 election of Grover
Cleveland, who was distinctly not a movement politician or a cult of
personality.
We are in for a new chapter of Trumps career, and a new chapter in the
American presidency.
--
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.
The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and
eradicated.
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.