Reckoning with reality
Reflections on the disconnect between my personal hopes and the nation's choice to return Donald Trump to the White House.
In the midst of my befuddlement and disappointment, I’ve struggled with how to write about the Presidential election.
One point of clarity: I’m not a very good political prognosticator. In fact, I’m really bad at it.
As you might recall, three weeks ago I predicted that Donald Trump would lose. I provocatively entitled my column “Trump’s a loser (again).”
I was blinded by my fatigued, fervent desire that Trump simply go away—and I was naive enough to think enough Americans were so turned off by Trump’s odious character that it would be enough for Kamala Harris to win.
I was evidently out of touch with that part of America so dissatisfied with the Democratic Party and/or Harris and/or the price of eggs and milk, and/or any number of things.
How many Trump voters were voting for him, and how many were voting against Harris? My vote, frankly, was more against Trump than for Harris.
Along the way, I misjudged how much—well, how little—weight a majority of fellow Americans would assign to Trump’s racism, misogyny, criminality, lack of integrity, lack of character, and all-around and indisputable awfulness.1
In the days leading up to the election, despite the “dead heat” polling numbers, my confidence in Harris’s chances soared. Well, it was more like nauseously optimistic, a play on “cautiously optimistic” that had recently emerged in political commentary.
As a fiercely independent voter2 I’m no born-again believer in the Democratic Party, which absolutely bungled matters by circling wagons for too long around President Joe Biden rather than seeking a nominee through the usual primary campaign process.
Flawed as Democratic leadership has been in so many respects, I was wholly unprepared for Tuesday’s turn of events. We couldn’t possibly put back into the Oval Office a person rated the Worst American President of All-Time.
Check out the audacity of my hope that morning, when I posted this on Facebook:
Most didn’t share my level of confidence—certainly nothing like the 95% (21 of 22 people) who took my poll three weeks ago (see below). See, I’m not the only Not-So-Nostradamus on these pages!
By the time I went to sleep shortly after midnight, the vote totals showed that Trump voters turned out in numbers similar to 2020, whereas the drop-off from Biden’s 81 million in 2020 to Harris this week was over 10 million. A startling number stayed on the sidelines.
I was tempted to simply delete my original Facebook post. Instead, I added this remark to the comments that had been flowing in response to that post for over 12 hours:
10% confidence level in a Harris win now. We will see how the final numbers roll in....godspeed to all!
When I woke up Wednesday morning, I saw that Trump’s Swing State Sweep hadn’t been a nightmare. His win was confirmed.
God help us.3
It might seem extreme and narrow-minded for me to use “indisputable” in this description. I’m saving you years and millions upon millions of words of reading by not going into the weeds on this. Also: it’s quite possible you can find those details elsewhere.
I’m now 10-for-10 in casting my votes for President. I’ve voted for Democrats multiple times (starting with my original stomping grounds of Massachusetts’ longtime governor, Michael Dukakis, in 1988). I’ve also opted for Republicans multiple times (take a bow, Dole, W and McCain). And, yes, I’ve even gone the third-party route once (I’ll keep you guessing on that one).
A recurring message from others that I’ve appreciated in this Election Post-Mortem period: the serenity prayer, which I learned as a kid and have sought to embrace ever since.
This year always felt to me more like 2016. What I mean is that my left leaning friends were very vocal and even pushy about their choice. They loudly stated their claim. My right leaning friends were pissed. They wouldn't write much, but they would specifically call out things that upset them over the past few years. Though I felt Trump would win in my gut, I didn't even answer your poll I don't think because I learned a long time ago that what I think is often not in line with what most think.
NY Democrat Ritchie Torres said in a Tweet: "Donald Trump has no greater friend than the far left, which has managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party with absurdities like “Defund the Police” or “From the River to the Sea” or “Latinx.”
For me, in addition to that, is where the crime and the tone deafness on many cultural issues is. Forcing people to abandon ICE vehicles or natural gas cooking are deal killers. And being done by unelected bureaucrats to boot. Oh some of it may pass, for a bit, until people actually figure out the cost. I always believed the general public will self correct though I doubted that this time. I said to my very liberal cousin back in 2015 when he was talking about all the forced changes coming on the climate front, "all it takes, is one election."
There will be many takes in the coming years. I personally believe every citizen is pretty much on the same page though. They want good opportunities, a safe community and a good job, stable family and all those American pie things. Another hot take: after the past few years many of the younger voters may have become more right leaning than they ordinarily may have. Especially the Hispanics who were thought to guarantee so many future wins for the Dems. Look up their social values and you'll see why that isn't necessarily so. So, so much to chat about and disagree or agree about. One thing is for certain, the US will continue to evolve year to year and decade to decade.
We need group therapy. From the history of your votes, I'm guessing you emphasize character. McCain was certainly a pro-character vote. Dole and GWB were running against Clinton, who had the reputation of playing fast and loose, and was impeached. Dole also had a sort of irrepressible honesty, politician though he was.
For those who voted for Trump, of course, where would one start in critiquing their vote? But the reason they shouldn't have voted for him, and in my dream world, what Harris would have said as she passed the torch to Trump on behalf of the Biden administration, was to make a plea that he, first of all, exercise a modicum of responsibility, and second of all, subject all of his decisions to the test of tolerance. On the first, a president SHOULD lose sleep at night worrying about the impact of what he does, both in terms of lives lost, and the potentially devastating consequences down the road, when it comes to something like global warming. There is no indication that Trump does this, or has this sense. Trump cannot be trusted to do the very basic things that any steward, indeed anyone given responsibility in any job, needs to be trusted to do. Then, a president should always bend in the direction of tolerance, and whenever any of his decisions are inconsistent with it, we should throw into question the wisdom and the safety of the decision.
With effort, responsibility and tolerance are possible. We know he will not find them and take them on, but there is no reason he theoretically couldn't. Where it is hopeless, where it is beyond pleas, is on the score of judgment. His is impaired. This does more broadly encompass not knowing right from wrong. There is truly no amount of alcohol that could give someone judgment as bad as Trump's.
I believe all presidents and candidates can be assessed on responsibility, tolerance, trust, and judgment, on whether they pass those tests. All presidents need to have at least an adequate level, and whether we like their politics or not, most do. For some presidents there are interesting arguments on each of these, but Trump simply inhabits a different landscape. I would submit that he ranks last on each of these values, compared to all of our other presidents.