Election Redux or Elections Have Consequences

I have been on the phone with people all morning about last night’s election. Right now, it seems surreal. It seems like it’s not real. I was up late last night. I ended my live on YouTube around midnight Eastern Time, and I finally slept at 2 a.m. when Pennsylvania calls began coming through. This morning, I woke up to the New York Times calling it for President-Elect Trump. Trump has become the only 2nd president in US history to serve non-consecutive terms. I want to talk about what I’m hearing so far and how I think this is all going to shake out.

A Peaceful Transfer of Power

One of the nice things about this situation is that we are practically guaranteed a peaceful transfer of power and no court cases that drag this out for weeks on end. Obviously, the final counts won’t come in until the weekend and early next week, but we no longer have to fear an explosion in the country over the election.

It’s the Economy Stupid

Obviously, there’s an economic message here. The reality is that the cost of living has skyrocketed 20-25% over the past four years, and concerns about that were the biggest thing I heard going into the election. This means, of course, that no one will ever spend $5 Trillion on helping people during a national crisis because it will cause inflation, and voters don’t like inflation or prices going up. The reality is that inflation was going to happen no matter what, but as one friend told me, “We should have let Trump win in 2020 so inflation would be on him instead of on Biden.”

Immigration

This is an issue that the GOP loves to haul out every election season. Trump getting Congress to drop the issue earlier this year paid off big time. He was able to run on migrants taking over cities. Trump made big gains among Latino voters and Harris lost ground as compared to Biden but even compared to Clinton. Back in 2009, I said that Latinos were the future of the Republican party, and in 2024, I was proven to be correct on that point. Although Harris won that vote share, it was by a slim majority, especially with Men with only 51% (CNN number). Exiting polling data shows that many Latino voters, upon hearing Trump’s comments about mass deportations of illegal immigrants, did not think he was talking about them and still felt comfortable voting for him.

Gaza and Palestine

I really hope that all those who were “not voting for genocide” are happy today because under no circumstances will Trump do anything about what is happening in Gaza. Israel will have a full green light to go ahead and bomb Gaza until it is flat. Some folks will escape to the West Bank, but I doubt Trump will bother with a two-state solution. There will not be a state for Palestinians. Instead, they will simply be absorbed into Israel or neighboring countries.

White Voters

Despite my firm prediction that abortion would be the specter of this election, Trump pulled away from it, and his political instincts (unmatched these days) were entirely correct. White voters moved over to him in massive numbers. The white male vote, which put him out of power in 2020, moved back to him in a big way with a 57% vote share, and also White women with 51% of the vote share. Add all that together, and you have a winning combination. I wrote about white racial consciousness back in 2016, and I stand by that. Given how some of the abortion amendments passed successfully, it appears that abortion was not the mover that we hoped for, but rather, people did not want to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Candidates…

When Biden decided to leave the race in July and endorse Harris, I told friends at the time, “You do not swap out a candidate in the middle of an election cycle and win; they just lost the election.” Everyone thought I was crazy, and most folks thought that a fresh face was just what was needed. It was clear the country was tired of Trump/Biden, a repeat, and they thought that a new face was just what was needed. After a few weeks, I thought perhaps I didn’t understand. I thought that it could be different this time. It appears I should have gone with my first feeling on the matter. Let’s not forget. Kamala Harris ran an unsuccessful campaign in 2020 and dropped out early.

On top of that, she was an unpopular Vice President and most people thought she was a bit of a do-nothing until earlier this year when she finally seemed to understand the job of being Vice President. She was an unlikely choice, and rumor holds that neither Nancy Pelosi nor Barack Obama were interested in going with her and instead wanted an open convention where the right person could be chosen. As we remember, many names were thrown around at the time.

The Democrats have run two female candidates in two of the last three cycles, and I doubt any woman with aspirations to the White House will have much support from now on. It will be different for the GOP, and our first female president may be Republican. But even the GOP has to look at these numbers and not be encouraged. America has spoken, but the country does not seem interested in voting for a woman to run the country. Women, in particular, don’t seem to be interested in voting for a woman to run the country.

My Thoughts

I will wrap up with this. I am not surprised that Trump won again. It was going to be a close race either way. I am surprised that Trump and the GOP ran the field with both the House and the Senate. I’m surprised that they managed to achieve unified government coming out of this. All the polls were resoundingly wrong, including Anne Selzer and her Iowa poll. The only people who seem to have gotten this right were Nate Silver and Nate Cohn. It is rather shocking that the country, which did not seem to be moving so far right, has lurched right and given Trump and the GOP a mandate and the power to implement it. I doubt much of Project 2025 will get implemented, but I do worry about who he will arrest (journalists), and I do worry about the crackdowns on everything he doesn’t like. Whatever he wants now, he will get it, and there will be no resistance. We are going to lose a lot of people to apathy and even more to ignorance. Voter turnout was down by 15 million votes, and some say that’s because 2020 was stolen and those were “fake votes,” and now we have an election with “real votes” despite the fact Trump’s own investigators didn’t find all these fake votes.

I am numb but not surprised. I am shocked about Congress, and I fear for our country today.