Trump’s Reelection

◼ Donald Trump’s reelection to the presidency is an astonishing political achievement. After an interregnum at Mar-a-Lago following the Capitol riot in January 2021, Trump set out to rebuild his political strength. That he did so in convincing fashion has been demonstrated by Tuesday night’s results. Trump overcame his election loss in 2020, his disgraceful conduct in the aftermath, a concerted and abusive effort by Democrats to prosecute him into political oblivion, and unremittingly hostile press coverage. Trump nonetheless swept the battleground states and is well-positioned to win the popular vote, an achievement that eluded him in 2016. This time, his coalition was broader and more racially diverse than in the last two elections. His comeback is more impressive than Richard Nixon’s in 1968. Grover Cleveland’s election to a nonconsecutive term in 1892 pales in comparison. But in politics, every victory is seeded with the potential for hubris and therefore a fall. Trump’s remarkable comeback will make him less inclined than ever to heed advice. He should still realize that he isn’t personally popular (public polling shows that many of his voters still disapprove of him) and that his victory was in large part a repudiation of Joe Biden (and of Kamala Harris, noted parenthetically here, as history will likely characterize her as well). Trump now has his four more years. We hope he uses them well.

◼ Trump “did not suddenly transform the Republican Party into the multiracial alliance of working-class voters,” the New York Times assured its readers in the wake of the former president’s victory. “But he nudged it in that direction.” It will take several weeks before all the votes are counted and exit polling properly reflects the makeup of the electorate, but the data we have are highly suggestive. Trump won the support of 46 percent of Latino voters, surpassing George W. Bush’s 2004 high-water mark for a Republican. Thirty-eight percent of Asian voters backed Trump, a nine-point shift from 2016. About 13 percent of black voters supported Trump, up slightly from 2020. But about one in five black men voted for Trump this time. Any more such “nudges,” and the Democratic party will collapse entirely.

◼ Democrats are experiencing the natural temptation to wish away the reality that Americans had creditable reasons for rejecting their candidates and policy preferences. Their rationalizations range from the unconvincing to the wildly uncharitable. Some have toyed with the notion that Americans have become ensorcelled by misinformation and disinformation, much of it from bad actors abroad. Others castigated the non-white voters who gravitated toward the Republican coalition only to “chase model minority status,” as the Nation correspondent Elie Mystal alleged. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough suggested that American misogyny, including among non-whites, had a lot to do with Kamala Harris’s loss, to say nothing of interracial hostilities. “A lot of Hispanic voters have problems with black candidates,” he speculated, only twelve years after America’s first black president won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote. Some declined to delve into the particulars and blamed America writ large for its failure to embrace Harris. Hers was a “historic, flawlessly run campaign,” MSNBC host Joy Reid reported from a parallel universe—which may be where some of these partisans plan to win future elections.

◼ Democrats invented the word “Bidenomics” to talk about their economic agenda in the current administration. It entailed government spending to subsidize demand for specific goods, such as electric vehicles and college education, and to boost aggregate demand with budget deficits. Democrats wanted to “run the economy hot” to achieve tight labor markets, especially for low-income workers. Industrial policy through the CHIPS Act, the infrastructure law, and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act was targeted to boost manufacturing and government projects. The results were sufficiently unpopular that by the start of this year, “Bidenomics” had become a cudgel used by conservative opponents of the administration. When Democrats replaced Biden with Harris, they had an opportunity to also replace his economic policy with a new one. They didn’t. Harris ran on Bidenomics-but-bigger, and according to exit polls, lost the 32 percent of voters who said the economy was their most important issue by 61 points. Despite four years of coordinated PR efforts to make big government popular, Americans would still rather keep more of their money and decide how to spend it on their own.

◼ At this writing, Republicans have gained four Senate seats, taking control of the upper chamber and bringing their Senate caucus to 53. Republicans held all of their own seats and flipped West Virginia, replacing the retiring Joe Manchin with Governor Jim Justice; ousted incumbents in Montana (where Tim Sheehy defeated Jon Tester) and Ohio (where Bernie Moreno defeated Sherrod Brown); and have beaten another incumbent in Pennsylvania (where Dave McCormick defeated Bob Casey, though as of this writing, Casey will not admit it). But this could and should have been a much better night. The close calls are likely to haunt the party for the next six years. In four states won narrowly by Donald Trump, the party’s Senate candidates ran one to five points behind him, losing tight races in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, and likely losing in Arizona as well. That bucks a powerful recent trend of Senate races following the presidential race. It plagued a diverse array of Republican candidates. If these results hold, states won by Trump in 2024 will be represented by ten Democratic senators in 2025—only two of whom face re-election in 2026—while Susan Collins will be the only Republican senator from a state won by Kamala Harris. Since 2016, Democrats have won nine out of 13 Senate races that were decided by two points or less, and 16 out of 25 races decided by four or less. American politics may be in flux, but candidate quality still matters.

◼ Tuesday was not a great day for pro-lifers, but it at least halted their unbroken string of referendum defeats post-Dobbs. Pro-abortion referenda won in Missouri, Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Colorado, Maryland, and New York. But they lost in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota. The results differed by the language of the amendments and by the support required for passage. In Florida, for example, there was 57 percent support, three short of what was needed to pass the amendment. In South Dakota, pro-abortion groups refused to support the proposal because it contained some limits on late-term abortions. Meanwhile, Harris’s bet on abortion did not pay off. Michigan, where Democrats swept the state in 2022 on a pro-abortion platform, saw Republicans retake the state house. That should end Democratic thinking about abortion as a magic wand to summon armies of new female voters from the hills. Exit polls showed that moderately pro-choice voters swung heavily toward Donald Trump compared with 2020, before Dobbs. Trump may have retreated on life issues, but at least his administration won’t stop pro-life states from enforcing their own laws or persecute pro-life activists. The fight continues, as it must.

◼ The exit polls suggest that immigration was a more powerful issue than abortion: Roughly as many people rated each issue as the most decisive one, and those who voted on immigration were more lopsided in Trump’s favor than the abortion voters were in Harris’s. Some analysts are touting the fact that voters split 56–40 percent in favor of letting most illegal immigrants apply for legal status rather than be deported—and Republicans should indeed be mindful of that fact even as they ramp up enforcement of immigration laws. In 2016, however, the split was 70 to 25 in favor of legal status. And the pro-deportation camp this time was not only larger but a bit more pro-Trump. Among Biden’s inadvertent accomplishments has been to make the public much more hawkish on immigration.

◼ In 2014, Californians voted to downgrade many felonies to misdemeanors. An initiative to partially reverse that one just passed the state handily; at press time, it appears to have carried every county. Los Angeles voted out its progressive prosecutor. The mayors of San Francisco and Oakland each lost reelection, with crime and disorder a top issue in each city. It is vital to ensure that crime doesn’t pay—and the first step is to make clear that it doesn’t poll well, either.

◼ The day before Election Day, the New York Times tech staff, who currently have an average compensation of $190,000 per year, went on strike. Their union, the Times Tech Guild—remember, it’s progressive to use a medieval form of organization under a legal regime from the 1930s in the modern digital economy—wants a four-day work week along with higher pay and guaranteed annual bonuses, 100 percent employer-covered health insurance premiums for employees and their family members, unlimited sick leave, more money for racial-minority staffers, trigger warnings at meetings, bereavement time for the deaths of pets, and a ban on scented products in break rooms. The union also wants you to “honor the digital picket line” by not playing online word games or using the NYT Cooking app during the strike. We don’t ordinarily recommend using more NYT products than are absolutely necessary, but we hear that the recipe for garlic-braised short ribs with red wine is excellent.