What Now? Digesting Trump's Return to Washington

The Tomb of the Unknown Solider, Arlington, VA | Photo: Mark Fischer

Happy Veterans Day! This week, I’ve come across Ben Franklin’s famous retort several times; “A republic, if you can keep it.” And though this has been said with reference to the election, it’s far more applicable to those we remember today. We owe our republic and the freedoms we so cherish to those who fought and died to defend them. In almost every generation since our founding, men and women have served and died for this wonderful country.

After an election, our gratitude should overflow all the more as we acknowledge that things have not always been as they are in the United States. Liberty for all, the right to vote, and the peaceful transfer of power have been rarities in the history of the world. That we have them now is something we pause today to remember.

America has been and will always be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Thanks to all those who have served this great nation!

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The world is digesting the Trump victory. What will his administration be like this time around? What changes are coming for America and the world? The commentators are just beginning to prognosticate. Here’s a rundown of a few of the most interesting insights to date.

The eminent historian of our day takes an eminently historical position on this election. It was about the economy all along. The history of elections would tell us that presidents who preside over recessions, inflation, or other negative economic phenomena lose re-election. For all the other topics we thought were important, this one followed the granddaddy rule. People were better off financially under Trump and before the inflation of the Biden years, so they voted for Trump. It’s as simple as that.

Or is it that simple? Ferguson read the cultural tea leaves and predicted a Trump win back in 2023. Why? Americans don’t like the lawfare against Trump, the assassination attempts, or the hyperbolic language used by the media in the run-up to the election. And they love a good comeback.

The scale of Trump’s comeback is still surprising. He came back after two impeachments, a total barrage from the media and the justice department, threats to bankrupt him, and the general reputation for being unmentionable in polite company. Despite all these factors, and this is where we see the cultural shift happening, he gained ground in almost every demographic group, won all seven swing states, and propelled his party back into control of both houses of Congress.

“This time really will be different. This election was a crushing defeat for political lawfare, critical race theory, woke campuses, biological males in women’s sports, genital mutilation of teenagers, the Ivy League, the legacy media, and Hollywood. But it was also a defeat for the neoconservative Never Trumpers, including Liz Cheney as well as all the former Trump officials who turned their coats and backed Harris. And it was a victory for SpaceX, for Starlink, for Polymarket, for Bitcoin, for Anduril, for Palantir, for Marc Andreessen, for Joe Lonsdale, for Joe Rogan, for The Free Press—in short, for the new generation of builders whose autistic-virile qualities Musk exemplifies.”

One of the more interesting - and maybe unanswerable - questions being discussed is whether to attribute Trump’s victory more to a change in the electorate or a tide of anti-incumbent sentiment across the West. Of course, the easiest answer would be to say that both are true. Continetti argues that the culture really is moving to the right, mainly because of overreach on the left.

The Harris campaign moderated from her 2019 run on issues like healthcare, fracking, transgender surgeries, and immigration in pursuit of the vote, but to no avail. In short, the Harris campaign strategy was simple; “Harris's logic is simple. Eke out a win by play-acting as a moderate on Trump's best issues, while pressing her advantage on abortion. Trust that the gender gap will work in her favor. Rely on the vaunted Democratic ground game. Depend on Trump's ceiling of support remaining at 47 to 48 percent.”

In hindsight, it was too clever by half. Voters didn’t want a moderated version of Harris’s 2019 campaign. The electorate is moving to the right. This position is born out by the fact that Trump increased his support in 49 states since 2020. And the most prescient thing about this column is it was written 2 weeks before the election.

Bret Stephens’ column is as self-reflective as it’s going to get at the New York Times, and the title says it all. Stephens pulls no punches, even as he wrote the column “A Conservative Case Against Trump” a week before the election. To summarize, populism is an uprising against the elites, real or perceived, and Trump is a master populist. On topics like inflation, migrant crime, and boys playing girls’ sports, voters had it with the “who will you believe, us or your lying eyes approach.”

A few days ago, Stephens appeared on an excellent episode of Goodfellows. Check out that episode for a great analysis of the election results.

For other takes and reflections, see the following:

Kimberley Strassel puts the media in the hot seat over the election. What they talked about and what voters ultimately cared about were highly divergent. The coverup of Biden’s infirmity didn’t help either.
Maureen Dowd wonders if this is the twilight of identity politics, as Hispanic voters broke strongly for Trump.
In the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady makes a similar point. There is no such thing as the Latino vote.
At the New York Times, the “Matter of Opinion” blames Biden’s late withdrawal for Trump’s win. Josh Barro adds, “This Is All Biden’s Fault.”
Tyler Cowen looks at Trump’s economic policy and blows the whistle on tariffs; they don’t work, but that’s because they are not very effective.