Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo
Former President Donald Trump arrives at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, November 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump was bigger than Hillary Clinton’s. And unlike the inept Clinton campaign of 2016, Harris made no big blunders.
After all we learned from Trump’s first term and from a 2024 Trump campaign filled with narcissistic, deranged bullying, the American people knew exactly what they were getting. But still a popular majority likely voted for Trump.
One answer has to do with race and gender. Too many Americans, especially white men, were still not willing to vote for a woman, even less a Black woman. The anticipated wave of white women’s support for Harris did not materialize at levels sufficient to offset the massive male gender gap in Trump’s favor.
Even the issue of reproductive rights, a sheer gift from the Republican right to the Harris campaign, was not decisive. Late-deciding independents swung to Trump, not to Harris. Despite the widely publicized “island of garbage” quote, Harris actually did worse among Hispanic voters than Biden did.
In Trump’s three elections, the one Democrat who was able to beat him, just barely, was a white male named Joe Biden. That speaks volumes.
But there was more to Trump’s win than race and gender. The second answer is that Harris ran a muddled campaign. When voter after uncommitted voter tells interviewers that they don’t know what Harris stands for, something is wrong. Yes, Harris had only three months to make clear who she was and what her presidency would be about. But that is plenty of time for a candidate with a clear strategy and a clear message.
Imagine voters telling interviewers that they weren’t sure what Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders stood for. So despite the massive advantage in ground game and door-knocking, and several unforced Trump errors in the campaign’s final week, the hoped-for surge in Democratic turnout did not materialize.
Harris might have tapped into the deep unease felt by most Americans about the direction of the country and of their own lives. But she didn’t manage to do that.
At the heart of this unease is decades of downward mobility and displacement, and the sense that the usual machinery of government is failing to address it. That sets the stage for a radical, anti-system leader, the more radical the better. It’s much harder for ordinary Americans to get ahead today than it was a couple of generations ago. The fact that recent years have been a time of overdue attention to Black lives, and LGBT lives, and the lives of immigrants, only added to the sense of nativist grievance.
As various Prospect writers keep pointing out, invoking the history of fascism, when the democratic left does not champion the economic needs, frustrations, and aspirations of ordinary people, especially the working class, the far right is all too happy to take over. The target of that anger might have been billionaires rather than fellow struggling people. But the billionaires got off easy. Economic elites find it all too easy to get along with fascists. In premarket trading this morning, the Dow was up 3 percent.
WHAT NOW? ARE THERE ANY FIREWALLS AT ALL?
In Trump’s first term, the grown-ups in the room managed to contain and frustrate his worst impulses. Progressives, ironically, were left to rely on generals and Wall Street veterans to contain outright autocracy. But it worked, barely, and democracy held just enough for Democrats to take back the House in 2018 and the White House in 2020.
Trump will not make that mistake again. He will hire henchmen far more radical and loyal than the more mainstream conservatives that he named on very short notice (expecting to lose) in 2016. And when he says he will use all the powers of his office to go after the enemy within, we need to take him seriously.
The other obvious firewalls are largely absent. The Supreme Court has already functioned as Trump’s enabler, and in four years he will have many more judicial appointments at all levels. The Senate is gone. There is an outside chance that Democrats will take back the House, but just barely.
Democracy was already seriously debased even before Trump’s appalling victory. Given the ability of Trump and his allies in red states to further weaken democracy, it would take a small miracle for Democrats to repeat their midterm success of 2018 and take back (or hold) the House in 2026, but that struggle needs to be waged.
There is also the risk that 2024 marks the beginning of a long MAGA dynasty. Whether or not Trump dies in office, he is very likely to be succeeded by JD Vance, who is at least as skilled a demagogue as Trump and unlike Trump does not come across as demented.
One of the many insidious things about fascism is that daily life still goes on as before, as long as you are not an enemy of the regime. People fall in love, get married, have babies. The restaurants are still open, the food tastes just as good. But democracy, despite its formal trappings, has ceased to function. Then again, it was less and less relevant anyway. Until Hitler ruined it with his war, Nazi Germany was pleasant enough if you were not an enemy of the regime.
Beyond the risks to what remains of democracy, Trump’s recklessness increases the risks of war, even nuclear war. He will probably settle the Russia-Ukraine war on Putin’s terms, but further unleash Netanyahu to create wider war in the Middle East. And notwithstanding Trump’s purely transactional alliance with Bibi and the evangelical right’s weird love for Israel, under fascism sooner or later they come for the Jews.
This will need to be a time of resistance, using all the instruments of the law to contain Trump’s dictatorial impulses. We will also probably see some civil disobedience as well, which runs the risk of playing into Trump’s hands.
As we all adjust to the shock, this will need to be a time of clear strategic thinking about what it will take to limit Trump’s worst excesses, salvage what remains of democracy, and rebuild a movement.
