The Wind Cried Trump
A Reality Check for Your Election Analysis
Here are some questions to ask yourself before you pronounce a verdict on the most expensive election in history.
Are you angry? This is OK, because you are an American.
Are you angry at voters? Sorry, can’t run with this one. Voters are the people we serve, and they have spoken (the bastards).
Are you angry at the people you’re usually angry at? Big blue flag here. Did the LEFT strike again because they’re so WOKE? Maybe hold this thought, unless you think Kamala’s bestie Liz Cheney is about to join the Squad. Are you mad at centrists who (presumably) encouraged Harris to showcase Mark Cuban because, um, who knows why? I suppose the reasoning is that they had to counter Elon Musk because … um … give me a second …
Are you angry at people you previously weren’t willing to admit you were mad at? Do you find yourselves thinking things like, “I have no problem with trans people, but they should have known the stakes were so high and held off on being trans until after the election!” Maybe reconsider thoughts like this.
Are you angry at Hispanic men because, dammit, don’t they know WE ARE ON THEIR SIDE? Maybe take this take back to your diversity training session.
Are you mad at Kamala Harris? Hey, you could have challenged her at the convention.
Are you mad at Tim Walz? Don’t judge Walz until you’ve walked a mile through Tiananmen Square (or Saint Paul, for that matter).
Are you mad at JD Vance? Go for it. That guy’s going to be around for a while.
Are you mad at Donald Trump? Don’t tell him, he’s about to have absolute immunity.
Are you mad at Joe Biden? Well, you can be I guess … he probably should have withdrawn sooner. He did say in 2020 that he’d only run for one term, but he backpedaled on that (if memory serves) within 24 hours. I say thank him first, for 52 years of government service. He was never perfect, but he tried his best, and public service is, for the most part, thankless work.
Are you trying to put your whirlwind of thoughts into a pithy little Substack post? Definitely don’t do that.
I had expected to be angry, but I'm not. Deeply saddened, confused, a little bit frightened -- mostly for others as my position as a straight cisgender white man provides a level of protection that the majority of my friends do not enjoy.
I know someone who voted for Trump. For reasons I won't go into, this would be the classic example of a person voting against their interest on the face of things. But, she's a devout Catholic and believes that abortion is a sin. Trump offered her a way to vote against abortion. Maybe that one issue was enough to let her overlook less deeply held moral objections to Trump's other policies.
I heard an interview with an Arab-American who had been active in the "uncommitted" movement during the primaries who was trying to persuade his family and other Arab-Americans to vote for Harris as the lesser of two evils. He described how his father planned to vote for Trump becasue he would stop sending weapons to Israel. Even though he expected Trump to try to repress and expel Arab-Americans in the US, he felt that was a burden he was better able to bear than the hospitalized children in Gaza who were being killed with weapons supplied by the US.
The argument in both cases comes down to this: something that the Democrats are doing is so morally reprehensible that I'm wililng to vote for Trump to get them out of power, and then we'll resist the rest of his agenda.
Is this Trump's secret sauce? Find enough niche issues where a policy, even one based on lies, or a promise that he doesn't intend to keep, injected into an environment where fact checking is non-existent, will get people to pull the lever for him *even if they dislike him him and find the rest of his promises morally repugnant?*
But it's not just that the Republicans won this election. The Democrats lost. Biden screwed the pooch, as you point out, by even running for a second term. But the party fell in line behind him obediently. Harris's nomination without any primary process was a sham, and her platform was weak sauce poured in short measure. I voted for her, much in the way I'm imagining some Trump voters cast their ballot. There was one moral judgment that was so important I could put the rest aside until later.
The moral imperative for me was keeping Trump out of the White House. That's not a great reason to vote for anybody.
Jim: Why would I be angry? I see the current state of affair as pretty close to disastrous especially with respect to illegal immigration, drug deaths, inflation, dumb spending, etc. Trump is nasty. Hopefully he will act as an emetic like Ipecac and the body politic will disgorge the stupidity and odiousness of the last 16 years from all sides. My hope is that the Supreme Court will be strengthened with people committed to keeping the Executive and Congress in their lanes and prevent lower courts from legislating to suit political purposes.