Ugh

Trump and Trumpism Win.

Donald Trump, authoritarian and felon and court-certified rapist and really bad president, is on his way back to the White House.

Republicans have regained a Senate majority, perhaps by several seats. But with quite a few seats not yet called, the House is still basically a toss-up. As I write this, either party could still have a tiny majority.

What appears to have happened was a national swing to the Republicans from where they were was four or even eight years ago. 

Why? Sorry, we have no idea, and if you want to know the real reason I advise patience. Elections are complicated things, and we haven’t even counted all the votes yet. It’s going to take time to figure it out. 

There are two different processes that go on. The wonks (political scientists who study these things, and also all sorts of other analysts) will try to figure out what actually happened. Meanwhile, every politically active group will quickly claim credit or, on the Democratic side, deflect blame. That matters going forward, because politicians and other political actors will respond to whatever they think happened in the election. 

But what actually happened matters too, for lots of reasons – including what it hints about future elections. 

I will speculate a bit. Incumbent parties have been doing badly around the world in the last couple of years in the wake of the pandemic and the fallout from the pandemic, economic and otherwise. Democrats did better than the Conservatives in the UK, or Macron’s party in France earlier this year. Everyone will want to attribute the election results to choices made by the candidates. But it’s quite possible – in fact, I strongly suspect it’s the case – that the Democrats ran a solid candidate who ran a good campaign, and the Republicans ran a terrible candidate who ran a mediocre campaign, but all of that only made it into a competitive race and couldn’t put the incumbent party over the top.¹

One more time, however: We just don’t know yet. 

As far as a second Trump term? He was absolutely awful at the job the first time around; he doesn’t believe in the rule of law; and he is effectively a policy extremist with a strong dose of crankery. That’s a recipe for a lot of danger to the republic. 

He’ll have some advantages over 2017, in particular a Supreme Court that has given him powers the Framers of the Constitution never imagined a president would have. He has people surrounding him who have been thinking hard about how to turn the presidency into a quasi-dictatorship. Republicans in Congress are less apt to constrain him than was the case eight years ago. He (once again) will enter office with a strong economy, which should help his popularity and mitigate the fallout from poor policy choices.

That said, Trump can’t simply wish away constraints built into the system. His inept personnel choices and his ignorance will continue to backfire on him, and if he plunges ahead with widely unpopular or unworkable policy choices he may get more, and more effective, pushback than some might expect. Whatever his choices, it seems likely he’ll be unpopular, just as he was in his first term. If Democrats do wind up with a (tiny) House majority that won’t help him, and if Republicans have a similarly tiny House majority…well, we’ve seen how that’s worked out.²

Do I fear for the republic? Damn right I do. Democracy has been harmed already, and further harm is certain. Terrible policy choices, with real damage to real people, are on their way as well. 

Do I think doom is inevitable? No. Lots of choices by lots of people are still to be made. Let’s hope they are wise ones.

1. The one thing I do think the Democrats did wrong was failing to pound it into everyone’s heads how big a mess Trump left them with. Would it have made any difference? Dunno. But any opportunity there was gone long before Harris became the nominee.

2. I’m fairly certain that if it turns out that way that 218 Republicans could manage to elect a Speaker and organize the House. Fairly certain. OK, there’s a good chance they could.