Shortly after January 6th of 2021, the day that Trump’s followers stormed Congress, I made a bet with my friend, John Grahm, who was worried that Trump would win the 2024 election. Thinking Trump was quite a long shot to win, I gave him 10 to 1 odds, $100 to $1000, that Trump would not win the election; both of us hoped that I would win the bet. We agreed that even if Trump did not run as a candidate for president, I would still win the bet. At the time and even later on in the mid-term elections, in 2022, when all of the candidates that Trump backed lost, I thought for sure that the Republicans would pick another candidate. So much for predicting the future.
Although there has been a myriad of reasons put forth as to why Trump won the election, I will offer my own take on Trump’s victory. Many years ago, my father told me that liberals can be extremely intolerable. Inasmuch as he had been a lifelong Democrat, hearing this from him surprised me. Moreover, I am proud to say that my father’s clothing business in Elizabeth, New Jersey, prior to the vast civil rights legislation enacted in the ‘60’s, was the first of its kind to hire Blacks as employees. I found that liberals/progressives, that is those that veer to the left on political issues, often believe that their view is the right one and are unwilling to listen to those that may harbor different opinions.
The reflexive reaction for many of those on the left is that Harris lost the election because of the inherent racism and sexism of America. In my opinion, this argument carries little weight when not that long ago our country elected Barack Obama, the first Black president, not only once but twice. A reminder to all is that America was the first country on record to have a white majority elect a Black as its president. At the end of the day when the votes were tabulated, Trump’s support by the Black and Hispanic populace surged as he won a greater proportion of their vote than in his earlier elections. Furthermore, Trump received more female voters in this election than in the election he previously lost in 2020. Attacking the other side with this kind of argument is simply poor sportsmanlike behavior and only will serve in strengthening the Republican hold on the slim majority they had in the present election. Unlike earlier elections, minority groups showed a disposition toward individual rather than group identity. It can be no longer taken as a priori that Blacks or other minorities will automatically vote Democratic. Although these voters chose to vote for Trump, a person whose leadership qualities I seriously question, I believe this trend of no longer voting for one party by people of color is a step in the right direction.
The underlying cause of Harris’ defeat wrapped itself in the left’s denial of anything wrong with the country, excluding Mr. Trump. This denial became obvious when President Biden faced off with Mr. Trump in the first presidential debate where Biden’s performance was considered by all a disaster. He eventually ceded his place in the election campaign to his Vice-President, Ms. Harris, who became the Democratic Party’s candidate without having to face the normal rivalry necessary in winning the nomination through the primary process. To her credit, she was able to amass a great amount of money, over 2 billion dollars, toward her campaign, quite a bit more than Trump spent. So, in this case, the old saw money can buy anything, including political power, did not hold. Furthermore, she had the support of a number of stars, such as Taylor Swift, Mark Cuban, and Oprah Winfrey who assisted her run for the presidency. In addition, she had the press and the news stations on television, with the exception of Fox, on her side. All this but to no avail.
Her message of joy to the voters was quite a few chords off. The inflation that liberals appeared to forgo in their message to the American public was not addressed. This may have been due to the fact that the Democratic Party had become more interested in the identity politics of special interest groups such as L.G.B.T.Q., gender transitions and the spread of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in the workplace and on college campuses. Rather than focusing on the issues deemed foremost to many voters such as illegal immigration and inflation, the Democrats exerted their energy on a legal battle against Trump. In a recent Op-Ed article appearing in the New York Times, Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale, points out that “for decades, liberals have made the mistake of prioritizing legal victories over popular ones.” He goes on to say that liberals (apparently, of which he is one) in their self-righteous attitude, failed to realize that this legalistic strategy may be seen by many others as a political weapon with the intent of doing Trump in. Suddenly, Trump had become a symbolic David fighting the evils of the Goliath, on the side of Harris, represented by the massive government bureaucracy.
Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer to the New York Times, recently stated that after 2004, over 50% of Americans were not satisfied with the government. Since that time, this lack of confidence in the institutions that form our government has clearly not improved and has been evident for some time. As it turns out, the Democratic focus on trying to eliminate Trump through the legal system, missed the pulse of a large segment of the American populace that Bruni mentioned.
The hope is that the Democrats will reorient themselves to the reality of where their fellow Americans are at, change tactics, with the effort of regaining the support of lower income workers that have gone over to Mr. Trump and the Republican party. I am quite sure that identity politics will not accomplish this goal. A better way would be to look at social class as the determining factor of their political agenda with the goal to perform better in the midterm elections in two years.
One of the reasons I had hoped that Trump would lose the election was because he would no longer be the butt of late-night comedy featuring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Steve Colbert. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and so we will be awarded for the next four years with their ad nauseum denigrating comments about soon to be President Trump. They say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The inimitable Johnny Carson, in my opinion, exceeded the comedic talent of the above three by far. Of course, the counterpart of these jokes will be the monotonous cheers for Trump that, I’m sure, Fox News will air.
Dr. Bernard F. Natelson 