When Donald Trump was elected for the first time, in 2016, the nation was in shock. The fact that he managed to eke out a win over Hillary Clinton, who was expected to overtake him in a landslide, had to be rationalized away: She was an unlikeable candidate; she didn’t campaign in Wisconsin; people thought her win was such a foregone conclusion that it was safe to vote third-party in purple states; if it weren’t for the Electoral College she’d have beaten him by three million votes, etc. The “Resistance” movement that arose in the wake of Trump’s ascension was predicated on the idea that he was an aberration who could be removed via impeachment or the legal process, or at the end of an apparently accidental first-and-only term.
When Joe Biden was elected president over Trump in 2020, the Resistance types were vindicated: Trump was gone. MAGA had been vanquished. We could return to business as usual.
But neither MAGA nor Trump went away. Come January, we will once again be living in Trump’s America, and with Trump even winning the popular vote this time, it’s no accident.
The 2024 election postmortem is well underway with plenty of speculation about how Vice President Kamala Harris lost so decisively against someone the Democrats managed to defeat just four years ago. One leading explanation is that Biden is deeply unpopular and, though the mid-summer Biden/Harris candidate swap gave the Democrats a fighting chance, Harris could not overcome her role in the administration as vice president.
Exit polls showed that inflation was a top priority for voters, and though economic indicators like jobs, wages, and the stock market remained strong under Biden, Americans still struggled with the pervasive high cost of necessities like groceries and housing. Republicans were able to flame those economic anxieties, as well as concerns about crime, connecting both to the post-pandemic record-high influx of migrants into the United States.
All of this was amplified by global patterns that saw incumbent governments ousted amid widespread post-pandemic inflation and dissatisfaction. In many ways, this election’s cake was baked years ago.
There also exists a bigger existential problem for the Democrats. For the past few election cycles, the Democrats have been losing the diverse coalition of working-class Americans, minorities, and young people that helped propel Barack Obama to victory many years ago. Trump managed to pick off white working-class voters during his first run; in this election, he netted an even higher proportion of those voters, and a surprising number of Latino and young voters, particularly young men, who went for Trump over Harris by an unprecedented number.
The Democrats have spent the past three election cycles ignoring their base in favor of appealing to Republicans who might find Trump repulsive. Harris, for instance, paraded her endorsement from former congresswoman and Never Trumper Liz Cheney, making a campaign appearance with her in Michigan (Harris was also endorsed by Cheney’s father, former George W. Bush vice president Dick Cheney, a longtime villain for liberals).
Though Harris and running mate Tim Walz came out of the gate calling Republicans “weird” and calling out their unpopular, fringe policies, the campaign quickly pivoted. They tried to square a circle, running hard to the right while also raising the alarm about the threat Trump poses to democracy. This threat is very real, but the messaging didn’t resonate with voters who already have little faith in the system and/or were primarily concerned about their own economic circumstances.
The Democrats once again positioned themselves as the party of the elite — in part because Trump’s assault on institutions required the party to stand in support of them — but also because Harris visibly embraced celebrities and billionaires like Mark Cuban. And Harris refused to break from any of Biden’s policies. She even championed the administration’s support for Israel amid the yearlong assault on Gaza, which frustrated young people pushing for a ceasefire and arms embargo and lost her votes from Arab Americans in states like Michigan.
There are even deeper problems brewing in this country, ones that will stick with us for a long time. First, there is the breakdown in information. Traditional media has been dying for years, with people getting their news instead through social media, YouTube videos, and podcasts, which are dictated by algorithms and not subject to a newspaper’s rigorous standards and fact-checking. These outlets operate alongside a well-funded right-wing media apparatus that includes Fox News and One America News Network. As a result, many people simply are not aware of the truth.
According to news reports, for instance, some people who voted for Trump may not realize that the high tariffs he proposed levying on China would increase the cost of imported goods or that his mass-deportation plan would not just affect undocumented immigrants with criminal records. These facts were reported by news outlets but didn’t make it onto right-wing podcasts or everyone’s TikTok For You page.
It’s important to note that some of these social media and podcasting platforms are owned by tech billionaires, and they don’t all have the best intentions. X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, who helped propel Trump to victory, is one of those billionaires; but others, like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, also appear to be more willing to offer Trump 2.0 an olive branch.
Then there is the rise in the “red pill-ification” of young Americans, particularly young men. In 2020, Biden overwhelmingly won over young voters; in 2024, Trump made inroads with voters under 30, with exit polls showing that young men went for Trump over Harris by two points. Right-wing content creators — Theo Von, Joe Rogan, and Adin Ross, to name a few — courted by Trump during his run appeal to young men who feel left behind as we embark on the (slow) road to gender equality, occasionally with misogynistic results. Indeed, women on social media reportedly experienced an increase in online misogynistic abuse in the days after Trump’s reelection.
So here we are, in a world with no news infrastructure, a generation of embittered young men who believe they own women’s bodies, and the worst people in the world in charge (and celebrating). We also have a president who will likely attempt mass deportations, speed up the rate of climate change, gut the Department of Education and other crucial federal departments, hamper reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights — and none of that even touches what might happen to our access to vaccines and other lifesaving medication if Trump makes good on his alleged promise to give noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a role in his administration.
With the Senate, and likely the House of Representatives, now in the hands of the Republicans, Trump may have less resistance when it comes to ramming through his agenda. And with his potential to appoint additional Supreme Court justices, we will be feeling the after-effects of this administration for generations. And this time, a majority of voters asked for it.
But it’s not all hopeless. Politics is a long-term organizing project, and over the next few years, in addition to protecting those who are most at risk under Trump’s second administration, our task will be to earn back some of the voters who turned to Trump this time. The Democrats will need to find a way to once again become a multiracial party of working-class and young people, which will require leaving the Liz Cheneys and Mark Cubans at home and creating a way to fix the institutions that aren’t working for most of us, not uphold and embrace them. More on that to come, but for now, strap in. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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