The columns people are writing and their comments on social media tell me that everyone thinks the world revolves around them, but they don't tell me why he won.
Do you agree that we are in a time period where the message of unification and reaching across the isle is completely ineffective. It’s either with one side or the other. Maybe this lasts 10 years, maybe 20 but something drastic will have to happen to change it.
Regardless of why Trump won, which is important for the Democratic Party to analyze if they care to ever be competitive again, Europe’s expectation that the US owes it consideration in its election is beyond weird and entitled. They want to fight Putin? Then fucking fund it, increase production of arms and ammunition, train and supply Ukraine. That’s the European continent. The EU has an equally sized economy and more people than the US. How can the EU both hate on the US and demand a subsidy of its defense?
(1) Way too much of your journalistic capital was expended this past month in your repetitive pleas to express your opinions about this election. Where was the analysis of the German government that fell apart this week, the Miliei government, Ukraine, the French minority government hobbling along, etc.?
(2) I believe that your perspective is limited as you have spent so much time outside of the USA with no extensive return visits to feel the pulse here.
Claire, I've never commented on your Substack, but this is one of the clearest things I've read post-election, so I felt I had to comment. I think you're right on the money, so thank you.
If Trump were just "Conservative Bernie Sanders" then all of the commentary you are condemning as just so much garbage would be perfectly reasonable and useful. Fixing immigration, inflation, income inequality, revolt against progressive's obsession with identity, etc. are all perfectly legitimate political desires within the constraints of a liberal constitutional democratic system. But Trump isn't Conservative Bernie. Rather, he has clearly shown himself by word, deed, and temperament to be ready, willing, and now able to destroy that constitutional system. To pick him to address those legitimate political ends is basically, for lack of a better phrase, a giant category error. It's like choosing an arsonist to renovate your kitchen.
So, why did so many Americans commit that error? As you point out, no one really knows. One can point to many hypotheses - lack of historical imagination, the funhouse of confirmation bias that media has become, the marginal cognitive decline of an aging population, the herd instinct that come from widespread personal dissatisfaction, tribalism, bloodlust, decadence, Flouride in the water (sorry!), and many more I'm sure. But it may be decades before we really understand it, if ever.
Human history is of course complex and contingent. I believe there are times when an enormous metaphorical "potential energy" has built up, just waiting to be released like an avalanche or an earthquake (note, both disasters!) that can irreversibly remake the entire terrain. Thus, in the right circumstances, relatively innocuous events like the marginal shifting of votes in a single election can have enormous consequences. After all, I imagine many Archdukes have been assassinated over the years, but only one started a world war. I fear we are at one of those times, when it is virtually impossible to sense what is coming until the ground is already moving beneath your feet, and completely impossible to know where it will lead.
Thank you for the comment. You understand exactly what I meant, and you've phrased it better than I did, for that matter. It's a category error. And yes, I agree with something you're groping at by using the metaphor of "potential energy," though I have no idea what we're saying in using this metaphor, since of course it is only a metaphor and doesn't come close to really describing what we mean. Trump's reelection may have been contingent in some sense--history could have gone the other way at many points since he came down that escalator--but the fact that it didn't go the other way at all of those points does suggest that Americans' desire to rip up the system and try a new form of governance wasn't a passing whim. What I'm really trying to understand is how well Americans understood that this is what they were doing. Part of me believes there's no way a single voter could have failed to understand this. Another part of me wonders if the experience of authoritarianism is just so completely alien to Americans that they simply couldn't believe, no matter what he said, that he would be capable of making the US something very different from what it's always been--if they believed and believe that he would simply be a normal president who carries out the policies they prefer, albeit rudely.
Thank you. With respect to the question of "why?", my fervent hope is that this is primarily a lack of imagination on the part of Trump voters. In other words, and despite the evidence to the contrary, most Trump voters just can't imagine him ultimately being much different than a typical American politician. He's just a little rougher around the edges. The nightmare scenario is that a hypothetical "Conservative Bernie" would have underperformed in the election compared to Trump, and it really is the vitriol, demonization, tribalism, glorification of violence, and willingness to truly smash the guardrails that put him over the top. The reality is that is likely both of the above and probably more, but how much of each? A key marker to look out for - what is the reaction when "others" really start getting hurt?
"What I'm really trying to understand is how well Americans understood that this is what they were doing."
I ask questions - non-confrontationally, I am just curious - and the answers I receive tell me: No, they do not. There are 1st order effects, and then there are 2nd and 3rd order effects. Most of these people do not understand even 1st order effects; typically, linear consequences.
And then there is the fact that Bannon's Bible is Fourth Turning, and he does everything he can do hasten its 'manifestation' - first the Unraveling and then the Crisis. I have come to believe a lot of people have been sold a Bill of Goods that is the actualization of the Fourth Turning without understanding its ramifications and consequences. The consequences are moot, the ramifications are not. Godspeed, Stephen.
Sorry for my Edit. I forgot an entire sentence or two.
Saw this quote. Seems appropriate. "There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and the superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures, and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally becomes a political power and changes the course of history."
Might it be that the reason that our peers chose DJT (Yes! Affirmatively and decisively!) is due to our society’s unprecedented plenty and security? So few of us cherish the precious precarity of our democracy. We don’t know societal fear. We have insufficient skin in the game. Ignorant of history, we cannot fathom what we risk when we regress to the mean of human experience.
Heather McDonald at City Journal has an interesting take on Trump’s victory and how it was aided and abetted by the mainstream press. It’s interesting and fun and worth a look (and it’s free) See,
The media grandiosity and martyr complex that birthed the Washington Post’s Democracy Dies in Darkness motto has not abated in the face of the media’s electoral defeat. According to Times editors Kahn, Lacey, and Ryan, the “people” need the Times: “They will need us to be unflinching in the face of intimidation.” Something else on the media scorecard to look for: the Trump administration “intimidating” the Times. Might Trump tweet nasty things about the Times? Probably. But it does not take much to “be unflinching” in the face of such alleged intimidation.
Kahn, Lacey, and Ryan end their November 6 memo with another channeling of what the “people” want from the Times: its traditional “sober analysis and guidance.” Some “people” who have followed the Times’s unhinged Trump coverage over the last month might chuckle over that description.
Impotent, blinkered, and unrepentant would be a more accurate motto for the press. Expect another four years of fear-mongering as the Trump administration tries to restore the country’s constitutional architecture. Keep that scorecard in hand. Though the media will never admit it, their credibility, already threadbare, will be definitively decimated. (Heather McDonald.)
I can see it already. The Ford class carrier USS Claire Berlinski. Known to its sailors as just Berl. This ship wages war where you want it, when you want it, now. You have been warned.
Coming from Turkey like you I am acutely aware and sensitive to what an authoritarian like trump can do to democracy, particularly in an already presidential system rather than a parliamentarian one. However there are a couple of points that even a pessimist like me can be hopeful about. A few weeks before the election, there was a Reuters poll that asked Americans, what are the issues that they are most concerned about. Top three were economy, immigration, and fear over loss of democracy. (Foreign policy and Gaza incidentally were distantly behind these factors, prognostications of certain people in Michigan not withstanding). Economy immigration, those pulled heavily Trump by a margin of like 3 to 1. but on the issue of democracy, those polled favoured Harris. I noticed after this poll that particularly in the various rallies in New York and Pennsylvania, Trump and his spokespeople were heavily focusing on the point of democracy. Their talking points were very simple. They were saying if we don’t win this election, this will be the last election. They kept pointing to the last election was stolen, voter fraud, they tried to block him from running, harris an ointment was not democratic, etc etc. Gone was All this previous stuff about third term and dictatorship, at least as far as I could tell. It seems like Trump in his camp correctly identified that they were weak on this point and quite effectively focused on this point to try to turn it to their favour. I wonder if their awareness of Americans’ sensitivity on the point of democracy, toogether with the fact that he won so handily may temper some of his authoritarian tendencies and desires to change the system. He may feel he doesn’t have to. We’ll see. Is very clear that the system is not at the mercy of the impulses and capabilities of one deranged individual
Erdogan is quoted as saying, early in his career, 1997, “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
It's possible. It's a slender reed on which to hang your hopes, though. What worries me perhaps most of all--or at least, it's in the top ten--is that while it may be true that a large part of the electorate reports fearing "loss of democracy," it has no stable understanding of what that means. As I've written before--many times--"democracy" and "liberal democracy" are not the same, and I don't know what people meant, exactly, when they said they feared "loss of democracy." A large number of Trump voters were prepared--sincerely prepared--to believe that Kamala Harris was a communist. They were prepared to believe the 2020 election was stolen. (I notice they're no longer worried about the integrity of our elections.) Would voters recognize it if Trump took the kinds of steps RTE has taken to ensure the opposition can't compete on a level playing field? I doubt it: It would be very easy for him, just as it has been for RTE, to create a narrative that satisfies them to account for what he does, even if it's profoundly illiberal. We can be sure he'll use the machinery of the federal government, for example, to bring critics in the media to heel. Bezos understood this perfectly. But Trump's supporters don't: We've seen that they're *very* willing to believe that Bezos just saw the light and became frustrated that WaPo was "a left-wing rag." They're willing to believe that Trump was prosecuted for trivial reasons. Many don't believe (and you can see this even in these comments) that Trump made a very serious effort, only narrowly thwarted, to stage a coup. They repeat that what happened at the Capitol was "just a riot," that Trump was "within his rights" to question the election, and therefore believe it be justified to prosecute Jack Smith for "weaponizing the justice system." If people don't understand these things, what difference does it make if they say they're worried about democracy? You know exactly how this goes: Media aligned with the ruling party begin a steady drumbeat of incitement against a critic of the government and by the time he's arrested, they're frothing at the mouth for his blood. The details of the indictment won't matter. I don't think there's the slightest reason to think the same techniques won't work in the US: In fact, they may work better because the population, we could say, is autocratically naive. Turks at least recognized that yes, it could happen in Turkey. They had recent memories of it.
If I've misunderstood you, though, or if anything else gives you cause for optimism, though, tell me about it.
Scratch that. He hasn’t even taken office yet and is already going after the Fed’s independence. I think he’s going full power grab landslide victory or not. My previous slender optimism now gone. Sorry. Ignore my wishful thinking
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I agree the hope is quite slender. I don’t know that there is a sophistication and experience enough for Americans to delineate between democracy and liberal democracy. I think to distinguish between the two you almost have to have gone through the experience of having your Democratic rights taken away from you, and that has not yet happened in the US. And yes, I fully agree that to the extent he wants to establish a de facto dictatorship he can, and much more easily than one can in Turkey. The question in my mind is with such a resounding victory does he feel he needs to even bother. Will find out soon enough, I guess.
"The Middle East awaited Nov. 5 to determine the conclusion of the war. The election of Mr. Trump—who wants Israel to finish up and win, as opposed to handcuffing it and pressuring it to lose—improves Israel’s bargaining position with Hezbollah and Hamas.
The pressure is on them to succumb to Israel’s terms. In one of Mr. Trump’s biggest applause lines at the Republican convention, he warned, “We want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office or you will be paying a very big price.” That threat is now operative, and the clock is ticking.
On Jan. 20, 1981, during President Reagan’s inaugural address, Iran released 52 U.S. hostages after 444 days in captivity. Today some 50 hostages are believed to be alive in Gaza, including four Americans: Edan Alexander, Omer Neutra, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Keith Siegel. We’re coming up on 400 days.
The 1980 election aftermath could be a precedent to follow for Hamas and its patrons in Qatar and Iran. Each has plenty to lose if a motivated U.S. President wants to act." (Editorial.)
Eight years ago, Donald Trump became president amid a flurry of miscalculations and arrogant misreads by political and media professionals from both parties. The commentariat first insisted he couldn’t win the Republican nomination (we were told to await the “real candidate” as he rose in polls), then told us he couldn’t win the general without endorsements and corporate backing. Then Trump did win and it became instant conventional wisdom that this impermissible political choice proved the rural malcontents who voted for him were moral troglodytes and white supremacists deserving of their fates.
A strategy of relentless vilfication on the one hand and self-congratulation on the other became standard. “I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product,” chirped Hillary Clinton. “The places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.” A list of pundits (Paul Krugman was a favorite) concurred: the Trump voter was a knuckle-dragging parasite living off the coastal wealth creators, whose votes mattered more. When Joe Biden won in 2020, media were quick to note Trump was only supported by 29% of GDP, practically the same thing as only being supported by 29% of people. White Rural Rage became the most predictable New York Times bestseller ever.
The cult of mass political psychosis was mind-blowing. Trump became a representation of evil more terrifying to laptop-class American adults than the Boogieman is to toddlers. Grown men and women rooted for the president to be proven a Russian agent. Studio audiences roared at the idea of vaccine-refusers dying. All explanations for Trump support other than racism and fears of “status loss” were dismissed, and his immigration policies were denounced as abhorrent and Hitlerian, until they were adopted by Harris in this cycle. Voters were told a billion times that Trump is a fascist dictator-in-waiting and a threat to democracy. They were chided a billion more times to remember he’s a convicted criminal. Virtually every federal enforcement agency made announcements proclaiming a vote for Trump to be tantamount to aid to foreign enemies.
At the end of all this messaging, Trump gained. He went from a two-time popular-vote loser to a president with a mandate of 5 million-plus votes. Despite constant reminders of his racism, he gained with black and Hispanic voters. There are species of tapeworms that could have grasped last night that voters got tired of being stereotyped as bigots by gasbags like Reid and Scarborough and told their race or gender or whatever compelled their political choices. An infant knows this, too, is a form of racism, and that too many “you ain’t black unless…” speeches will tend to push people after a while to reach for something sharp, or give Donald Trump a landslide win.
If 71 million people giving you the finger as eight years of statements and predictions go belly up on live TV won’t budge these idiots out of their “All people who are not me are racist” bubble, nothing will. Perfect, virginal ignorance is a rare sight. We should admire theirs for the shimmering collective pearl it is, though I worry the exhibition might keep running another ten years. (Taibbi.)
Snippet-sorry for long excerpt- "Of the tens of thousands of Trump devotees from across the country who descended on Washington to attend then-president Trump’s inflammatory speech at the Ellipse, a raucous subset, numbering a few thousand, marched on the Capitol. Most of these were peaceful if misguided protesters, but hundreds were not. Well over a hundred of the latter fought with grossly undermanned, unprepared security forces. The rioters did not kill anyone, as the media–Democratic complex slanderously maintained in the weeks immediately after the siege. But enough force was used to overwhelm the police — about 140 of whom suffered injuries, some of which were serious. That enabled the horde to breach the barriers. No, there was no intention to destroy the Capitol, but windows were smashed, doors were damaged, offices were trashed, and there were sundry other acts of vandalism.
Most significant, Congress was obstructed while conducting a constitutionally required proceeding, in which both houses and the vice president quadrennially bear witness to the counting of state-certified electoral votes and then formally acknowledge the winner of the presidential election, who is to be inaugurated two weeks later. The storming of the Capitol required then-vice-president Mike Pence and lawmakers to be evacuated. Because of bureaucratic incompetence, as well as President Trump’s unwillingness to discourage the rioters or call in the National Guard, it took hours longer than it should have to suppress the agitators, clear the building, and reconvene the session.
But reconvene it did. The damage was minimal. There was no need to find an alternative location. There was no prospect that Pence and Congress would be dissuaded from performing their duty. By the wee hours, Joseph Biden had been duly recognized as the president-elect. Trump was quickly shamed into committing to an orderly transition, and Biden was timely inaugurated, as there was no doubt he would be.
Such a riot, it should go without saying, is very far from nothing. It may be that hundreds of Trump supporters did nothing more serious than trespass (the Capitol may belong to the people, but by law it is a restricted-access federal facility). It may also be that some of those who’ve been identified in the government’s no-stone-unturned, no-Facebook-photo-ignored dragnet never got near the Capitol, or were unaware that entry was prohibited by the time they harmlessly wandered through. Yet, based on the Justice Department’s public disclosures, CBS News reports that more than 130 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers; over 40 have been charged with using dangerous weapons (though these charges mainly involve bear spray and other toxic aerosols, not firearms); and another 30 have been charged with some degree of property destruction.
Again, a national disgrace. There is a disconnection, though, between the grave constitutional affront — namely, the effort to reverse a presidential election — and the crimes committed in furtherance of it, which were comparatively minor in the sense that the perps had no conceivable prospect of achieving that objective.
There is, moreover, a displacement of accountability. The media–Democratic “insurrection” rhetoric is hyperbolic, and the Biden-Garland Justice Department’s portrayal of right-wing groups as an emerging white-supremacist ISIS is preposterous. As horrific as January 6 appeared to be, the real threat to democracy was not the Trump supporters. It was Trump. It was a two-month barnstorm of which January 6 was the climax. It was the turning of the powers and prestige of the presidency against the Constitution presidents are sworn to preserve, protect, and defend.
Democrats, of course, are delighted to keep the spotlight on Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s continuing grip on the GOP — a corollary of his stunningly durable grip on his core supporters, who now dominate many state-party organizations that heavily sway national Republicans — divides the Right and undermines a unified opposition to the faux-moderate Biden administration’s profligate progressive agenda.
Regarding January 6, though, Trump is a second-order consideration. The priority, which was already a hot pursuit before the Capitol riot, is to limn Trump supporters — and, by extension, Republicans and conservatives — as defenders of an incorrigible, institutionally racist order that inspires neo-Nazi terrorism under the guise of championing American heritage, free speech, religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and equality (the antithesis of “equity,” the Left’s new cynosure).
That explains the now-stalled push for a “national commission” to examine, hold hearings on, and generate an epic report about the Capitol riot — which, mantra-like, Democrats brand the “Capitol insurrection.”
Palpably, there is no need for such a commission, which, as envisioned by legislation passed in the Democratic-controlled House but blocked in the Republican-controlled Senate, was to be a blue-ribbon panel of nonpartisan (of course!) national-security and civil-rights experts, consisting of ten members, five chosen by Democratic and five by GOP leadership. That sounds eminently fair . . . until you factor in that the chairman, chosen by Democrats, would dominate the hiring of commission staff, which controls how these exercises proceed (particularly the report-writing); and that, with Republicans divided on the knotty problem of how to deal with Trump, unified Democrats would have de facto majority control.
A cynic (ahem) might ask how it is that Congress could have impeached a president over the riot yet failed adequately to investigate it. Not just failed. In their haste to present Trump as having instigated the killing of a police officer, Democrats included in their “Incitement to Insurrection” impeachment article and their pretrial brief filed with the Senate a month later the dubious and, we now know, false allegation that rioters had caused Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick’s death by bashing his head with a fire extinguisher. In reality, Sicknick died of natural causes (two strokes) the day after the riot; he’d suffered no blunt-force trauma, and no one (including two rioters accused of assaulting him with bear spray) has been charged with homicide.
Still, to say the commission is a bad idea is not necessarily to say Congress should move on from January 6. The point is that any need for continuing investigation of the riot should be handled by the representatives the public elects for such purposes. Contrary to popular belief, the job of lawmakers is not to delegate authority and then go on cable news to complain about how “broken” the system is; it is Congress’s job to conduct oversight of the executive branch, examine security breaches on congressional turf itself, and enact any necessary curative legislation — i.e., to be accountable.
A January 6 probe could easily be conducted by Congress’s standing committees or by a special committee, perhaps a bicameral committee, formed for the purpose. The House Democrats, who managed to impeach Trump twice, the second time in warp speed, could get such hearings up and running tout de suite. Indeed, even as Democrats were clamoring that a commission was the only way to go, two standing Senate committees managed to investigate and issue a lengthy bipartisan report on the mind-boggling security and intelligence failures that resulted in the January 6 mob’s overmatching of the police guarding the Capitol.
Democrats have to this point eschewed this approach for a simple reason: They want a 9/11 Commission–style extravaganza to sear in public consciousness their ceaseless narrative that the Capitol riot was a terrorist atrocity on par with the jihadist murder of nearly 3,000 Americans.
The political messaging dates back to the Obama administration, the model for Biden-era Democrats. Shortly after President Obama took office, his Homeland Security Department issued an intelligence assessment that portrayed “right-wing extremism” as the most perilous terrorism threat facing the nation. The report insinuated that traditional conservative policy positions — favoring federalism, limited government, the Second Amendment, a crackdown on illegal immigration, and so on — were drivers of “extremism.” Further, it suggested that military veterans returning from defending America overseas would be likely recruits to extremism. The reflex of the Obama-Biden administration was to downplay actual jihadist terrorist attacks (it called them “man-caused disasters,” implying that they had no Islamist motivation) while trumpeting the allegedly omnipresent threat of forcible right-wing uprisings. In this context, Democrats equate “right-wing extremism” (and, derivatively, “conservatism”) with “white supremacism,” on the theory that Republicans and their supporters envision tearing down government barriers to the onset of a new Jim Crow era.
Democratic proposals for heightened law enforcement and intelligence surveillance of right-wing groups gave us, even before Biden took office, the proposed Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act. It would expressly direct executive agencies to focus their attentions on white supremacism, simultaneously prescribing a new definition of “domestic terrorism” that exempts from its coverage persons in the United States who are “associated with or inspired by” foreign terrorist organizations. That is, it turns a blind eye to jihadism . . . which, naturally, is why Democrats garnered support for their gambit from an array of Islamist-apologist and progressive groups (e.g., Muslim Advocates, the Arab-American Institute, and the Southern Poverty Law Center) heretofore hardwired to oppose U.S. counterterrorism efforts. (Andy McCarthy.)
Again, There was no prospect that Pence and Congress would be dissuaded from performing their duty. By the wee hours, Joseph Biden had been duly recognized as the president-elect. Trump was quickly shamed into committing to an orderly transition, and Biden was timely inaugurated, as there was no doubt he would be.
Such a riot, it should go without saying, is very far from nothing. It may be that hundreds of Trump supporters did nothing more serious than trespass (the Capitol may belong to the people, but by law it is a restricted-access federal facility). It may also be that some of those who’ve been identified in the government’s no-stone-unturned, no-Facebook-photo-ignored dragnet never got near the Capitol, or were unaware that entry was prohibited by the time they harmlessly wandered through. Yet, based on the Justice Department’s public disclosures, CBS News reports that more than 130 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers; over 40 have been charged with using dangerous weapons (though these charges mainly involve bear spray and other toxic aerosols, not firearms); and another 30 have been charged with some degree of property destruction.
Again, a national disgrace. There is a disconnection, though, between the grave constitutional affront — namely, the effort to reverse a presidential election — and the crimes committed in furtherance of it, which were comparatively minor in the sense that the perps had no conceivable prospect of achieving that objective. (Andy McCarthy.)
I agree with you Claire in your. — lack of understanding. I am with you. How on earth anyone could vote for Trump at this stage, when we know him and when what he revealed at his rallies was even more revolting than ever… is beyond me. It took me awhile to really get it, but I have. His MSG rally was full of people who bellowed that Kamala Harris had “pimps”, was an “antichrist” and “satan”. Tucker Carlson called her a (paraphrase) ‘low IQ, Samoan/Polynesian DEI hire”… there was Hulk Hogan and nearly no GOP political officials. Who talks like this? Well, I mean, in public at a rally? We know Nixon was crass behind closed doors, but the doors were closed even if the tape was running. I’ve never seen anything like Trump’s circus tent rallies and conventions. Now we have RFK Jr. promised a run of “taking care” of women’s health and American’s health — maybe the HHS or CDC or… RFK Jr. a committed lunatic anti-vaxxer! How crazy are people? So what if Kamala Harris uses “Latinx” now and again. Trump was threatening to hunt down enemies and stating he would be happy if members of the media were shot as his rallies (the crack about how the protective plastic shielding him from the trajectory of a bullet had an opening only where the press would be killed first and he would be glad if they were). People laughed at these remarks at his rally but why would Americans vote en masse for a man like this? He pretended to fellate the mic stand at one of his rallies, there’s video. He rambled on about Hannibal Lector and how he was a better president than Washington. The guy is nuts. What is the appeal? I don’t get it.
We had a perfectly reasonable Democrat who veered center-right and appeared exuberant and civil at her public appearances. She debated him into the ground and showed him up thoroughly. She gave a great convention speech. OK, maybe she could have given more interviews and maybe sometimes her answers were a bit garbled in the ones she gave but she was — openly and entirely relatable and — sane.
I think you are right Claire that Americans want the dark side. They are craving the dark energy that Trump gives off, the Mafia Don quality. Not sure why… but there you have it.
Nothing else explains it.
Oh, by the way, it’s “birthing persons”. I hate that term too. Harris was careful to stay away from those terms from what I heard. At any rate, so what? The propensity of some Dems to use absurd language doesn’t mean we need to elect Caligula. Weird times!
Inflation, immigration and trans rights won the election for Trump combined with a superior social media and advertising strategy that hammered those fears home constantly. The legacy media harmed Harris badly because they are still playing the old balance game. To her credit Kamala‘s team understood this and didn’t cave in to the old pundits saying she needed to talk about policy, but the left has no media capable of delivering consistent messaging to the median voter the way the right does with. Harris really should have gone on Rogan though. She also should have fought harder for another debate, the first debate really brought into focus how broken Trump is. Even a debate on Fox News probably would have helped her.
Lesson for politicians: elections aren't won over the rule of law, liberal democratic norms, or policies. Trump shredded the whole idea of America ‚The New Colossus‘ and even that didn’t matter to his voters. We witness the rise of a post-political electorate who simply don‘t care about facts, science, reason but about sentiments and their gut feeling. Pretty much like the famous ‚common sense‘ which delivered Brexit for Britain. The populists manage time and time again to convince people to vote against their interests. Disregarding facts and heeding the ‚will of the people/dear leader’ is one way down the road to facism.
I tend to be a big picture kind of guy, and I think all the little reasons people are giving for why Trump won need to be thought of in a larger context.
First, on the international side, the post-WWII world order has been unraveling for years. If you wanted a specific point in time when it started, let's say when Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard. Wolfgang Streeck does a decent job of describing the economic unraveling in the years since then (although he doesn't posit a cause and effect relationship). Slowly but surely the world I was raised in (I was born in 1952) has been disappearing, and—although the media rarely, if ever, frame things in that context—it causes quite a bit of stress. But it's a very complex issue, and Joe and Jane Six Pack aren't really going to take the time or make the effort to understand it. That's one reason why "Make America Great Again" resonates with so many people . . . as H.L. Mencken allegedly said, "For every complex problem there is a solution which is clear, simple and wrong.”
Second, on the domestic side, there's an entire thread you can follow, beginning with Lewis Powell's famous memo of August, 1971, "Attack on American Free Enterprise System." This is referred to a lot here and there, but few people ever connect the dots through Michael Horowitz's later essays (and the establishment of The Federalist Society), Pete DuPont's GoPac, and the realization by the religious right that "there's gold in them thar hills," and the subsequent politicization of American evangelicals. All of these things (and more) point to a wave that's been building—and that has morphed into something that Lewis Powell wouldn't recognize—for over 50 years.
One piece of that domestic thread that's worth examining is the development of media. Lewis Powell did a good job in a September 2004 Harper's article, "The Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History," but that's a bit outdated now. Take a look at sociologist Sharon Quinsaat's post on X about her research into what information is actually being consumed by Trump supporters. As she put it, "We're living in two different worlds." That's where we are now, and I can't see any way around that.
If you take all of those things together, it's hard to see that a policy tweak here or a different running mate there would have made a difference. And it's equally hard to see that this can be turned around with the Democrats winning the House this time or the Senate in a mid-term turn around or a Democratic President in 2028. There are some very deep-rooted problems at play that have been developing for decades, and they need to be fixed, not just glossed over with a changing of the guard in Washington DC.
Although I was hoping for the best, I've been preparing for the worst for some time. Part of that preparation has been thinking about my identity. Having been raised a baby boomer, and having spent the bulk of my working life in the U.S. military, and having been very politically active over the years, a big part of my identity has been rooted in being a liberal American. But I think it's time to try letting that go. I've been living in Europe for over six years now, and if there's one sliver of a silver lining in Trump's re-election (and the obvious Russia/Ukraine direction in U.S. policy) it's that Europe might finally get its act together as a political bloc. Macron seems to be pushing in that direction. And perhaps I can restructure my identity into something like a cosmopolitan adherent to classic liberal, Enlightenment values and find meaningful ways to keep the flame burning here in Europe as it sputters out in the U.S.
Rick, I agree. May I add to your big picture the Reagan years of deregulation that started the US budget deficit’s growth into the unimaginable *and* opened the door to the wealth inequality in the US that is absolutely horrifying today. No US government since then has truly turned its back on “Reaganomics” because that created the money that funds the system of influence we call US American politics.
It is a mystery to me why the economic underclass in the US thinks that a Trump presidency will be good for them. Today’s Trump-Republican party is only serving the interests of the ones with money. The “culture” statements are aimed to please the economic underclass— but I doubt their opportunities will improve much in any other way. The American Dream dies hard.
Like you, I’ve made my home in Europe. There had been rumblings in the regional political scene a year ago, when it seemed that Biden had no chance against another Trump candidacy. I was greatly encouraged by leaders starting to think aloud about how to counter another Trump presidency. This appeared to stop abruptly when Harris-Walz took the ticket. Now the wake-up call is real, and I also pray that the (long overdue) silver lining you describe comes to pass.
I am not convinced Americans who voted for Team Trump have thought through their decision's consequences. If, for example
* You take medications, can you continue to trust their efficacy as 'safeguarded' by RFK, Jr?
* Have they thought through the true use of tariffs for Team Trump?
* etc ad infinitum
There is an incipient groundswell among the Resistance (I use the media's term) to "Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war." It is best, I believe, for each person to ensure he or she and their family be protected against the likely future to come.
We can rationale this forever and we likely will but the simplistic take away here for the Democrats is much like it was when Trump beat Hilary. A long look in the mirror is needed if you can’t convince people that you are more worthy of managing the leading democracy on the planet than a man with few if any redeeming qualities. It’s not so much what you did to lose the election it’s the short list of anything you did right in the previous four years.
Do you agree that we are in a time period where the message of unification and reaching across the isle is completely ineffective. It’s either with one side or the other. Maybe this lasts 10 years, maybe 20 but something drastic will have to happen to change it.
Regardless of why Trump won, which is important for the Democratic Party to analyze if they care to ever be competitive again, Europe’s expectation that the US owes it consideration in its election is beyond weird and entitled. They want to fight Putin? Then fucking fund it, increase production of arms and ammunition, train and supply Ukraine. That’s the European continent. The EU has an equally sized economy and more people than the US. How can the EU both hate on the US and demand a subsidy of its defense?
Claire,
(1) Way too much of your journalistic capital was expended this past month in your repetitive pleas to express your opinions about this election. Where was the analysis of the German government that fell apart this week, the Miliei government, Ukraine, the French minority government hobbling along, etc.?
(2) I believe that your perspective is limited as you have spent so much time outside of the USA with no extensive return visits to feel the pulse here.
Claire, I've never commented on your Substack, but this is one of the clearest things I've read post-election, so I felt I had to comment. I think you're right on the money, so thank you.
If Trump were just "Conservative Bernie Sanders" then all of the commentary you are condemning as just so much garbage would be perfectly reasonable and useful. Fixing immigration, inflation, income inequality, revolt against progressive's obsession with identity, etc. are all perfectly legitimate political desires within the constraints of a liberal constitutional democratic system. But Trump isn't Conservative Bernie. Rather, he has clearly shown himself by word, deed, and temperament to be ready, willing, and now able to destroy that constitutional system. To pick him to address those legitimate political ends is basically, for lack of a better phrase, a giant category error. It's like choosing an arsonist to renovate your kitchen.
So, why did so many Americans commit that error? As you point out, no one really knows. One can point to many hypotheses - lack of historical imagination, the funhouse of confirmation bias that media has become, the marginal cognitive decline of an aging population, the herd instinct that come from widespread personal dissatisfaction, tribalism, bloodlust, decadence, Flouride in the water (sorry!), and many more I'm sure. But it may be decades before we really understand it, if ever.
Human history is of course complex and contingent. I believe there are times when an enormous metaphorical "potential energy" has built up, just waiting to be released like an avalanche or an earthquake (note, both disasters!) that can irreversibly remake the entire terrain. Thus, in the right circumstances, relatively innocuous events like the marginal shifting of votes in a single election can have enormous consequences. After all, I imagine many Archdukes have been assassinated over the years, but only one started a world war. I fear we are at one of those times, when it is virtually impossible to sense what is coming until the ground is already moving beneath your feet, and completely impossible to know where it will lead.
Not meant to "persuade,' but rather to "inform." https://www.wsj.com/video/series/news-explainers/how-trump-won-a-data-breakdown/332C54E8-C721-4BAE-8EF8-E71F1823ACE8?mod=WSJvidctr_editorpicks_pos1
https://x.com/ClayTravis/status/1856047192143794687?t=GOGC92sS63P8xA-27TR1Ug&s=19
Thank you for the comment. You understand exactly what I meant, and you've phrased it better than I did, for that matter. It's a category error. And yes, I agree with something you're groping at by using the metaphor of "potential energy," though I have no idea what we're saying in using this metaphor, since of course it is only a metaphor and doesn't come close to really describing what we mean. Trump's reelection may have been contingent in some sense--history could have gone the other way at many points since he came down that escalator--but the fact that it didn't go the other way at all of those points does suggest that Americans' desire to rip up the system and try a new form of governance wasn't a passing whim. What I'm really trying to understand is how well Americans understood that this is what they were doing. Part of me believes there's no way a single voter could have failed to understand this. Another part of me wonders if the experience of authoritarianism is just so completely alien to Americans that they simply couldn't believe, no matter what he said, that he would be capable of making the US something very different from what it's always been--if they believed and believe that he would simply be a normal president who carries out the policies they prefer, albeit rudely.
Thank you. With respect to the question of "why?", my fervent hope is that this is primarily a lack of imagination on the part of Trump voters. In other words, and despite the evidence to the contrary, most Trump voters just can't imagine him ultimately being much different than a typical American politician. He's just a little rougher around the edges. The nightmare scenario is that a hypothetical "Conservative Bernie" would have underperformed in the election compared to Trump, and it really is the vitriol, demonization, tribalism, glorification of violence, and willingness to truly smash the guardrails that put him over the top. The reality is that is likely both of the above and probably more, but how much of each? A key marker to look out for - what is the reaction when "others" really start getting hurt?
"What I'm really trying to understand is how well Americans understood that this is what they were doing."
I ask questions - non-confrontationally, I am just curious - and the answers I receive tell me: No, they do not. There are 1st order effects, and then there are 2nd and 3rd order effects. Most of these people do not understand even 1st order effects; typically, linear consequences.
And then there is the fact that Bannon's Bible is Fourth Turning, and he does everything he can do hasten its 'manifestation' - first the Unraveling and then the Crisis. I have come to believe a lot of people have been sold a Bill of Goods that is the actualization of the Fourth Turning without understanding its ramifications and consequences. The consequences are moot, the ramifications are not. Godspeed, Stephen.
Sorry for my Edit. I forgot an entire sentence or two.
I don't know, sounds like Macron just summed it up pretty well.
"Donald Trump was elected by Americans to defend the interests of Americans."
https://x.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1854606082473148791?t=PhsKnyUGzvMw72q6Hel0Ig&s=19
Saw this quote. Seems appropriate. "There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and the superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures, and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally becomes a political power and changes the course of history."
Claire,
Might it be that the reason that our peers chose DJT (Yes! Affirmatively and decisively!) is due to our society’s unprecedented plenty and security? So few of us cherish the precious precarity of our democracy. We don’t know societal fear. We have insufficient skin in the game. Ignorant of history, we cannot fathom what we risk when we regress to the mean of human experience.
For sure.
Heather McDonald at City Journal has an interesting take on Trump’s victory and how it was aided and abetted by the mainstream press. It’s interesting and fun and worth a look (and it’s free) See,
https://www.city-journal.org/article/trumped?utm_source=virtuous&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cjdaily
The media grandiosity and martyr complex that birthed the Washington Post’s Democracy Dies in Darkness motto has not abated in the face of the media’s electoral defeat. According to Times editors Kahn, Lacey, and Ryan, the “people” need the Times: “They will need us to be unflinching in the face of intimidation.” Something else on the media scorecard to look for: the Trump administration “intimidating” the Times. Might Trump tweet nasty things about the Times? Probably. But it does not take much to “be unflinching” in the face of such alleged intimidation.
Kahn, Lacey, and Ryan end their November 6 memo with another channeling of what the “people” want from the Times: its traditional “sober analysis and guidance.” Some “people” who have followed the Times’s unhinged Trump coverage over the last month might chuckle over that description.
Impotent, blinkered, and unrepentant would be a more accurate motto for the press. Expect another four years of fear-mongering as the Trump administration tries to restore the country’s constitutional architecture. Keep that scorecard in hand. Though the media will never admit it, their credibility, already threadbare, will be definitively decimated. (Heather McDonald.)
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Hear, hear!
I can see it already. The Ford class carrier USS Claire Berlinski. Known to its sailors as just Berl. This ship wages war where you want it, when you want it, now. You have been warned.
Coming from Turkey like you I am acutely aware and sensitive to what an authoritarian like trump can do to democracy, particularly in an already presidential system rather than a parliamentarian one. However there are a couple of points that even a pessimist like me can be hopeful about. A few weeks before the election, there was a Reuters poll that asked Americans, what are the issues that they are most concerned about. Top three were economy, immigration, and fear over loss of democracy. (Foreign policy and Gaza incidentally were distantly behind these factors, prognostications of certain people in Michigan not withstanding). Economy immigration, those pulled heavily Trump by a margin of like 3 to 1. but on the issue of democracy, those polled favoured Harris. I noticed after this poll that particularly in the various rallies in New York and Pennsylvania, Trump and his spokespeople were heavily focusing on the point of democracy. Their talking points were very simple. They were saying if we don’t win this election, this will be the last election. They kept pointing to the last election was stolen, voter fraud, they tried to block him from running, harris an ointment was not democratic, etc etc. Gone was All this previous stuff about third term and dictatorship, at least as far as I could tell. It seems like Trump in his camp correctly identified that they were weak on this point and quite effectively focused on this point to try to turn it to their favour. I wonder if their awareness of Americans’ sensitivity on the point of democracy, toogether with the fact that he won so handily may temper some of his authoritarian tendencies and desires to change the system. He may feel he doesn’t have to. We’ll see. Is very clear that the system is not at the mercy of the impulses and capabilities of one deranged individual
Erdogan is quoted as saying, early in his career, 1997, “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
It's possible. It's a slender reed on which to hang your hopes, though. What worries me perhaps most of all--or at least, it's in the top ten--is that while it may be true that a large part of the electorate reports fearing "loss of democracy," it has no stable understanding of what that means. As I've written before--many times--"democracy" and "liberal democracy" are not the same, and I don't know what people meant, exactly, when they said they feared "loss of democracy." A large number of Trump voters were prepared--sincerely prepared--to believe that Kamala Harris was a communist. They were prepared to believe the 2020 election was stolen. (I notice they're no longer worried about the integrity of our elections.) Would voters recognize it if Trump took the kinds of steps RTE has taken to ensure the opposition can't compete on a level playing field? I doubt it: It would be very easy for him, just as it has been for RTE, to create a narrative that satisfies them to account for what he does, even if it's profoundly illiberal. We can be sure he'll use the machinery of the federal government, for example, to bring critics in the media to heel. Bezos understood this perfectly. But Trump's supporters don't: We've seen that they're *very* willing to believe that Bezos just saw the light and became frustrated that WaPo was "a left-wing rag." They're willing to believe that Trump was prosecuted for trivial reasons. Many don't believe (and you can see this even in these comments) that Trump made a very serious effort, only narrowly thwarted, to stage a coup. They repeat that what happened at the Capitol was "just a riot," that Trump was "within his rights" to question the election, and therefore believe it be justified to prosecute Jack Smith for "weaponizing the justice system." If people don't understand these things, what difference does it make if they say they're worried about democracy? You know exactly how this goes: Media aligned with the ruling party begin a steady drumbeat of incitement against a critic of the government and by the time he's arrested, they're frothing at the mouth for his blood. The details of the indictment won't matter. I don't think there's the slightest reason to think the same techniques won't work in the US: In fact, they may work better because the population, we could say, is autocratically naive. Turks at least recognized that yes, it could happen in Turkey. They had recent memories of it.
If I've misunderstood you, though, or if anything else gives you cause for optimism, though, tell me about it.
Scratch that. He hasn’t even taken office yet and is already going after the Fed’s independence. I think he’s going full power grab landslide victory or not. My previous slender optimism now gone. Sorry. Ignore my wishful thinking
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I agree the hope is quite slender. I don’t know that there is a sophistication and experience enough for Americans to delineate between democracy and liberal democracy. I think to distinguish between the two you almost have to have gone through the experience of having your Democratic rights taken away from you, and that has not yet happened in the US. And yes, I fully agree that to the extent he wants to establish a de facto dictatorship he can, and much more easily than one can in Turkey. The question in my mind is with such a resounding victory does he feel he needs to even bother. Will find out soon enough, I guess.
Another footnote from today's WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/iran-donald-trump-joe-biden-sanctions-israel-hamas-hezbollah-e1492234?st=nZh1H2
"The Middle East awaited Nov. 5 to determine the conclusion of the war. The election of Mr. Trump—who wants Israel to finish up and win, as opposed to handcuffing it and pressuring it to lose—improves Israel’s bargaining position with Hezbollah and Hamas.
The pressure is on them to succumb to Israel’s terms. In one of Mr. Trump’s biggest applause lines at the Republican convention, he warned, “We want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office or you will be paying a very big price.” That threat is now operative, and the clock is ticking.
On Jan. 20, 1981, during President Reagan’s inaugural address, Iran released 52 U.S. hostages after 444 days in captivity. Today some 50 hostages are believed to be alive in Gaza, including four Americans: Edan Alexander, Omer Neutra, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Keith Siegel. We’re coming up on 400 days.
The 1980 election aftermath could be a precedent to follow for Hamas and its patrons in Qatar and Iran. Each has plenty to lose if a motivated U.S. President wants to act." (Editorial.)
Another footnote: https://www.racket.news/p/giant-electoral-asteroid-strikes?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1042&post_id=151270842&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=3qd0x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Eight years ago, Donald Trump became president amid a flurry of miscalculations and arrogant misreads by political and media professionals from both parties. The commentariat first insisted he couldn’t win the Republican nomination (we were told to await the “real candidate” as he rose in polls), then told us he couldn’t win the general without endorsements and corporate backing. Then Trump did win and it became instant conventional wisdom that this impermissible political choice proved the rural malcontents who voted for him were moral troglodytes and white supremacists deserving of their fates.
A strategy of relentless vilfication on the one hand and self-congratulation on the other became standard. “I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product,” chirped Hillary Clinton. “The places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.” A list of pundits (Paul Krugman was a favorite) concurred: the Trump voter was a knuckle-dragging parasite living off the coastal wealth creators, whose votes mattered more. When Joe Biden won in 2020, media were quick to note Trump was only supported by 29% of GDP, practically the same thing as only being supported by 29% of people. White Rural Rage became the most predictable New York Times bestseller ever.
The cult of mass political psychosis was mind-blowing. Trump became a representation of evil more terrifying to laptop-class American adults than the Boogieman is to toddlers. Grown men and women rooted for the president to be proven a Russian agent. Studio audiences roared at the idea of vaccine-refusers dying. All explanations for Trump support other than racism and fears of “status loss” were dismissed, and his immigration policies were denounced as abhorrent and Hitlerian, until they were adopted by Harris in this cycle. Voters were told a billion times that Trump is a fascist dictator-in-waiting and a threat to democracy. They were chided a billion more times to remember he’s a convicted criminal. Virtually every federal enforcement agency made announcements proclaiming a vote for Trump to be tantamount to aid to foreign enemies.
At the end of all this messaging, Trump gained. He went from a two-time popular-vote loser to a president with a mandate of 5 million-plus votes. Despite constant reminders of his racism, he gained with black and Hispanic voters. There are species of tapeworms that could have grasped last night that voters got tired of being stereotyped as bigots by gasbags like Reid and Scarborough and told their race or gender or whatever compelled their political choices. An infant knows this, too, is a form of racism, and that too many “you ain’t black unless…” speeches will tend to push people after a while to reach for something sharp, or give Donald Trump a landslide win.
If 71 million people giving you the finger as eight years of statements and predictions go belly up on live TV won’t budge these idiots out of their “All people who are not me are racist” bubble, nothing will. Perfect, virginal ignorance is a rare sight. We should admire theirs for the shimmering collective pearl it is, though I worry the exhibition might keep running another ten years. (Taibbi.)
On the "coup'- https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/12/how-to-think-about-january-6/
Snippet-sorry for long excerpt- "Of the tens of thousands of Trump devotees from across the country who descended on Washington to attend then-president Trump’s inflammatory speech at the Ellipse, a raucous subset, numbering a few thousand, marched on the Capitol. Most of these were peaceful if misguided protesters, but hundreds were not. Well over a hundred of the latter fought with grossly undermanned, unprepared security forces. The rioters did not kill anyone, as the media–Democratic complex slanderously maintained in the weeks immediately after the siege. But enough force was used to overwhelm the police — about 140 of whom suffered injuries, some of which were serious. That enabled the horde to breach the barriers. No, there was no intention to destroy the Capitol, but windows were smashed, doors were damaged, offices were trashed, and there were sundry other acts of vandalism.
Most significant, Congress was obstructed while conducting a constitutionally required proceeding, in which both houses and the vice president quadrennially bear witness to the counting of state-certified electoral votes and then formally acknowledge the winner of the presidential election, who is to be inaugurated two weeks later. The storming of the Capitol required then-vice-president Mike Pence and lawmakers to be evacuated. Because of bureaucratic incompetence, as well as President Trump’s unwillingness to discourage the rioters or call in the National Guard, it took hours longer than it should have to suppress the agitators, clear the building, and reconvene the session.
But reconvene it did. The damage was minimal. There was no need to find an alternative location. There was no prospect that Pence and Congress would be dissuaded from performing their duty. By the wee hours, Joseph Biden had been duly recognized as the president-elect. Trump was quickly shamed into committing to an orderly transition, and Biden was timely inaugurated, as there was no doubt he would be.
Such a riot, it should go without saying, is very far from nothing. It may be that hundreds of Trump supporters did nothing more serious than trespass (the Capitol may belong to the people, but by law it is a restricted-access federal facility). It may also be that some of those who’ve been identified in the government’s no-stone-unturned, no-Facebook-photo-ignored dragnet never got near the Capitol, or were unaware that entry was prohibited by the time they harmlessly wandered through. Yet, based on the Justice Department’s public disclosures, CBS News reports that more than 130 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers; over 40 have been charged with using dangerous weapons (though these charges mainly involve bear spray and other toxic aerosols, not firearms); and another 30 have been charged with some degree of property destruction.
Again, a national disgrace. There is a disconnection, though, between the grave constitutional affront — namely, the effort to reverse a presidential election — and the crimes committed in furtherance of it, which were comparatively minor in the sense that the perps had no conceivable prospect of achieving that objective.
There is, moreover, a displacement of accountability. The media–Democratic “insurrection” rhetoric is hyperbolic, and the Biden-Garland Justice Department’s portrayal of right-wing groups as an emerging white-supremacist ISIS is preposterous. As horrific as January 6 appeared to be, the real threat to democracy was not the Trump supporters. It was Trump. It was a two-month barnstorm of which January 6 was the climax. It was the turning of the powers and prestige of the presidency against the Constitution presidents are sworn to preserve, protect, and defend.
Democrats, of course, are delighted to keep the spotlight on Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s continuing grip on the GOP — a corollary of his stunningly durable grip on his core supporters, who now dominate many state-party organizations that heavily sway national Republicans — divides the Right and undermines a unified opposition to the faux-moderate Biden administration’s profligate progressive agenda.
Regarding January 6, though, Trump is a second-order consideration. The priority, which was already a hot pursuit before the Capitol riot, is to limn Trump supporters — and, by extension, Republicans and conservatives — as defenders of an incorrigible, institutionally racist order that inspires neo-Nazi terrorism under the guise of championing American heritage, free speech, religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and equality (the antithesis of “equity,” the Left’s new cynosure).
That explains the now-stalled push for a “national commission” to examine, hold hearings on, and generate an epic report about the Capitol riot — which, mantra-like, Democrats brand the “Capitol insurrection.”
Palpably, there is no need for such a commission, which, as envisioned by legislation passed in the Democratic-controlled House but blocked in the Republican-controlled Senate, was to be a blue-ribbon panel of nonpartisan (of course!) national-security and civil-rights experts, consisting of ten members, five chosen by Democratic and five by GOP leadership. That sounds eminently fair . . . until you factor in that the chairman, chosen by Democrats, would dominate the hiring of commission staff, which controls how these exercises proceed (particularly the report-writing); and that, with Republicans divided on the knotty problem of how to deal with Trump, unified Democrats would have de facto majority control.
A cynic (ahem) might ask how it is that Congress could have impeached a president over the riot yet failed adequately to investigate it. Not just failed. In their haste to present Trump as having instigated the killing of a police officer, Democrats included in their “Incitement to Insurrection” impeachment article and their pretrial brief filed with the Senate a month later the dubious and, we now know, false allegation that rioters had caused Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick’s death by bashing his head with a fire extinguisher. In reality, Sicknick died of natural causes (two strokes) the day after the riot; he’d suffered no blunt-force trauma, and no one (including two rioters accused of assaulting him with bear spray) has been charged with homicide.
Still, to say the commission is a bad idea is not necessarily to say Congress should move on from January 6. The point is that any need for continuing investigation of the riot should be handled by the representatives the public elects for such purposes. Contrary to popular belief, the job of lawmakers is not to delegate authority and then go on cable news to complain about how “broken” the system is; it is Congress’s job to conduct oversight of the executive branch, examine security breaches on congressional turf itself, and enact any necessary curative legislation — i.e., to be accountable.
A January 6 probe could easily be conducted by Congress’s standing committees or by a special committee, perhaps a bicameral committee, formed for the purpose. The House Democrats, who managed to impeach Trump twice, the second time in warp speed, could get such hearings up and running tout de suite. Indeed, even as Democrats were clamoring that a commission was the only way to go, two standing Senate committees managed to investigate and issue a lengthy bipartisan report on the mind-boggling security and intelligence failures that resulted in the January 6 mob’s overmatching of the police guarding the Capitol.
Democrats have to this point eschewed this approach for a simple reason: They want a 9/11 Commission–style extravaganza to sear in public consciousness their ceaseless narrative that the Capitol riot was a terrorist atrocity on par with the jihadist murder of nearly 3,000 Americans.
The political messaging dates back to the Obama administration, the model for Biden-era Democrats. Shortly after President Obama took office, his Homeland Security Department issued an intelligence assessment that portrayed “right-wing extremism” as the most perilous terrorism threat facing the nation. The report insinuated that traditional conservative policy positions — favoring federalism, limited government, the Second Amendment, a crackdown on illegal immigration, and so on — were drivers of “extremism.” Further, it suggested that military veterans returning from defending America overseas would be likely recruits to extremism. The reflex of the Obama-Biden administration was to downplay actual jihadist terrorist attacks (it called them “man-caused disasters,” implying that they had no Islamist motivation) while trumpeting the allegedly omnipresent threat of forcible right-wing uprisings. In this context, Democrats equate “right-wing extremism” (and, derivatively, “conservatism”) with “white supremacism,” on the theory that Republicans and their supporters envision tearing down government barriers to the onset of a new Jim Crow era.
Democratic proposals for heightened law enforcement and intelligence surveillance of right-wing groups gave us, even before Biden took office, the proposed Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act. It would expressly direct executive agencies to focus their attentions on white supremacism, simultaneously prescribing a new definition of “domestic terrorism” that exempts from its coverage persons in the United States who are “associated with or inspired by” foreign terrorist organizations. That is, it turns a blind eye to jihadism . . . which, naturally, is why Democrats garnered support for their gambit from an array of Islamist-apologist and progressive groups (e.g., Muslim Advocates, the Arab-American Institute, and the Southern Poverty Law Center) heretofore hardwired to oppose U.S. counterterrorism efforts. (Andy McCarthy.)
Again, There was no prospect that Pence and Congress would be dissuaded from performing their duty. By the wee hours, Joseph Biden had been duly recognized as the president-elect. Trump was quickly shamed into committing to an orderly transition, and Biden was timely inaugurated, as there was no doubt he would be.
Such a riot, it should go without saying, is very far from nothing. It may be that hundreds of Trump supporters did nothing more serious than trespass (the Capitol may belong to the people, but by law it is a restricted-access federal facility). It may also be that some of those who’ve been identified in the government’s no-stone-unturned, no-Facebook-photo-ignored dragnet never got near the Capitol, or were unaware that entry was prohibited by the time they harmlessly wandered through. Yet, based on the Justice Department’s public disclosures, CBS News reports that more than 130 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers; over 40 have been charged with using dangerous weapons (though these charges mainly involve bear spray and other toxic aerosols, not firearms); and another 30 have been charged with some degree of property destruction.
Again, a national disgrace. There is a disconnection, though, between the grave constitutional affront — namely, the effort to reverse a presidential election — and the crimes committed in furtherance of it, which were comparatively minor in the sense that the perps had no conceivable prospect of achieving that objective. (Andy McCarthy.)
I agree with you Claire in your. — lack of understanding. I am with you. How on earth anyone could vote for Trump at this stage, when we know him and when what he revealed at his rallies was even more revolting than ever… is beyond me. It took me awhile to really get it, but I have. His MSG rally was full of people who bellowed that Kamala Harris had “pimps”, was an “antichrist” and “satan”. Tucker Carlson called her a (paraphrase) ‘low IQ, Samoan/Polynesian DEI hire”… there was Hulk Hogan and nearly no GOP political officials. Who talks like this? Well, I mean, in public at a rally? We know Nixon was crass behind closed doors, but the doors were closed even if the tape was running. I’ve never seen anything like Trump’s circus tent rallies and conventions. Now we have RFK Jr. promised a run of “taking care” of women’s health and American’s health — maybe the HHS or CDC or… RFK Jr. a committed lunatic anti-vaxxer! How crazy are people? So what if Kamala Harris uses “Latinx” now and again. Trump was threatening to hunt down enemies and stating he would be happy if members of the media were shot as his rallies (the crack about how the protective plastic shielding him from the trajectory of a bullet had an opening only where the press would be killed first and he would be glad if they were). People laughed at these remarks at his rally but why would Americans vote en masse for a man like this? He pretended to fellate the mic stand at one of his rallies, there’s video. He rambled on about Hannibal Lector and how he was a better president than Washington. The guy is nuts. What is the appeal? I don’t get it.
We had a perfectly reasonable Democrat who veered center-right and appeared exuberant and civil at her public appearances. She debated him into the ground and showed him up thoroughly. She gave a great convention speech. OK, maybe she could have given more interviews and maybe sometimes her answers were a bit garbled in the ones she gave but she was — openly and entirely relatable and — sane.
I think you are right Claire that Americans want the dark side. They are craving the dark energy that Trump gives off, the Mafia Don quality. Not sure why… but there you have it.
Nothing else explains it.
Oh, by the way, it’s “birthing persons”. I hate that term too. Harris was careful to stay away from those terms from what I heard. At any rate, so what? The propensity of some Dems to use absurd language doesn’t mean we need to elect Caligula. Weird times!
Inflation, immigration and trans rights won the election for Trump combined with a superior social media and advertising strategy that hammered those fears home constantly. The legacy media harmed Harris badly because they are still playing the old balance game. To her credit Kamala‘s team understood this and didn’t cave in to the old pundits saying she needed to talk about policy, but the left has no media capable of delivering consistent messaging to the median voter the way the right does with. Harris really should have gone on Rogan though. She also should have fought harder for another debate, the first debate really brought into focus how broken Trump is. Even a debate on Fox News probably would have helped her.
Lesson for politicians: elections aren't won over the rule of law, liberal democratic norms, or policies. Trump shredded the whole idea of America ‚The New Colossus‘ and even that didn’t matter to his voters. We witness the rise of a post-political electorate who simply don‘t care about facts, science, reason but about sentiments and their gut feeling. Pretty much like the famous ‚common sense‘ which delivered Brexit for Britain. The populists manage time and time again to convince people to vote against their interests. Disregarding facts and heeding the ‚will of the people/dear leader’ is one way down the road to facism.
*fascism.
I tend to be a big picture kind of guy, and I think all the little reasons people are giving for why Trump won need to be thought of in a larger context.
First, on the international side, the post-WWII world order has been unraveling for years. If you wanted a specific point in time when it started, let's say when Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard. Wolfgang Streeck does a decent job of describing the economic unraveling in the years since then (although he doesn't posit a cause and effect relationship). Slowly but surely the world I was raised in (I was born in 1952) has been disappearing, and—although the media rarely, if ever, frame things in that context—it causes quite a bit of stress. But it's a very complex issue, and Joe and Jane Six Pack aren't really going to take the time or make the effort to understand it. That's one reason why "Make America Great Again" resonates with so many people . . . as H.L. Mencken allegedly said, "For every complex problem there is a solution which is clear, simple and wrong.”
Second, on the domestic side, there's an entire thread you can follow, beginning with Lewis Powell's famous memo of August, 1971, "Attack on American Free Enterprise System." This is referred to a lot here and there, but few people ever connect the dots through Michael Horowitz's later essays (and the establishment of The Federalist Society), Pete DuPont's GoPac, and the realization by the religious right that "there's gold in them thar hills," and the subsequent politicization of American evangelicals. All of these things (and more) point to a wave that's been building—and that has morphed into something that Lewis Powell wouldn't recognize—for over 50 years.
One piece of that domestic thread that's worth examining is the development of media. Lewis Powell did a good job in a September 2004 Harper's article, "The Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History," but that's a bit outdated now. Take a look at sociologist Sharon Quinsaat's post on X about her research into what information is actually being consumed by Trump supporters. As she put it, "We're living in two different worlds." That's where we are now, and I can't see any way around that.
If you take all of those things together, it's hard to see that a policy tweak here or a different running mate there would have made a difference. And it's equally hard to see that this can be turned around with the Democrats winning the House this time or the Senate in a mid-term turn around or a Democratic President in 2028. There are some very deep-rooted problems at play that have been developing for decades, and they need to be fixed, not just glossed over with a changing of the guard in Washington DC.
Although I was hoping for the best, I've been preparing for the worst for some time. Part of that preparation has been thinking about my identity. Having been raised a baby boomer, and having spent the bulk of my working life in the U.S. military, and having been very politically active over the years, a big part of my identity has been rooted in being a liberal American. But I think it's time to try letting that go. I've been living in Europe for over six years now, and if there's one sliver of a silver lining in Trump's re-election (and the obvious Russia/Ukraine direction in U.S. policy) it's that Europe might finally get its act together as a political bloc. Macron seems to be pushing in that direction. And perhaps I can restructure my identity into something like a cosmopolitan adherent to classic liberal, Enlightenment values and find meaningful ways to keep the flame burning here in Europe as it sputters out in the U.S.
Rick, I agree. May I add to your big picture the Reagan years of deregulation that started the US budget deficit’s growth into the unimaginable *and* opened the door to the wealth inequality in the US that is absolutely horrifying today. No US government since then has truly turned its back on “Reaganomics” because that created the money that funds the system of influence we call US American politics.
It is a mystery to me why the economic underclass in the US thinks that a Trump presidency will be good for them. Today’s Trump-Republican party is only serving the interests of the ones with money. The “culture” statements are aimed to please the economic underclass— but I doubt their opportunities will improve much in any other way. The American Dream dies hard.
Like you, I’ve made my home in Europe. There had been rumblings in the regional political scene a year ago, when it seemed that Biden had no chance against another Trump candidacy. I was greatly encouraged by leaders starting to think aloud about how to counter another Trump presidency. This appeared to stop abruptly when Harris-Walz took the ticket. Now the wake-up call is real, and I also pray that the (long overdue) silver lining you describe comes to pass.
I am not convinced Americans who voted for Team Trump have thought through their decision's consequences. If, for example
* You take medications, can you continue to trust their efficacy as 'safeguarded' by RFK, Jr?
* Have they thought through the true use of tariffs for Team Trump?
* etc ad infinitum
There is an incipient groundswell among the Resistance (I use the media's term) to "Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war." It is best, I believe, for each person to ensure he or she and their family be protected against the likely future to come.
We can rationale this forever and we likely will but the simplistic take away here for the Democrats is much like it was when Trump beat Hilary. A long look in the mirror is needed if you can’t convince people that you are more worthy of managing the leading democracy on the planet than a man with few if any redeeming qualities. It’s not so much what you did to lose the election it’s the short list of anything you did right in the previous four years.