Trump Won: My Takeaways
What half of America proudly said yesterday.
I’m not going to sugarcoat things. It’s bad. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few hours, you’ll know Donald Trump has just been elected President once more, retaking control of the White House. He might not be able to buy a gun in some states, but he now has the nuclear codes. American democracy is in mortal peril, ironically because lots of people voted for this. Now, we won’t know everything about why people voted the way they did until the results are officially certified, but I’m going to offer some of my preliminary takeaways. Again, I’m just a single terminally online man who pretends to be a lion.
Kamala Harris supporters at her watch “party” in Washington DC last night - taken from r/Pics.
INCUMBENCY HAS BECOME A DISADVANTAGE IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
The biggest albatross hanging around Harris’ neck was always her boss, Sleepy Joe Biden. In hindsight, she was always going to have trouble winning when the incumbent President was at a 40% approval rating. Given how polarized the United States has become, I don’t think it’s likely that any President will have particularly high approval ratings in the future. During Trump’s first term, he was always underwater, often significantly. Biden, meanwhile, had a honeymoon period at first, and then his approval tanked with the Afghanistan withdrawal and never fully recovered from that. It’s a damning indictment of our media that this is what sent Biden’s approval ratings into the toilet, considering that’s what most Americans wanted him to do at the time. Ironically, Trump is right about the media - they are the enemy of the people. They’re perhaps the biggest reason he will return to power.
“Comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe calls Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. No persuadable voter cares.
CAMPAIGNS DON’T MATTER
Kamala Harris did the best she could with the hand she was dealt. Her campaign knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors in the key swing state of Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Trump outsourced all of his campaign’s ground game to Elon Musk’s PAC. Harris had lots of enthusiasm behind her, particularly in the immediate aftermath of her boss’ withdrawal from the race. Trump canceled events because he was too tired to hold them. Harris attacked Trump viciously on issues like abortion, whereas Trump’s surrogate called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage a week before the election. None of it ended up mattering, at least not enough to save Harris. I think it’s safe to say that if 2028 is anything remotely resembling a free and fair election, campaign strategies will look very different on both sides.
Conglaturation. You just ensured there would be no justice or peace for the foreseeable future.
PROTEST VOTES TANKED HARRIS
I don’t think there is any way around it. I’ve encountered a lot of people on social media saying they weren’t going to vote for Harris because of her support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Even so, I held out some hope that the Internet is not real life, that perhaps platforms like BlueSky make these people seem more numerous than they truly are. In the end it seems like I was kidding myself, as were others who thought the Uncommitted movement wouldn’t matter. These people were literally willing to burn the world down in order to virtue-signal, and I hope they’re happy when Trump gives Netanyahu carte blanche…well, more so.
America soon. Hopefully.
OUR ONLY HOPE
Like I said at the start of this article, I’m not going to lie to you and say that the future looks anything other than bleak for the country and the world. However, the fact remains that Democrats control election infrastructure in most of the swing states. To some extent, there is hope that the 2026 election will still happen. And if it does, I want those people who voted for Trump (particularly his new voters that he seems to have picked up from 2020) to suffer. I want them to realize that voting to put an orange fascist back in power is not funny, and I want them to experience buyer’s remorse as quickly as possible. This country only ever elects Democrats to punish Republicans, and that’s what we proved last night.
No matter what does or does not happen in Trump’s second term, I still harbor some hope that American swing voters will realize just how big a mistake they’ve made and will vote for Democrats in 2026. Even if the next few elections happen, it’s at least conceivable that Democrats screw it up; this is the same party that lost to Donald Trump not once but twice, after all. But any sympathy I have for Trump’s voters in an America with a national abortion ban, or a repealed Affordable Care Act, or no Department of Education, or any other horrific policy, is predicated on them realizing their grave mistake and learning from it in the midterms.
Assuming they still happen, that is.
