What Has Changed?

Things don’t often change overnight. Change tends to happen slowly, then fast, in small increments and then big jumps—but rarely does one night matter that much. So it is with the election; America did not change overnight as it reelected Donald Trump president, but the election of Donald Trump did mark a significant milestone of change in America.

There are some quick and easy changes to note. Most polling shops should just close up: They are worthless. The election the polls told us would be down to a skin-of-our-teeth tie ended up a solid blowout, with Republicans taking the presidency, the Senate, and the House. Polls are seemingly unable, after three presidential elections, to dig into the thoughts of Republicans in general and shy Trump voters in the specific. Whatever it is, whatever methodology is challenged by these voters, the polls are of little value. It’s a joke now seven swing states later to remember CNN the night before the election touting some “solid gold” poll showing Trump would lose Iowa.

Identity politics seems to have run its course. Harris did not run heavily on her multiple identities as a black and Asian woman until near the end, where she switched to her Sunday church accent. (It was ripe for an Saturday Night Live parody, except SNL was fully onboard the Harris campaign bus and not willing to risk insulting anyone with an “edgy” parody.) The campaign dragged out a tired-looking Barack and a boyish-looking Michelle to chew out black dudes for not voting for Kamala (as if being chewed out was a good election strategy.) There was barely a flamboyant gay or trans person in sight on Harris’s team, unlike the showpiece drag queens Biden attached to himself—remember the guy in the red dress with the bright red lipstick and shaved head? In the end America elected an old, wealthy, white, Republican, (semi-)Macho Man. Read the room, Dems.

There’ll be changes in the bureaucracy of Washington, either via Elon Musk, RFK Jr., or the use of Schedule F. Trump will again fill any Supreme Court vacancies, this time with a Republican Senate unlikely to challenge his choice in confirmation hearings. As in Term One, this may prove to be one of Trump’s most transformational accomplishments.

It’s doubtful the mainstream media learned anything from its work on the 2024 election, given that it did not learn much from its failures in 2016 and 2020. Change there is unlikely. Across the mini-spectrum from CNN to the Atlantic, the MSM unabashedly promoted Harris at every chance, and bashed Trump whenever possible. All pretext was discarded, right down to dear SNL, who gave Kamala free, puffy air time the weekend before the election, a move so grotesquely out of line that parent network NBC was forced by FCC pressure to hand over two minutes of expensive commercial time to Trump.

Even as they were reporting Trump’s victory, CNN and MSNBC kept injecting little digs about him being a fascist and all that. In its obituary for the 2024 campaign, the New York Times wrote, “For the first time in history, Americans have elected a convicted criminal as president. They handed power back to a leader who tried to overturn a previous election, called for the ‘termination’ of the Constitution to reclaim his office, aspired to be a dictator on Day 1 and vowed to exact ‘retribution’ against his adversaries.” They still don’t get it.

The media and Democrats face a forced change of view about January 6. The events of that day never mattered much, despite efforts by the media and the Democratic establishment to replay things in every format possible. “The real America becomes Trump’s America,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University. “Frankly, the world will say if this man wasn’t disqualified by Jan. 6, which was incredibly influential around the world, then this is not the America that we knew.” Indeed, it was not the America they knew; it was an America more concerned about food prices and interest rates than settling political mud fights. The results of November 5 should be seen, among other things, as a referendum on events like January 6. They never mattered except to some elites and their media. Can we hope never to speak of them again?

The election should hopefully change the view of those elites toward the more than half of America who voted for Trump. The election vindicates Trump’s argument that Washington has grown out of touch, that America is a country weary of war, crazed immigration, and political correctness. Can we as a nation now stop being offended so readily and stop calling everything in turn racist or, the other magic word no one understands, fascist? Does every discussion need to include a clause, “but what about the trans people?” Maybe they can take care of themselves for a while. 

“The Trump presidency speaks to the depth of the marginalization felt by those who believe they have been in the cultural wilderness for too long and their faith in the one person who has given voice to their frustration and his ability to center them in American life,” said Melody Barnes, the executive director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy.

Elections do indeed matter. The Democrats tried to defeat Donald Trump in every way possible—by any means necessary—before the election. They impeached him twice, indicted him 88 times, and attempted to murder him twice. Despite efforts to force him off the ballot in multiple states, he stayed on the ballots, aided by a judicial system that had not fully drunk the Kool Aid.

One of the most significant things to have changed, or that we now acknowledge as changed, having had the MRI of an election with a clear outcome, is the permanence of Trumpism. There’ll be books and dissertations defining it, but it is clear whatever it is that Trump is, it is a large part of the American body politic now. Not only did Trump capture the usual red states; he flipped some blues and even in urban areas where he did not win, racked up high scores, 40 percent or more. The polls obviously missed all this, but the reality is there are a lot of Trump supporters—a mandate for change—and it even looks like he won the popular vote.

Trump is indeed about divisions in America, but more about understanding, acknowledging, and profiting from them than creating them himself. He is unlikely to know how to heal them; it is something it is time to learn to live with and govern over, not simply wipe away half the electorate as garbage or deplorables. They are us.

There is little need to worry about Trump seeking retribution or misusing the military; much of that was theater, off-the-cuff remarks or attempts to rile up the crowds. Look to his first term and past the crying around January 6, and you’ll see how he’ll govern in round two. And get used to it, because Trumpism is now the Republican party platform. The half-assed attempts to seize control of the party by the Never Trumpers and the neocons failed completely. With J.D. Vance as the candidate in 2028, the Trump legacy will dominate modern American politics well beyond that of Reagan. The 2016 election wasn’t a fluke; 2020 was.

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