The Brutal Clarity of This Result

Taegan Goddard, Political Wire:

After last night, it became clear it was a mistake to dismiss Trump’s true political strength. He will win the 2024 election with at least 51% of the popular vote.

His win will not be the result of a constitutional quirk. It was not even the result of a bad campaign by Kamala Harris. His victory was so broad based I’m not sure any Democrat could have beaten him last night.

There’s a brutal clarity in this result.

The majority of Americans are not concerned with Trump’s blatant racism or sexism. They are not concerned with his vows of retribution on his political enemies. They are not concerned with warnings of “fascism” by his former top aides. They are not concerned with his extensive criminal and fraudulent behavior.

If there’s a takeaway from this election, it’s that this is who we are.

Not all of us, to be sure. But it makes clear what the rest of us are up against.

I take some small solace at the moment in Trump’s victory being the clear democratic result. Republicans just fucking won. No mistakes on Harris’s side. There’s no Comey letter. No hanging chads. No margin within the range of woulda-coulda-shoulda recriminations. Just a clear electoral result.

I realized this year — or perhaps over the last four years — that for me, belief in the merits of democracy is quasi-religious. It’s more than a philosophy. It’s a fundamental belief. I have faith in democracy, and part of that is accepting the results of any fair and free election as the will of the electorate — similar, I think, to how actually religious people have faith that unspeakable tragedies can somehow be the will of a just and righteous deity. Through that prism, and with the genuine shock of 2016 giving me a brace, I can accept this. But because of that prism, I will never forgive or forget Trump’s shameful desecration of our democratic ideals in 2020. His winning in 2016 and again now are awful events. But his attempt to overturn the 2020 election — ham-fisted, idiotic, and failed though it thankfully was — was and will always be worse.

★ Wednesday, 6 November 2024