Predicted and Predictable
Those who most wanted Trump to lose did the most to insure he would win.....
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post:
I am reeling, to be honest…. I cannot fathom the notion of Trump as a “better politician.” Everything that happened over the last few weeks, in particular — all of his unhinged remarks and self-inflicted wounds, all the things that appeared to drive his own advisers around the bend — does not suggest “canny politician” to me. Likewise, I think Harris ran, from my perspective, a very good and disciplined campaign — far better than I expected, with a far more energized and unified party than on the day Joe Biden withdrew.
We must now fathom the unfathomable: All the misogynistic things, the racist things, the crude things, the undemocratic things he’s said and done don’t negate his appeal to millions of voters. Because he will once again be our president, and he has declared that he has “an unprecedented mandate.”
I will have more to say about everything soon, but I’m going to put aside my normal rule about not making predictions to make some (knowing I might be wrong….):
1. As I wrote a few days ago on foxnews.com, the Democratic Party, lacking clear agreement about why Trump won and lacking an obvious once-in-a-generation talent to lead them back, is going to be at Trump’s mercy for a good long while.
2. Trump’s government will be filled with a lot of senior officials who will reassure Wall Street, foreign capitals, and a lot of Trump haters (at least the ones with open minds).
3. Trump will at the start have an enormous amount of influence over Congress, from leadership elections to the legislative agenda.
4. The Dominant Media won’t come close to taking responsibility for their role in helping Trump win, won’t fire those whose bias and incompetence has been on display for as long as a decade, won’t take the steps necessary to understand the Trump movement, and won’t reorient for the next four years in any meaningful way.
5. None of the Democrats who some pined for in 2024 to be their presidential nominee will play a significant role in trying to shape the party or the nation.
6. When honest political scientists study the dimensions of Trump’s win, they will realize that Trump’s remaking of the Republican Party in 2016 (turning it into a white working-class party) was nothing compared to what happened this time – turning it into a Black, Hispanic, white, young, independent working-class party.
7. Trump will, in fact, end the Ukraine war, safeguard Israel’s security, increase energy production, decrease regulations, cut taxes, control the Mexico border, conduct a mass deportation, and change a myriad of social policies.
8. The remarkable achievement of Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita will be adequately appreciated in some quarters, but not in others.
9. As already predicted, we will now see the largest mental health crisis in American history, as tens of millions of Americans – and many of the nation’s liberal cultural institutions, including Hollywood – can’t handle the truth about what happened and why.
10. The Lincoln Project leaders will do even less soul searching than the newsroom denizens of the Washington Post and New York Times.
11. The stories of how Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, the pasts of Harris and Doug Emhoff, the coverup of Joe Biden’s loss of mental acuity, and how the attempts to keep Trump off the ballot, lawfare, and other anti-democratic efforts aimed at stopping Trump ironically backfired will only be told if the right people get the right book deals.
12. We won’t know who has the House majority anytime soon.
To be continued….