AGAINST ALL ODDS
But those so shocked by Trump's victory have only themselves to blame
The relief, for some of us, is overwhelming. Even among people who dislike Donald Trump or worry about his temperament, the possibility that Kamala Harris might win yesterday’s US presidential election produced the deepest fear and dread — fear for America and fear for civilisation.
Others, however — dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, formerly Republican “never-Trumpers” and “progressives” in Britain and elsewhere — are clutching their heads today and moaning “How could this have happened”?
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. The election result is by any standard extraordinary. This is a man whom the left has spent the past eight years trying to destroy through every possible means other than a stake through the heart.
He was subjected to an attempted rolling coup, impeachment (twice), lawfare prosecutions and legal harassment. He was found guilty of sexual assault and improperly reporting hush money payments. His house was raided over official documents that, like Joe Biden, he had taken home. He was defamed non-stop with malicious distortions of his comments and claims that he was a Nazi, fascist, and dictator who would destroy democracy. Then he survived a would-be assassin’s bullet.
Yet Trump and the Republicans have now come through to win the presidency, the Senate and the popular vote.
Moreover, in every constituency that the Democrats had assumed was their own and in which they were confident they had the vote sewn up — African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities, women, young people, first-time voters — Trump actually increased his support and crushed his opponent.
Why oh why? cry traumatised liberals. How could this possibly have happened when we said it wouldn’t? We stated definitively that Kamala would win by an overwhelming majority. So how can it possibly be the case that she didn’t achieve what we had said would happen?
The arrogance and hubris are overwhelming, a rich source of mockery and comic memes which are now doing the rounds. However, these come from a mindset which is far from amusing. As the default position of those screaming about the threat that Trump is said to pose to democracy, this mindset is actually based on profound and venomous contempt for millions of regular folk.
This was summed up in an unusually clear-eyed analysis by a member of the American media. As the result was becoming clear last night, CNN’s political commentator Scott Jennings said:
This is a mandate.. for getting the economy working again for millions of working-class Americans, fix immigration, try to get crime under control, try to reduce the chaos in the world — this is a mandate from the American people to do that. I’m interpreting the results tonight as the revenge of the regular old working-class American, the anonymous American who has been crushed, insulted, condescended to; they’re not “garbage”, they’re not “Nazis”, they’re just regular people who just get up and go to work every day trying to make a better life for their kids, and they feel like they have been told to just shut up when they have complained about the things that are hurting them in their own lives.
Jennings was a rare voice of honesty from within a liberal establishment that has thus dismissed and defamed ordinary Americans for years. The reason that so many liberals simply can’t believe what’s just happened, the reason they were absolutely certain in their predictions that Trump couldn’t possibly win, the reason they never registered Kamala’s manifold and disqualifying flaws, is that the world they inhabit is a fantasy world.
What they want to happen is what they tell themselves must happen; because it must happen, it will happen; and, if they tell themselves lies — such as that transgender men are women, that excluding Zionists from publishing is helping oppressed Palestinians or that accusing all Caucasians of “white privilege” is anti-racist — what must happen is already happening.
And where it is undeniably not happening, they have a duty to make it happen by foul means as well as fair because it cannot be allowed not to happen.
So when faced with the evidence of the disaster that was Kamala Harris’s candidacy, they simply didn’t see what the rest of us saw. They didn’t see that her inability to answer any question other than in gibberish “word-salads” was evidence of someone who was totally unsuited to public office. Instead, the mainstream media censored those episodes on the grounds that it was their duty to ensure she was elected because the alternative couldn’t be allowed to happen.
They didn’t register the copious evidence on social media of African- Americans and Hispanics declaring themselves Trump voters. They didn’t acknowledge — couldn’t possibly acknowledge — the disaster of Barack Obama’s arrogant attempt to bully young black men into voting for Kamala, a desperate move which backfired so very badly when these young men declared themselves insulted by a man who had done nothing for them while he was president.
But when what they deem unconscionable really does happen despite all their efforts, it’s as if the world has turned backwards on its axis. It’s an offence against nature itself. It simply cannot be.
Hence the titanic effort by the liberal establishment in Britain to reverse the 2016 Brexit vote. Hence the unconstitutional and probably illegal three-year attempt by elements in the justice department, FBI and Democratic party — facilitated by a shockingly partisan media suppressing the truth — to lever Trump out of office the first time round.
Lo and behold, there are already threats to repeat that attempted coup against democracy — by those who in the same breath are intoning that Trump will now destroy democracy. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols writes:
After Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, then–Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to make Obama a one-term president, and obstructed him at every turn. McConnell, of course, cared only about seizing power for his party, and later, he could not muster that same bravado when faced with Trump’s assaults on the government. Patriotic Americans and their representatives might now make a similar commitment, but for better aims: Although they cannot remove Trump from office, they can declare their determination to prevent Trump from implementing the ghastly policies he committed himself to while campaigning.
The kinds of actions that will stop Trump from destroying America in 2025 are the same ones that stopped many of his plans the first time around. They are not flashy, and they will require sustained attention, because the next battles for democracy will be fought by lawyers and legislators, in Washington and in every state capitol. They will be fought by citizens banding together in associations and movements to rouse others from the sleepwalk that has led America into this moment.
Get that? “Patriotic” Americans must now prevent Trump from carrying out the pledges he made to the American people on the basis of which they voted for him— the essence of a democratic election.
Liberals having this meltdown are accusing Trump of behaviour of which they themselves are guilty: contempt for democracy, suborning the constitutional order, lying, bullying, extremism, suppressing contrary opinions and promoting hatred and division. Psychologists call this kind of accusatory behaviour “projection”. It is a mental disorder.
The chances of this election result resulting in such people questioning their own mindset and assumptions, which have now so spectacularly blown up in their faces, are very slim. A notable exception has been Scott Jennings, who in his rare media mea culpa also said the following:
I also feel like this election was something of an indictment of the political information complex. We’ve been sitting around it for the last couple of weeks, and the story that was portrayed was not true…all these gimmicks we were told were going to push Harris over the line, and we were ignoring the fundamentals: inflation, a feeling like they were barely able to tread water at best…for all of us who cover elections, and talk about elections, and do this on a day-to-day basis, we have to figure out how to understand, talk to and listen to the half of the country that rose up tonight and said, we’ve had enough.
Absolutely correct. Elsewhere, however, liberal commentators are employing funereal tones today as if they are in mourning. And of course, they’re lashing out at the people they say are to blame.
They blame Harris for failing to be different enough from Joe Biden.
They blame women for unaccountably failing to vote for her.
They blame people without a college degree for not having the intelligence to agree with them.
They blame the dark forces of human nature.
They blame Elon Musk for existing.
What such people can’t see — and will never see — is that the people to blame are themselves.
