Ed's (Forlorn) Take on the Election
Monday, 11 November 2024
Let me start by wishing all my fellow veterans—and others who serve in public capacities (teachers, first responders, sanitation workers, health care providers, and more)—a happy Veterans Day. It’s been a long time since 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918—and there’s been a helluva lot of war and horror since.
The Election
I have mixed feelings—mostly but not all the ones I expected if Trump won.. I agree and disagree with some things others have said. The following points are numbered just in case anyone wants to refer to one in comments—they’re not in any particular order other than saving my fears for last.
I don’t want all those who supported Trump to just burn in hell—and not just because I don’t even believe in hell. I really do want to stick to the “Love Thy Neighbor (with mighty few exceptions)” rule. I think those who voted for Trump made a mistake, a dangerous and potentially very serious one—and I want them to realize that and do better next time. But not to suffer horrific retribution.
I think racism and sexism played some part in Kamala Harris’s loss. But so did Democrats’ embrace of what James Carville calls “identitarianism.” I’m an old short white irreligious liberal socialist Southerner male, but none of those things were uppermost in my decision (at least consciously) to support Harris. If an exit poll had reported that “short guys were less likely to vote Democratic than they were in previous elections,” what would you have thought?
The role of factors like sex or age or ethnicity or race or educational level was, I think, relatively small. To the extent any of those mattered it was probably mostly in terms of cultural perception. Trump’s ability to convince (falsely, I think) huge numbers of voters that he was their champion, that he’d successfully oppose corruption, and that he’d deport millions of foreigners, that he’d ignore or oppose politically correct silliness, that he’s the best supporter of the working class, that he cares about real people because he was “authentic”—all these things helped him. And the double standard of media attention did, too.
I think Harris ran a good campaign—and that poring over it for tactical mistakes is nearly useless. If Biden had decided not to run for re-election at all, as I sort of thought he would, it could have made a difference—but we’ll never know. If Biden had stayed in for 2024 all the way to 5 November, I think Trump would’ve won by a bigger margin—but we’ll never know.
I don’t know whether Harris gained or lost more by her somewhat ambiguous stance on Hamas, Israel, Gaza, etc. Any voter who stayed home, voted third party, or voted for Trump “because Kamala didn’t speak out against Israelis carrying out genocidal attacks” has no respect from me. Anyone who stayed home, voted third party, or voted for Trump “because Kamala didn’t speak out strongly enough for Israel” has no respect from me. (Trump is certainly more likely to give Bibi Netanyahu unfettered power to wage war—but also less likely to provide effective diplomatic support for real peace negotiations, reining in Iran, releasing hostages, etc.) The choice was Harris or Trump—no one else was a real possibility—and Harris was the vastly better choice, regardless of whether you think the US should abandon Israel’s defense or should go to war with Iran by their sides.
“The people have spoken—the bastards”—defeated candidate Dick Tuck, California, 1966. I don’t think the election was stolen or fraudulent, and I’m glad the Democrats conceded—though as Bill Maher pointed out, that probably wouldn’t have happened if the Trump forces had lost. Confidence in public elections is crucial, and many, many leaders and election workers across the nation took immense care to make sure the people did get to speak. And I’m grateful to them.
I am consciously working to avoid giving in to my worst fears. But I’m also eager to find ways to help keep the worst from happening. My fears—
Democracy will be lost. I honestly think it will be weakened—that Trump will, for example, pardon all the January 6th insurrectionists, and that will in turn undercut confidence in orderly, democratic changes in power and in the rule of law. The chance that it will be truly completely lost in the four years ahead of us of Trump-Vance is not zero, but it’s pretty small. There are still way too many Americans, including many Trump voters and leaders of our institutions who still want a democratic republic and will act accordingly for complete autocracy to descend. I’ve read or heard someone say, “We’ll never have an election again—or at least not a real one, one where the outcome is not foreordained.” Before this election, I thought there was in fact no chance of that. Now I think the risk is there, but that it’s small. I hope I’m right that it’s a slight risk and that it will be countered.
Law and order will be imperiled. Not only because of Trump pardoning insurrectionists but also because of his successful evasion of his own criminal or civil penalties, it will be harder to convince anyone that obeying the law and keeping the peace is necessary or desirable. Back in the days of Richard M. Nixon and Spiro Agnew, I was convinced that calls for law and order were mere racist covers for protecting the power of a corrupt elite. I’m over that now.
Trump is a fascist. The Democrats were excoriated for name-calling Trump a Hitler or a “fascist.” And vapid name-calling—“Harris is a communist and a socialist”—vapid because unconnected to any real definition of the label—can be more silly than dangerous and unlikely to be effective. But Trump’s own words and actions condemn him as a fascist. In Trump’s first term, as reported by insider John Francis Kelly, retired US Marine Corps general who was White House chief of staff for Trump from 2017 to 2019, evidence was abundant. It was Kelly who most prominently called him that. If I had only one insubstantial wish for Trump supporters, it would be that they look up, in a source they trust, the definition and characteristics of a “fascist.” (For example, https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism .) Then these supporters can join the rest of us in being on guard and countering him, rather than just assume we’re guilty of mindless name-calling. Trump is more a Benito Mussolini than he is an Adolf Hitler, at least so far. But regarding the US Constitution and bedrock American liberal values (the ones veterans have sacrificed so much for), Trump is plainly guilty of at least depraved indifference. So this fear is chillingly well founded, despite Trump’s consistent disregard for truth even about his own plans with his overblown rhetoric.
Either Ukraine is doomed or nuclear war may ensue. I think this fear—the first part more than the second—is pretty likely, unfortunately. I don’t think Trump is all that likely to tell Putin, “Go ahead and destroy Ukraine.” And I think Europe/NATO may rise to the occasion and give Ukraine the arms and ammunition it needs to survive. But I can well imagine Trump telling Ukraine, in effect, “Go ahead, bomb Moscow”—and the resulting escalation costing the world dearly. Or demanding of Ukraine that they quit resisting militarily and settle for whatever peace they can manage—and that that may lead, slowly if not quickly, to Ukraine and then Poland and Finland and . . . to become Russian states or Russian-dominated states.
Global climate disorder will get dramatically worse, not better. I’m not sure how dramatically, but I am sure it’ll get worse under Trump.
Our stable, important government institutions will be destroyed or badly weakened. Destroyed?—pretty unlikely, at least in one Trump-Vance term—but not impossible. Weakened?—pretty likely. Civil servants and bureaucratic leaders are at real risk. Physical and government infrastructure will probably be damaged. The Centers for Disease Control, the National Weather Service, even air transportation safety are probably going to be damaged.
Our economy will be tanked. This one depends heavily on whether Trump really gets his way. If the House and Senate put up no resistance, and massive tariffs are applied and mass deportation happens, inflation and unemployment will soar. Millions of migrants will suffer, many of them cruelly; some wages will go up thanks to a tight labor market, but so will prices. The titans of construction and agribusiness may well force Trump to back off significantly on his promises, and if they do, the worst of the economic woes will, in the short run at least, be avoided. But if these titans do slow him down, they’ll also allow the social cost of growing increases in severe wealth and income inequality. (See next two items, too.)
Social chaos will come with attempts at detention and mass deportation. Some chaos is certain and serious chaos is possible, including increases in violence and crime. It’s just not possible to suddenly—or reasonably quickly—upend the lives of millions of people without civil disruption. And the real suffering and social angst that happened in Trump 1 with separating children from parents may be trivial compared to what will happen in Trump 2.
Social domestic chaos will come from Trump’s utter disdain for unity, negotiation, civilized disagreement, and compromise. This one seems pretty likely to me. I don’t really think it’ll be civil war or widespread violent riots—but I’m not as sure of that as I wish I were.
Taxes will get less fair and the deficit will get worse. The probability that Trump will get the tax cuts (mostly for the richest Americans) extended is high. And if some fiscal conservatives succeed in getting these “paid for,” then Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, etc., will be hurt. If those fiscal conservatives don’t get the tax cuts “paid for” somehow, then the deficit—that the GOP once cared about—will soar.
America’s global standing will drop. This one is, I think, quite likely to come about. We will become seen as a far less trusted, reliable ally. We will be somewhat more vulnerable to military testing (by China in Taiwan, for example), and especially to economic attacks. A nation that blithely elects, by a majority of the votes, a sexual predator and convicted felon, deserves to be ridiculed—and we’ll get what we deserve.
Trump’s “enemies”—in the press, Republicans like Liz Cheney, and others—will pay a price. They almost certainly will, but it’s unclear just how dear the cost will be.
Christian nationalism will grow as a danger to religious liberty. This and other aspects of Project 2025 are scary. How much they will hurt depends a lot on how much power J. D. Vance gains. I don’t, by the way, think that “Christian nationalism” is in fact very Christian—but that is up to Christians, not atheists/secular humanists like me.
As for what we—the sane, reasonable people who voted for Kamala Harris—should do, I honestly don’t know. More, probably, on that in future Letters.
Others have written many, many post mortem analyses and recommendations. One I have in my possession but have intentionally avoiding reading (I’m afraid he’d overly influence me prematurely—before I write) is by Keith Parsons. I’ve never before posted two essays in one day, but I will today—mine and Keith’s.
(I’ve just read Keith’s—or rather persuaded Diane to read it to me, and his is better, but at least the overlap is honest rather than plagiarism by me.) His will be posted within the next hour.
Others I have found insightful, starting with Heather Cox Richardson—
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1854854517293998488 J K Rowling
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/opinion/trump-voters-future-plan.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Y04.htIO.vwl0twvLkVk0&smid=url-share Jamelle Bouie
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/opinion/democrats-working-class.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Y04.8ju1._JywFO2Vlv49&smid=url-share Nicholas Kristof
https://wapo.st/3YZ3qYs Fareed Zacharia
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/opinion/democrats-trump-elites-centrism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZE4._IU6.rqUC91PT-7QK&smid=url-share Thomas Frank
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/opinion/democrats-identity-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZE4.w--P.5CU-OyV888LE&smid=url-share Maureen Dowd
From Jay Kuo—
From American Atheists/Melina Cohen:
On Thursday, Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walters issued a new memo and the latest signal he’s positioning himself to head the Department of Education (that is, until he eliminates it). “Working with President Trump,” Walters wrote, “I will do everything I can to limit the federal overreach into education and return parents their rightful authority over our schools.”
We needn’t guess what havoc a Secretary of Education Walters might wreak. As Christian nationalists are wont to do, he wrote it down. And like Betsy DeVos before him, his enmity toward secular public education has been clear for a long time. By comparison, though, DeVos now appears somewhat constrained, by basic decorum and her fixation on privatization.
Walters is constrained by nothing. He's a Christian nationalist, through and through. He doesn’t bother concealing the real intention of school privatization as DeVos did. He’s an unabashed revisionist. For him, propaganda is curricula. And he will not hesitate to use government resources to procure and disseminate it. If you don’t like it, you’re not American enough. He is, in a single word, dangerous.
It’s a tired but true refrain that public schools are the backbone and beating heart of our democracy. We demand a lot of them. We rely on a skilled workforce and an informed electorate. We ask teachers to impart social-emotional skills because they’re necessary in a multiracial, multicultural, pluralistic society.
What Walters proposes instead are segregation and assimilation academies filled with more preachers than teachers. Their priority is to produce "America First" patriots; not graduates who can read and write and think critically; not citizens who can identify bias, misinformation, and junk science; and certainly not freethinking voters who might pick “the other one.”
As a general rule, we election workers are excited by high voter turnout, particularly among young people and new voters. Democracy in action! I think it’s fair to feel apprehensive, though, about the future of that democracy given the now-imminent fate of our education system.
Even as voters in three states rejected the use of public dollars for private schools (as they have in every election), they also elected pro-privatization politicians who will likely — and now easily — pass a national voucher bill called the Educational Choice for Children Actthat would divert up to $20 billion tax dollars to non-public, mostly religious, schools.
And much to Walters’s delight, a privatization friendly Supreme Court will soon have the opportunity to overturn an Oklahoma court decision that denied funding to a Catholic charter school. Doing so would pave the way for the nation’s first (but definitely not last) publicly funded religious school. The petitioners’ claim of “religious hostility” echoes the incoming administration’s promise to establish a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias” and “protect Christians in our schools.” No such declaration to safeguard any other religious or nonreligious group has been made.
We can expect to see the same Christian-privileging policies we’ve seen play out in state legislatures in recent years arrive and thrive at the federal level. Everything from school chaplain legislation, “parental rights” laws, book bans, religious display mandates, released time for religious instruction, Bibles in classrooms, and more. Taxpayers will not only be funding private, religious schools against our will but also an increasingly Christianized public system.
We must face facts: For millions of Americans, the moral panic manufactured by Walters and others about DEI, CRT, and LGBTQ people worked. That they largely cannot define these acronyms only makes them scarier. If we’re going to save public education, we need to educate the public. That means we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, and we’re going to need your help to do it.
On tariffs (sent to me by Tony King)
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President Biden should resign immediately and make Kamala Harris our first woman president. That would really stick in Trump's craw. Does Biden really need to stick it out for the next two plus months as a lame duck president that few even in his own party respect? President Harris can then appoint her own vice president and be spared the indignity of presiding over Trump's Electoral College victory. And maybe she'll actually show some gumption and allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to strike military targets inside Russia, which is something Biden should have done two years ago.
Excellent and thorough analysis, Ed. Thanks also for the links.
Democrats will self-flagellate and wear hair shirts for a week or two, but what will they really do? Some have recommended an ideological shift to the right, others to the left. The former would alienate their base, and conservatives already have a party. The latter would alienate centrists, as Congressman Ritchie Torres, has argued. The left, as it is now constituted, is identified with obsessive concern with DEI, CRT, and LGBTQ issues, which are meaningless or repugnant to working class voters of all races and ethnicities. If you want people to vote for you, you have to show that THEIR issues are YOUR issues.