I’ve been thinking about what to write about Tuesday’s election. My friend Clay beat me to it. Here are his thoughts, shared with the participants in his Vail Symposium. A good analysis. I pretty much agree with him. I’ll write about the election here in North Dakota one of these days. I’m still collecting my thoughts about that. For now, thanks to Clay for sharing his thoughts. Insightful, as always.
By Clay Jenkinson
What just happened is not quite clear.
- The system worked. President Trump said he would not contest the election.
- It may feel like “America is back,” that we have awakened from a dozen years of hypnosis, but the longer term implications of this election are not yet clear.
- Where does the MAGA movement go? All that grievance, frustration, rage, and contempt doesn’t just shrug and turn away to join a bowling league. Donald Trump and the Republican Party stirred up all that discontentment and fed it into a serious political movement. Now the Republicans are hostage to the populist fury they encouraged, and if they try to distance themselves from the MAGA movement, they may be punished. They created a monster for the most opportunistic of reasons. Now they are hostage to that monster.
- Nor do we know what Trump will do in the aftermath of the election and in the remaining two years of his presidency. He continues to be the most interesting individual in the mix and we know he is unpredictable. How he responds to the smackdown will be a very important determinant.
- We need to ask what the message was from the American people on November 3. It doesn’t seem to have been an endorsement of the Democrats, though we cannot rule that out. It seems to have been a wholesale rejection and repudiation of Trump and the Trump Republican Party. But what endorsement did the people make of the Democratic approach to governance?
- Some commentators are saying that we are now in a see-saw cycle in which the two parties will supplant each other every two or four years, because neither is able to govern under these polarized conditions. The Democrats will have to deliver, and not just with laws passed by C0ngress but vetoed by the President, with an insufficient number of Republicans to overturn a veto.
- We will want to examine President Trump’s campaign strategy—return to the reddest places in the reddest states to stir up his base. But did he stir up his base? His final speech, at the reflecting pool, was one of the most bizarre political events of my lifetime. What was he thinking?
- How diminished is President Trump? And how defiant? The selection of Steven Miller as his new Chief of Staff suggests that he is doubling and tripling down. After the country seemed to be declaring itself appalled by the ICE escapades, and an unprecedented number of non-white people have been elected—something that must make Miller’s skin crawl—Trump’s making Miller his Chief of Staff seems either like the least savvy appointment under these circumstances or—and this is where I land—or a statement of pure defiance.
- My sense is that the Miller appointment was a message to the hard-core MAGA base: don’t worry, we’ll still be working towards a white nationalist America even if we have lost Congress
- It is quite possible that if Trump does not decide to resign—a distinct possibility that would put him right back at the center of the American politicalwhirlwind—we will be entering 25th Amendment country sometime sooner rather than later in the last two years of his presidency. He is in clear physical and mental decline. He is increasingly erratic. We cannot let him let Putin win the war in Ukraine. We have to wonder about the immortality that would come from first using a nuclear device after Nagasaki. We can be sure that there are strained conversations going on behind the curtain about how to prevent him from doing something truly insane.
- I think, too, that we have to ask if the U.S. Constitution is so broken that we cannot really go on or repair the system without serious amendments or a new constitution. The American people have little interest in that, but it may be that the “rules of the game” are now so chaotic and broken that this constitution cannot self-repair.
- We should talk about generational change. The elderly are withdrawing and young people have been elected to Congress. This is long past due. We are still in many respects a gerontocracy. Nancy Pelosi 86, Maxine Waters 88, Eleanor Holmes Norton 89, Chuck Grassley 93, Bernie Sanders 85. Even Chuck Schumer is 75. The torch is being passed.
- We should talk about race. That a black man can be a Mississippi Senator, and a Hispanic woman a Texas Governor, and a black woman the Governor of Georgia, is astounding. The country is changing. White people are starting to get over race. Starting, just starting. But this was a historic election, especially since the gerrymandering was designed to promote a white nationalist result.
I say this is a perfect time to breathe a sign of relief, and to step back and assess this moment. Is it the end of MAGA? Is it the end of Trump? Will the Republican establishment repudiate Trump or distance itself from him? How much retributive power does he still possess and does he intend to use it? Cornered as he is, and publicly (and globally) humiliated, will he do increasing erratic and dangerous things, things that must be prevented (but how?). Who is the Barry Goldwater to go over to the White House to tell Donald Trump that he must get out of the way of the future?
Clay Jenkinson
