Last month, when I interviewed billionaire mogul and major Democratic donor Barry Diller, he told me that – even more than a Kamala Harris victory – he wanted a decisive victory, on one side or the other, to break the great American stalemate.
In the end, he got his wish.
On Tuesday night, America repudiated the liberal plan, temperament and future. There is no ambiguity here.
The country’s swing districts, where hearts and minds might have seemed unsafe, largely collapsed in favor of Donald Trump and the Republicans.
It turned out that it was quite early in the evening.
The country’s swing districts, where hearts and minds might have seemed unsafe, largely collapsed in favor of Donald Trump and the Republicans.
In the end, the United States repudiated the liberal plan, temperament, and future. There is no ambiguity here.
The choice was emphatic and binary: America chose the opposite of every leftist notion of what is good, right, and decent.
The idea that American women would triumph and protect fundamental rights over their bodies failed.
The idea that the Democratic Party better represented the country’s minorities fell apart.
The idea that we are a country of impeccable laws, in which the justice system has the last and final sentence, was swept away: a convicted criminal won.
The idea that Donald Trump was an outlier, however persistent, was shattered.
In the end, it meant nothing that the establishment had aligned itself powerfully with the Democrats.
In fact, never in recent memory has there been a bipartisan gathering like that, shoulder to shoulder at the barricades, of the great and the good: former generals, foreign policy experts, the daughter of a recent Republican vice president (Liz Cheney).
And in vain. His status, position and experience turned out to influence few, if any, other than those already in the choir.
In a real sense, we have simply returned to 2016, albeit now with even more foreboding and angst for the left.
Trump’s victory in 2016, liberals could tell themselves (and have for eight long years) was a fluke.
The year 2024 cannot be ignored.
The question of 2016, which was never fully answered, is back on the table: is the novelty of Donald Trump what the country wants, or is it this blunt repudiation of the attitudes and precepts of the liberal establishment?
Well, it’s not new anymore.
It would be foolish not to acknowledge the obvious: Donald Trump and the populist spirit he represents is the dominant political ideology, style and impulse of the time.
And the age is long. For a decade, Trump has been the dominant figure of our time, with Joe Biden and the Democrats offering, at best, what appears to be only a mere footnote.
Now, barring an act of God, the Trump era continues for another four years. This appears to be the longest political streak since Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Now, barring an act of God, the Trump era continues for another four years. This appears to be the longest political streak since Roosevelt and the New Deal.
And, just as that era remade the nation—with its methods of government, its social aspirations, its moral philosophy—so will the era of Trump. In fact, judging by Tuesday night, it already has.
The Democrats’ internal blame game will now be fierce and cleansing.
Biden and his old age and his desperate efforts to retain office, along with his weak management of the Democratic coalition and his swing to the crazy left, deserve much of that blame.
Harris, a mediocre candidate with a lukewarm campaign, will also receive her share.
But the Party’s own lack of a compelling message will come under the microscope more than anything. His one-note reliance on abortion left him wavering in the face of Trump’s ownership of the case against the Biden-Harris economy and his crisis at the southern border.
The Democrat’s fatal assumption: Donald Trump’s profanities would trump his own weak response to inflation and immigration, the most pressing and emotional issues of the moment.
In fact, his profanities seem to have been a net advantage to him. His serious flaws turned out to be his unique virtues.
The mainstream media couldn’t have banged the drum harder, condemning, in particular, the supposed darkness of his closing event at Madison Square Garden for its nastiness, its racial slurs, its open threats against MAGA haters, all this poison in plain sight.
But if you were there in person, what you would see would be 20,000 people having a wonderful time. It was a WWF wrestling match or even, in its working-class familiarity, a Grateful Dead rock concert.
Even the Trump campaign in recent weeks has cringed at its candidate’s obvious invectives and oddities. But Trump himself has never wavered.
When doubts arise around him, he simply leans more and more toward being Donald Trump, and is rewarded for it.
Joe Biden, his old age, and his desperate efforts to retain office deserve much of the blame. Kamala Harris, a mediocre candidate, will also receive her share.
Democrats’ fatal assumption: Donald Trump’s profanities would trump his own weak response to inflation and immigration, the most pressing issues of the moment.
That’s the existential situation for Democrats: a pretty healthy majority of the country is attracted to this man. They enjoy it. They admire him. They respect him.
Democrats’ inability to understand that – a complete inability to understand why anyone wouldn’t completely reject this man and be completely horrified by his presence – is what, above all, now throws them into the wilderness.
And so we move beyond an evenly divided nation, always the last refuge of Democrats.
Even if they had lost, their true majority in the popular vote (which everyone assumed they would win), as well as their moral majority, would have held. It would still have been – but for electoral college anomalies and MAGA deplorables – a liberal nation. The establishment would have remained.
But now the Republicans have handily won the White House, the Senate and probably even the House of Representatives.
Liberals in the United States are something of an island. And it will be a long time before they can regroup and plan an effective counterattack. If ever.
There is no doubt about what has happened. This is Donald Trump’s country.