Donald Trump gave Americans what they wanted
It’s a nightmare, but not complicated
Welcome a Wednesday morning edition of Progress Report.
Everything you thought you knew about this country probably changed last night. Now, it’s time to figure out what happened and how we move forward. I’ll be back with some better news on Wednesday night, but this one is all about tackling the big issue.
Note: This is going to be a long four years — and perhaps much longer, if Donald Trump and his newly empowered Republican Party accomplish their goals.
As right-wing media metastasizes, billionaires use outlets as tools of appeasement, mainstream media fails, and corporations sell off news divisions, we need independent media to step into the breach. Please make Progress Report and make this work possible — just $5 a month makes all the difference.
The end of American exceptionalism
Former President Donald Trump will return to the White House, having defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in a bitter and hard-fought presidential election that culminated late Tuesday night. The surprisingly authoritative victory is poised to remake American politics for a generation and alter the fabric of government in not-yet-knowable ways.
A Republican who campaigned on mass deportations of immigrants and his own singular ability to solve society’s problems, Trump survived a litany of challenges over the course of the campaign, including being found guilty of paying hush money to a porn star, new allegations of sexual assault, and federal election tampering charges. His victory will not come with an asterisk, because he will also win the popular vote for the first time thanks to enormous gains even in states that he lost.
Becoming the first convicted felon to serve as commander in chief, especially under those circumstances, will be viewed by many as a personal and political triumph. But Trump could only complete his comeback with the consent and proactive support of the American people.
This is who we are
Over the days and weeks to come, Democratic politicians and consultants will engage in a circular firing squad during an existential inquest to determine what went so wrong. And while there are plenty of people and institutions who deserve blame for what is undoubtedly the biggest political catastrophe of our lifetimes, there is one inconvenient truth that we must face:
Americans knew Donald Trump, were fully aware of his mendacious personality and mental instability, the hateful crew of ideological madmen who accompany him, and had a clear idea of what he'd do in office. And they chose to make him president again, anyway.
It’s a painful thing to admit, but this is just who we are as a country, at least right now. A majority of voters experienced all four excruciating years of Trump’s presidency — the scandal and corruption, mass pandemic deaths, the elevation of three vicious Supreme Court justices, and an actual attempt to overthrow the government — and either enjoyed the depravity or did not see it as a dealbreaker when they chose a new president.
In fact, Trump expanded his electoral coalition this time, attracting significant numbers of Democratic voters who had either voted for Joe Biden in 2020 or did not participate in that election.
Exit polls, while imperfect, all point to the same stark trends:
According to CBS, Harris won voters aged 18-29 by just 10%, down precipitously from President Biden’s 24% margin in 2020.
NBC has Harris’s margin at 13% — and just 2% among young men. In 2018, when Democrats took back the House, they won young voters by 31 points.
In Michigan, CBS’s poll actually has Harris losing voters 18-29:
Latino men shifted from +23 for Biden to +8 for Trump.
Harris is winning New York State by just 11 points, whereas Biden won it by 23 points.
The vice president won New York City with 67% of the vote, the lowest margin for a Democrat since the 1988 blowout.
Jewish New Yorkers only backed Harris by 13%.
Harris won New Jersey by just 5% after Biden won the state by 16% in 2020.
In Wisconsin, she won union households by 1% and lost non-union households by 1%, ending the historic Democratic advantage.
So why did so many unexpected people in so many unexpected places decide they were okay with all of the felonies, all the flagrant hate speech, all the violence, and all the national crises thay another Donald Trump presidency promised?
He was everything to everyone, a deeply pro-Israel mensch who also was seen as a better choice by Palestinians because after eight years, nobody took what he said seriously. He could say what he wanted and it was downplayed by the media, so he never had to answer for it and didn’t bother to blend in. Trump was troll who drove the moralizing elite insane, the smug operator who took what he wanted and promised that others could too. He made grand promises and didn’t immediately negotiate them down.
The shifts he led worked down ballot too, so Republicans also won control of the Senate. They could possibly helped them keep the House — it may take a while for those races to be finalized. But with or without a GOP trifecta, things are going to move fast from here.
A plunge into the darkness
Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are likely to push their ultra-regressive agendas as far as they possibly can during this term. Trans people, birth control, and the NLRB will be on the chopping block before next June, as will what remains of the Voting Rights Act.
When they’ve satisfied the flaccid old bigots who take them on cruises and secret church trips every year, at least one of Alito and Thomas is likely to retire.
After swearing off Project 2025 on the campaign trail, there’s no doubt that Trump will hire its architects to run the executive branch. It won’t be long before they commence a full-scale assault on the consumer protections, environmental regulations, civil rights enforcements, and health and safety guidelines that have been implemented over the past century.
A fast food CEO is likely to be the Secretary of Labor, while RFK Jr. is going to hold a lot of influence over the health of young children.
Crypto libertarians are going to run rampant, protected by Elon Musk and Trump’s desire to grift a quick buck. Many want to establish their own minor self-governed utopias, and they’re moving quickly to push working class Americans out of the way to do it. They have the money to make sure nobody bothers them.
Between the courts and a GOP governing majority emboldened by its landslide victory, there is no part of American life that will not face some kind of upheaval. Nebraska and Kentucky, two very conservative states, voted overwhelmingly tonight to reject the privatization of public schools, but private school vouchers are a top priority for Trump’s donors and the weird people who hang out with JD Vance at church events.
I don’t anticipate many of these policies being particularly popular, but gauging public reaction to things explicitly designed to hurt them now seems like a fool’s errand. Democrats will no doubt protest each and every one of them, and maybe that will help them win in the midterm elections, as it did in 2018. But that’s no strategy, nor is it at all guaranteed.
Where do we go from here?
First and foremost, that depends on how much damage is done. We don’t have a functioning constitution or government setup that can withstand major degradation from the courts. Once regulatory bodies and personal rights are gone, that’s it for a generation.
The electorate has undoubtedly moved to the right, fueled by media, isolation, and self-interest. Today, most media platforms are the domain of corporations or egomaniac fascist billionaires, and will be increasingly manipulated to throttle real news in favor of right-wing horseshit designed to confuse and abuse the public.
The media and party establishment will insist that Democrats need to shift right, too. They'll demand an embrace of conservatism, business interests, and deficit hawkishness. That the party abandon immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. And many Democrats will be happy to do it — it’s always their go-to pivot. But it never works, because it’s phony, which is part of what plagues the party.
There will not be an obvious or quick solution. It will have to be holistic, from the ground-up, and unwavering. I’ve outlined parts of it here over the past number of months, including the desperate need to reconnect with young male voters (see below for a recent conversation on it — im obsessed).
They are not intrinsically more important than anybody else, but young guys are an essential part of any winning political coalition due to their ubiquity and media influence.
Concurrently, Democrats must vigorously lean into defending unions and workers’ rights on the job. One bright spot on the night was the Harris’s strong performance with union households in Pennsylvania, which was in part the product of a very concerted effort by organized labor to back the vice president.
Democrats must hit every picket line possible as often as possible, not for a photo opportunity as they generally do now but to connect with workers on an individual and group basis. Nothing builds trust like that kind of visit, and not just in one direction. Ideally, Democrats begin to recruit young, vibrant, working class candidates who can convey as much urgency through a bullhorn as they can during call time. Candidates who can empathize with how hard it is to pay rent or buy a first home, not a second or third.
Democrats have gotten a little bit better with these issues of late, but their visits can’t just be for established locals. The same strategy must apply to every nonprofit, every organizer, and every member of any given community.
One example: Worker centers for non-unionized industries are huge in red states in particular, and there is only upside to crusading on behalf of workers injured or otherwise abused by negligent employers. Their families will recognize it, the people who pass by the demonstrations will recognize it, and the perception of a party that lives at the ground level, willing to stand up and admonish its donors, may begin to take root.
Elon Musk’s litany of labor abuses at Tesla and SpaceX, many of which I’ve reported on, would have been perfect to pursue, but Democrats are a caucus of too many letter-signers, not action-takers. If any Democrat is reading this, here’s a little helpful hint: look into how pissed off city letter carriers are with USPS and their own union right now.
Organized labor is a small sliver of the economy, but the eternal power struggle provides a framework for every fight going forward. Smart movements have goals and enemies, and the best ones have both.
Democrats must define a tangible enemy beyond Trump, which in some ways must include publicly shedding the identity of the Democratic Party as it stands now. The old and tired 80-something party leaders must retire or recede into the background, the lawmakers like Josh Gottheimer, who gutted big pharmaceutical price capping, to be replaced by people who exist in the worlds of their constituents.
There needs to be Democrats who understand shitposting and speak the language of youth and irreverence, not because a staffer prepared them a guide to Reddit but because it’s where they exist already. They need to be smart but not condescending, know music and movies and even sports, to the point that a governor who was a teacher and high school football coach 30 years prior isn’t seem as the best hope of getting guys on board.
This new Democratic Party has to listen, online and in person, and progressivism needs to inject itself into conversations that have nothing to do with politics, social issues, or anything else that seems like a chore. There must be volunteer centers and hubs of activism on all levels, getting people involved long before and after Election Day.
I’ll have much more to come on both the imminent dangers we face and the ways in which we must rebuild from the ashes. This is a decades long project in the making, and if there’s any encouragement, it’s that nobody can claim to have a full read on it.
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I’m in shock. Can’t even cry. Thank you for this in-depth review of where we are, and what we need to do next.
I underestimated how racist and misogynistic the average American is. (Already knew about the homophobia and transphobia.)
For my entire lifetime (beginning with FDR) Democrats have tried to do a lot for women, seniors, workers, unions, the economy and obviously would have done more had the Repugnants in Congress not put a stop to so much of what they tried. If the majority of the American voters want authoritarianism or Fascism (let's state it plainly for what it is) and according to Musk a painful economic contraction for the next few years, then they get what they want. I no longer choose to call myself an American. Fortunately, we left a year ago. It didn't stop me from sending much of my retirement income to Progressive candidates and causes, and voting, but the 74 million that wanted T in 2020 made me say enough of living amongst them. God, I'm so glad now with this new insult.