Progressive wins undermine Trump’s big realignment

Public good triumphs offer hope, right-wing deceptions pile up

Welcome to a Thursday edition of Progress Report.

Now that you’ve had a few days to let the news settle in and your stomach settle down, how are you feeling about Donald Trump’s overwhelming election victory and imminent return to the White House?

Actually, I think I have a decent idea of how people are feeling about right now —over the past 48 hours, I’ve received a fair number of subscription cancellations with this kind of feedback:

Fair enough: Society only really works when everybody participates, so why spend time or money fighting for people who seem like they want to watch the world burn?

If you need to take a break from the madness, this is the moment, because things are going to ramp up quickly. Republicans are going to operate as if they have a mandate to indulge in their most brutal ideological fantasies — as Steve Bannon said yesterday, Project 2025 is indeed the plan.

Tonight, however, we’re going to look at the most positive developments from Election Day, which offer some proof that we’re not yet entirely broken.

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.

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Realignment is not brat.

Democrats will spend the next few years wringing their hands over how to respond to Tuesday’s historic election drubbing, which saw the GOP gains with across every demographic. Donald Trump is a singular political character with his own gravitational pull and an unparalleled ability to scam people, but such an easy and overwhelming victory wasn’t simply down to his alien magnetism.

The question going forward is why Republicans pulled new support from such a complete cross-section of the American public. Was it the product of…

1. A one-off confluence of events that Harris failed to adequately address?

2. A major shift in Americans’ fundamental beliefs and policy preferences?

3. The emergence of a major, multi-cycle partisan realignment?

Let’s examine the evidence.

✅ A one-off confluence of events…

Democrats were dealt a tough hand when they took over in 2021. They inherited a global pandemic and soaring inflation, a feral political opposition that tried to overthrow the government, and a Senate caucus filled with sellouts and egomaniacs.

Biden’s decline and stubborn refusal to exit the race then meant that the new Democratic nominee could only launch their campaign late July, with Trump far ahead and little time to reset the race. Harris was saddled with a public still angry over inflation, furor over an ongoing genocide in Gaza, and a rival who got a boost from nearly being assassinated.

✅ A failure to adequately address those events

But Harris and her team can’t put all the blame on Biden, because the campaign also lost the plot sometime after the September debate.

Whereas her first round of headlines was about banning price gouging, Harris ultimately pivoted away from populism to limp attacks on Trump’s character and appeals to saving democracy. Trump’s fascist tendencies are very real, but it was foolish to believe that Americans would suddenly be jolted by harsh words from Liz Cheney if they were still considering the guy after a decade of saying the most monstrous things possible about women and minorities, colluding with foreign dictators, and orchestrating a coup attempt.

The shift was done at the insistence of Tony West, her Uber exec brother-in-law, which gives you an idea of how detached the campaign was from the lives of everyday Americans.

Trump created the perception that he’d been maintained a pro-worker trade policy as president by shamelessly lying about his record and relentlessly promising to bring back they heyday of American industry, even though his record as president was the complete opposite.

Among other things, Trump signed the USMCA, the trade deal currently incentivizing corporations like John Deere to ship jobs to Mexico. Salt of the earth midwesterners at iconic American companies having their jobs offshored to Mexico would be a bad look for Trump, so he simply lied and declared that he’d actually saved the jobs by threatening Deere with tariffs.

Harris, on the other hand, voted against the USMCA but didn’t say a word about Deere; the only comment from her campaign came from surrogate Mark Cuban, who blasted Trump’s threats to slap tariffs on the company as a punishment for outsourcing. It was like snatching a loss from the jaws of defeat.

They should have saved money on their consultants and just read this newsletter.

One wildcard here is how rightwing media portrays these inane boasts and claims, because calling Trump a liar, even when he’s clearly lying, only has so much utility. If they want to tell audiences that he is now the CEO of John Deere, they will do that. The only way to beat it is to strike first and neutralize it.

🤔 A shift in Americans’ fundamental beliefs and policy preferences…

This was an election driven by dissatisfaction with the economy, and there will be no shortage of pundits, reporters, and centrist Democrats who insist that the party must move away from people like Lina Khan and toward a more corporate-friendly agenda.

The reality, however, is that modern campaigns are driven far more by vibes than policy papers. The daily news cycles tend to be inane meta discussion of gaffes, spin, and celebrity endorsements, and most Americans don’t stack up the various proposals from each candidate and award their vote to whose platform they like best.

In fact, if you look closely, there was a solid list of positive results — including some blockbuster David vs. Goliath victories — on Tuesday that underscore the fact that Americans still prefer progressive policy.