Trump supporters attend a rally in Hialeah, Florida. (Alon Skuy/Getty Images)
“You can always spot a fool, for he is the man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election. But an election is a living thing — you might almost say, the most vigorously alive thing there is — with thousands upon thousands of brains and limbs and eyes and thoughts and desires, and it will wriggle and turn and run off in directions no one ever predicted, sometimes just for the joy of proving the wiseacres wrong,” - Robert Harris in his novel Imperium.
This last decade or so, we’ve heard an awful lot about the new fragility of American democracy. So it bears noting that, after much angst, we somehow pulled this election off. Kudos to the election workers. Kudos to the voters for providing a clear and decisive result. Kudos to Harris for the graceful concession (in stark contrast to Trump in 2020). We have not lurched into another crisis of democratic legitimacy. No windows are being smashed; no statues are being torn down.
And there is, yes, a mandate. When one party wins the presidency, Senate, and probably the House, that’s usually the case. But this year, the policy divides were particularly clear, and the shift so clear and in one direction everywhere. Americans have voted for much tighter control of immigration, fewer wars, more protectionism, lower taxes, and an emphatic repudiation of identity politics. In the immortal words of Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” We’ll soon see how that pans out.
But the good news is that we have become less tribal. The president whom Ta-Nehisi Coates derided as whiteness personified just won more non-white votes than any Republican since Nixon. The allegedly xenophobic campaigner against illegal immigration gained massively among various Spanish-speaking constituencies and many legal immigrants, especially men. The champion of rural whites somehow also made his biggest electoral gains in the big, non-white cities, and among Hispanic voters in Texas border counties. A Republican whom the left and the legacy media called a “white supremacist” won about 24 percent of the black male vote and 47 percent of the Latino male vote.
What about the huge impact of enraged women we were told about, especially in the wake of the Selzer poll in Iowa? Again: a nothingburger. Biden won women by 12 points; Harris —a woman candidate after the end of Roe — won by only 7 points. Ruy Teixeira runs through the other demos here. Gen Z? Biden won women under 30 by 32 points, and Harris by a mere 18. Meanwhile, men under 30 went from +15 for Biden to +14 for Trump — a truly staggering swing! Trump gained among Jews and Muslims! Harris was the candidate of the Upper West Side. The Bronx moved massively to Trump.
How could an entire left-liberal worldview be more comprehensibly dismantled by reality? And yet, the primary response among my own liberal friends was rage at the electorate. They texted me to insist that Harris lost because of white people — white women, in particular, their favorite bêtes blanches. The NYT’s resident race-baiter, Nikole Hannah-Jones, made her usual point:
Since this nation’s inception large swaths of white Americans — including white women — have claimed a belief in democracy while actually enforcing a white ethnocracy.
In fact, among the few demos where Harris did better than Biden were white people earning over $100,000 a year, white women, white men, and “LGBT” voters — most of whom are now young, bi, white women in straight relationships. Warming to her racism, NHJ went after “the anti-Blackness … in Latino cultures as well.” Here’s how Joan Walsh put it:
[Biden]’s got a couple things that my girl Kamala didn’t have. A penis, and that nice white skin.
But more whites went for Kamala than Biden! If you want proof that critical race, gender and queer theory is unfalsifiable, you just got it. The Dems and most of the legacy media have literally no frame of reference outside “white-bad/black-and-brown-good” and “men-bad/women-good.”
And no, Harris did not run a “flawless campaign.” Please. She ran one with no coherent message. She picked a woke weirdo as veep. She embraced neocons like Liz Cheney while never breaking decisively with Biden or the left. She had no credible answers on immigration and inflation. She had nothing coherent to say on foreign policy. She thought Cardi B and Stephen Colbert were arguments.
On Trump as a potential dictator, Americans keep telling us they don’t really buy it. They may be wrong … and maybe they are. But if you are going to respect democracy, you also need to respect their judgment, and honor their choice. I suspect they think he will throw his weight around, but will be constrained as he was last time around by the ability of the American system to stymie most radical moves. But they want him to end mass illegal immigration, and I suspect they will give him some leeway to get there. The Dems had their chance to enforce the border and instead chose to open the floodgates. What Trump now does is therefore their responsibility too.
And the slow, corrosive impact of wokeness has taken a toll. I know many of you are tired of this emphasis, but I’m not wrong! It matters when the elites decide to re-educate the masses in Neo-Marxism. Young men are sick of being pathologized, as they should be. Urban residents — from San Francisco to New Jersey — are maddened by Democrats’ seeming indifference to violent crime. And one of Trump’s most effective ads — “it shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor,” according to the NYT — was on Harris’ support for public funding for sex reassignments for illegal aliens and prison inmates. It packed a real punch among black and Latino men and suburban women.
The Democrats’ insistence that women have penises and men give birth is perhaps the most insane position any major political party has ever taken in US history. And how exactly do you remain a pro-woman candidate when you favor boys competing against girls in sports and women prisoners being forced to share intimate space with biological men convicted of rape? At some point, as Harris found out, you can’t. But can she and her party extricate themselves from this hole they keep digging ever deeper? I doubt it.
So here we are. I hate to break it to you, but it’s not just a Trump victory. It’s a Trump triumph. I also suspect it’s his high watermark. The policies he favors — and will have no excuse not to deliver on — will bring backlash, and pretty quickly. Drastic reductions in illegal immigration will hurt economic growth; tariffs will boost inflation; a deal with Putin in Ukraine may seem weak, not strong; ridding the federal government of DEI will not be easy; and too crude a DOJ crusade against his enemies will lose the center.
But Trump is now a world-historical figure, the most significant American politician of this century so far, with a real mandate. That requires, in my view, an attitude adjustment: not a doubling down of “resistance” but a strategy of engagement and discerning opposition. The way to get Trump to do what you want is to flatter and seduce him — the way Putin and Kim Jong Un do. I suspect that finally giving him the establishment respect he so desperately yearns for could be the most effective way of dealing with him. That requires a real shift in worldview among his opponents. And it will not come easy to many of us. But if this election doesn’t occasion that, what would?
Yes, this is democracy in action. It hasn’t died. It has, in fact, surprised us by revealing a much less tribal and less racially polarized country than we imagined, a vibrant electorate open to change and nuance, and two multiracial coalitions vying for power. Trump remains the unknown, of course. And we could be headed for disaster if both he and his opponents revert to form. But there is an opening here, if we want to take it. For the first time in eight years, I feel some small confidence in saying this once again, even as many around me seem sunk in despair.
Know hope.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a long chat with Damon Linker on the election results; dissents from readers over my latest column, abortion, and trans coverage; 16 quotes from the remarkable week in news, including three Yglesias Awards for Democrats; 16 pieces on Substack we recommend; a mischievous Meme of the Week; a nostalgic Mental Health Break from the Obama era; a bright-red window from Oregon; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
From a happy subscriber:
The Dish does horrible things for my productivity on Fridays, since I spend at least an hour or two reading all the stuff you and Chris link to. I like that it makes me think.
And another:
I read and listen to the Dish every week. I’m another person who despises Trump and is shocked that Harris is the best they can give us. Call me one of the last few Reagan Republicans. I never voted for Trump, but I love that all my liberal friends in central California are sure that I’m the one Trump voter they know. LOL.
I’m sure that you and I would agree on some things and vehemently disagree on others. But like you, I have been whipsawed by the last few years, and I’m trying to move forward the best I can in a world that makes no sense.
Back On The Dishcast: Damon Linker
Damon is a political writer with a must-read substack, Notes from the Middleground. He’s been the editor of First Things and a senior correspondent at The Week, and he’s the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test. Back when we were both at Newsweek / Daily Beast, he edited my essays, so we’ve been friends for a while. We also both belong to the camp of conflicted moderates — and look like doppelgängers. The poor guy gets mistaken for me sometimes.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — if we should be more afraid of Trump this time around, and the effect of woke culture on men. That link also takes you to commentary on last week’s episode with Musa al-Gharbi on elites and wokeness. Man, Musa was vindicated this week. We also hear from readers on the election, the Supreme Court, abortion, and the trans debate.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Anderson Cooper on grief, Reihan Salam on the evolution of the GOP, David Greenberg on his new bio of John Lewis, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, and Mary Matalin on anything but politics. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
You mentioned that you’re closer to Trump than Harris on “free speech.” We all know you don’t like being scolded or self-censored into lefty ideas. Fine. But focusing on that contretemps misses the actual stakes for free speech in this election. Trump has repeatedly — repeatedly! — called for persecuting his political enemies and using government to crush dissent — by, for example, pulling FCC licenses. Last week he “joked” about reporters being gunned down. And people with business in DC, such as Jeff Bezos, are already self-censoring rather than risk their government contracts in a potential second Trump administration.
Centrist Substack types love to complain about the censorious effect of some on the left, and imagine themselves closer to the right accordingly. But the war has widened and you’re missing how the battle lines have been redrawn. I hope I don’t have to say “told you so.”
Read my response here, along with more dissents. More still on the pod page. As always, please keep the dissents coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the election fallout, surrogacy, and asexuals. Below are a few examples:
Matt Ford laments, “Liberals just lost the Supreme Court for decades to come.”
Dan Drezner takes stock of what he got wrong in the 2024 election. Subscribe for the tegridy!
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the VFYW). Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. From the winner of the contest two weeks ago:
WHOA! This made my day! I’ll take the famous VFYW book and display it with pride.
If I may join the super-chef and others in making a plug for a wonderful Asheville institution that is temporarily closed, I’d like to call some attention to Vivian, a fantastic restaurant in the River Arts District (but thankfully just above Helene’s waterline). Many of us fans think it’s one of the best restaurants in the Southeast, but somehow it never seems to get noticed broadly. It’s a tiny little place with a tiny team, putting out food and drink that is broadly European-inspired but brilliantly creative. I have shamelessly wowed my own guests with at least half-dozen cocktail ideas borrowed from them (most recently one consisting of bourbon, crème de banane, lemon juice, and walnut orgeat).
Vivian restaurant is still closed, waiting on potable water and necessary repairs. I’m sure they’d appreciate all the support they can get at their GoFundMe while they’re closed, and hopefully from guests coming to the restaurant again soon.
And finally, with respect to the Biltmore Estate, I’m surprised nobody mentioned how expertly the architect Richard Morris Hunt set up the views from the house’s windows. Not only does almost every guest room have a window onto the mountains, but so do the bathrooms — and down below, in the servants’ wing, so even those doing the dishes got to share the multimillion-dollar view:
The Dish — and thus your subscription support — made a donation to Vivian restaurant. Here’s another followup from the super-sleuth in Chattanooga:
Thanks for sharing the fundraising link for Beloved Asheville. I was also glad that someone wrote up the Cúrate restaurant. I read this morning that they reopened and hosted Jose Andres, whose World Central Kitchen deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for their work to feed people in the wake of disasters of all kinds.
