WASHINGTON — The U.S. presidential election is a moment when the nation looks in the mirror. They are the reflection of values and dreams, of grievances and scores to be settled.
The results speak volumes about a country’s character, future and core beliefs. On Tuesday, America looked in that mirror and more voters saw former President Donald Trump, handing him a sweeping victory in the most contested states.
He won for several reasons. One was that a considerable number of Americans, from different perspectives, viewed the state of democracy as a major concern.
The candidate they chose had campaigned in obscurity, calling the country “rubbish” and his opponent “stupid,” “communist,” and a “b-word.”
The mirror reflected not only the discontent of a restive nation, but also of childless cat ladies, false stories of pets devoured by Haitian immigrant neighbors, a sustained insistence on calling things “weird,” and a sudden burst of democratic “joy” now crushed. The campaign will be remembered both for its profound developments, like Trump’s two assassination attempts, and for its curious chatter about golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitals.
Even if Trump were to win, most voters said they were very or somewhat concerned that Trump’s election would move the United States closer to an authoritarian country, where a single leader has a unchecked power, according to the AP VoteCast survey. Yet 1 in 10 voters still supported him. Nearly four in 10 Trump voters said they want a complete upheaval in how the country is run.
According to Trump, the economy was in shambles, even when almost every measure said otherwise, and the border was an open wound for murderous migrants, while the actual number of crossings had fallen precipitously. All this was wrapped in his characteristic language of catastrophism.
His victory, only the second time in U.S. history that a candidate has won the presidency in non-consecutive terms, demonstrates Trump’s keen ear for what stirs emotions, particularly the sense of exclusion of millions of voters – whether because someone else cheated or was cheated. special treatment or fell under the ravages of the internal enemy.
This is what the Americans decisively chose.
The centuries-old democracy gave power to the presidential candidate who warned voters that he could destroy essential elements of that democracy.
Having previously attempted to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power during his defeat to President Joe Biden in 2020, Trump believed he would be justified in pursuing “the repeal of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
This, contrary to the oath of office that he took, and will continue to take, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” as best he can.
A rough and decidedly imperfect measure of Trump’s ability to mean what he says is the number of times he says it. His direct threat to attempt to terminate or suspend the Constitution was largely one-off.
But the 2024 campaign was full of promises, rally after rally, interview after interview, that, if fulfilled, would upend the fundamental practices, protections and institutions of democracy as Americans know them.
And now, he declared after his victory: “I will govern according to a simple motto: promises made, promises kept.”
Throughout the campaign, to enthusiastic cheers, Trump promised to use presidential power over the justice system to go after his personal political opponents. He then upped the ante even further by threatening to use military force against these internal enemies – the “enemy within”.
This would shatter any semblance of Justice Department independence and turn the soldiers against the citizens in a way never seen in modern times.
He has promised to track down and deport large numbers of immigrants, raising the possibility of also using military or military-like means for this purpose.
Driven by his fury and denial over his 2020 defeat, Trump supporters in some state governments have already changed the way votes are cast, counted and confirmed, an effort centered on the false idea that the latest elections were rigged against him.
On Tuesday, Trump won the election under a Democratic administration. Efforts to overhaul election procedures will now be led by states in due course.
Another pillar of the system is also in his crosshairs: the apolitical civil service and its political masters, which Trump together calls the deep state.
He means the generals who didn’t always listen to him last time, but who will this time.
He’s talking about the people at the Justice Department who refused to give in to his desperate efforts to concoct votes he didn’t get in 2020. He’s talking about the bureaucrats who dragged their feet on parts of his premier agenda. term and which Trump now wants to serve.
Trump wants to make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as not enjoying civil service protections. This could weaken the government’s power to enforce laws and rules by draining some of the workforce and allow his administration to staff offices with more malleable employees than last time.
But if some or all of these principles of modern democracy were to collapse, it would be by the most democratic means. Voters chose him – and by extension, that – and not Democrat Kamala Harris, vice president.
And by early measures, the election was clean, just like the 2020 election.
Eric Dezenhall is a scandal management expert who has followed Trump’s economic and political career and correctly predicted his victories in 2016 and today. He also predicted that criminal prosecution of Trump would help him, not hurt him.
It’s not always easy to determine what Trump actually intends to do and what might be bluster, he said. “There are certain things he says because they cross his mind at some point,” Dezenhall said. “I don’t give it any importance. I favor themes, and there is a theme of revenge.
It therefore remains to be seen whether America will benefit from the two special days promised by Trump.
When he returns to office, he said, he will be a “dictator,” but only for one day. And he promised to let police have “a really violent day” to crack down on crime with impunity, a remark his campaign said he didn’t really mean, just as his people said they didn’t. was not serious in his desire to overthrow the American Constitution.
Voters also gave Trump’s Republicans clear control of the Senate, and therefore a majority allowing them to confirm or not confirm loyalists that Trump will nominate to the government’s highest posts. Trump controls his party in a way he did not during his first term, when major figures in his administration repeatedly derailed his most extreme ambitions.
“That a once-proud people chose, twice, to demean themselves in the face of a leader like Donald Trump will be one of the greatest cautionary tales in history,” said constitutional expert Cal Jillson and presidency at Southern Methodist University, whose new book, “Race, Ethnicity, and American Decline,” anticipated some of the election’s existential questions.
“Donald Trump’s actions will be as divisive, thoughtless and mean-spirited in his second term as they were in his first,” he said. “It will undermine Ukraine, NATO and the UN abroad, as well as the rule of law, individual rights and our sense of national cohesion and purpose at home . »
On the political left, no threat to democracy was on independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont when he delivered a scathing critique of the Democratic campaign.
“It’s no surprise that a Democratic Party that has abandoned working people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he said in a statement. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?
He concluded: “Probably not. »
For his part, Trump says he intends to restore democracy, not tear it down.
There was nothing democratic, he and his allies say, about seeing military leaders defy the elected commander-in-chief, whether it was the deployment of troops or his desire for a flashy military parade. Or seeing Democratic presidents establish immigration policy and broad student loan relief through executive action, bypassing Congress.
But this case is built from the ground up on the lie of a stolen 2020 election, his machinations to block the certification of that vote, and his mob’s bloody attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He comes to power with intending to pardon some. of those found guilty of this riot and perhaps exonerate himself from the criminal proceedings brought against him.
Safeguards remain. One is the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority relaxed scrutiny of presidential behavior in its decision expanding their immunity from prosecution. The court has not yet been fully tested as to how far it will go to accommodate Trump’s actions and agenda. And which party will control the House is not yet known.
The Republican’s victory came from a public so discouraged by America’s trajectory that they welcomed his brash and disruptive approach.
Among voters under 30, just under half voted for Trump, an improvement over his 2020 performance, according to the AP VoteCast survey of more than 120,000 voters. About three-quarters of young voters said the country is heading in the wrong direction, and about a third said they want a complete upheaval in how the country is run.
In Trump’s words, at least that’s what they’ll get.
AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.
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