Election Countdown: The Day After.
“The end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” TS Eliot, from 1942, with words for our moment.
Replanting, for a new beginning. A team working on “re-wilding” our front lawn in Washington DC, on this warm and beautiful November morning the day after the election. (Photo by Deborah Fallows.)
This time, it was not a fluke.
When Donald Trump came to power eight years ago, there were countless what-ifs. What if James Comey had held his tongue? What if Clinton campaign emails, hacked by Russian operatives, had not been published on WikiLeaks just minutes after the Access Hollywood video came out? (And distract attention from “Grab ‘em by…”) What if Clinton emails had not been such a media obsession? What if cable outlets had not found Trump rallies such useful audience draws? What if the US had joined every other democracy on Earth in choosing leaders without the bizarre Electoral College? What if everyone including Donald Trump himself had not taken it for granted that Hillary Clinton would win, and given her tougher scrutiny accordingly?
What if, what if.
This time we don’t have that distraction, or that consolation. The electorate of our country has had a good, clear, years-long look at Donald Trump. His braggadocio and his decline. His corruption and his vulgarity. His resentments and his threats. The warnings about what he would do from the most senior people who had ever worked with him, starting with his own vice president.
And, with eyes wide open, with the evidence before them, most of our fellow-citizen voters decided: Bring him back.
Yes, sure, there are what-ifs? this time. What if Mitch McConnell, after condemning Trump for the January 6 assault, had mustered courage to match even that of Mitt Romney and the other GOP Senators who voted to convict Trump on his second, Jan 6-related impeachment? McConnell could have assembled his caucus to do so, which would have permanently barred Trump from seeking office ever again. (Counting Romney, seven Republicans voted to convict; it would have taken 17.) What if in this past month George W. Bush had matched the courage of hundreds of his appointees, one of his daughters, and his vice president (and that vice-president’s daughter)?
What if Joe Biden had stepped aside earlier? What if Kamala Harris had chosen a crucial swing-state governor as her running mate?
Among these, only the impeachment-conviction vote would have stopped Trump for sure. Based on what we’ve seen now, I have doubts whether any of the rest would have. The stakes were clear. And the voters chose.
By the standards of any presidential race in modern times, Kamala Harris ran a very “good” campaign. Minimum of gaffes; maximum of concentration on “strategic” states. The broadest alliance in modern political history—Beyonce to Dick Cheney. The smallest number of backstage, backbiting leaks or second-guessing. This on the heels of what was at least statistically the strongest re-election year economy of any incumbent party in many decades.
By those same standards, Trump ran a very bad campaign. Mounting insults to known voting blocs—starting with the biggest bloc of all, women. Increasing darkness, rambling, and resentment in Trump’s public appearances. Visibly diminishing crowds. Leaks from disgruntled staffers blaming others for a likely defeat.
And none of it mattered.
The Republican presidential candidate had won the popular vote only once in the past 32 years. Eight years ago, Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by three million votes. Four years ago, he lost to Joe Biden by seven million. Yesterday, our fellow Americans appear to have given him an absolute majority—as I type, over 51% of the total vote, and a margin of several million.
“Absolute” is the relevant term here. The results last night appear to be so sweeping and absolute, on so many fronts, with so few caveats or complications, as to give us an unsparing view of our country in our time.
Two weeks ago, I quoted two celebrated and veteran campaign strategists—the Democrat James Carville, and the Republican Stuart Stevens—on why they were confident that Kamala Harris would win. Each of them rested that outlook on the character of the country.
Stevens said, to members of the broad Harris coalition:
There are more of us than there are of them… This is yours. Walk out and take it. You will look back at this moment with quiet pride and satisfaction for the rest of your life, knowing that when America called, you answered.
And Carville:
A vast majority of Americans are rational, reasonable people of good will. I refuse to believe that the same country that has time and again overcome its mistakes to bend its future toward justice will make the same mistake twice…. I know that we know we are better than this.
Two professionals who had based their careers on knowing the country turned out to be badly wrong about its nature, as expressed on November 5, 2024. It turns out that we are not better than this. That is why I thought last night of the famous verse from Little Gidding: We are arriving where we started, and knowing the place—our America, of this moment—for the first time.
What is next? I have no idea, at levels from personal-and-family plans to the largest global consequences.
But by complete chance, on this beautiful sunny morning in Washington DC, Deb and I are having most of our front yard replanted (by the excellent Love & Carrots in DC). For decades it has been a patchwork of grass that always struggled in the northern-exposure shade. Soon it will have a a rich variety of native, sustainable plants. It’s our own small step in the “rewilding” movement that is transforming residential areas around the country.
For now we end with perhaps the world’s most famous optimist, from Candide:
Les grandeurs, dit Pangloss, sont fort dangereuses…
Je sais aussi, dit Candide, qu'il faut cultiver notre jardin.
I know this too, Candide says. We must cultivate our garden.
(Or Make Our Garden Grow, as Leonard Bernstein put it, in music. Thanks to several readers for pointing this out.)
As usual, you wrote brilliantly.
For me, the saddest part is the realization that 2016 was not the aberration; 2008, 2012, and 2020 were the aberrations.
And I think of Mr. Lincoln: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
I texted this to a friend a couple of hours before reading your col: I definitely feel myself turning inward after what happened. Not that I will no longer be engaged but that it is even more important to have good times with close friends and do things like turn our backyard into a more welcoming gathering space.
Also on that thread: I will be kayaking with a friend in Sausalito this afternoon and then we will join some other friends on a houseboat for a dinner and sparkling wine and tears and love. We will do the same when we see you next week.
... I think about what the Dalai Lama said when asked how he can be so happy and joyful when he has lost so much, especially the Chinese annexation of his land and people. He said something to the effect of, "yes, they have taken so much so why would I give them my joy and happiness?"