by Jackie Neiman
Waking up to confirmation of Trump’s victory was a gut-punch, and I instinctively turned to familiar news channels, seeking solace in the commiseration of like-minded pundits. I wanted people expressing the horror and dismay I felt. I wanted definitive calls to action and promises that we would once again rise up and fight.
I didn’t find it. Instead, the finger-pointing postmortems had already begun. Trump won because of…Joe Biden’s unpopularity, foreign disinformation campaigns, the GOP’s failure to hold Trump immediately accountable for his crimes, the Justice Department’s glacial pace, Kamala Harris being a woman, Kamala Harris being Black, the progressive left’s woke agenda, Dems’ embrace of Liz Cheney, the continued funding of war in Gaza, the return of billionaires supporting Trump, Dems’ poor messaging, the media’s sane-washing of Trump, lack of Democratic turnout, Latino men voting for Trump, white women voting for Trump, and, and, and…
Everything went his way
Whatever the magic poison formula turns out to have been, the result is that we lost. Despite all his deficiencies, Trump won. Despite all his depravity, Trump grew in popularity. Despite all his criminality, Trump escaped accountability. Despite every hurdle, Trump came out ahead.
Every. Single. Thing. Broke. In. His. Favor.
Everyone who voted for him knew who he was and what he was promising. There is no longer any plausible deniability. Trump was selling racism, misogyny, grievance, greed, elitism, isolationism, and bigotry; and he had many eager customers. Those who voted for Trump didn’t overlook anything, they ran toward it. That so much of our population is devoid of common decency (or at least willing to set aside theirs in this election) is perhaps the hardest pill of all to swallow.
America hasn’t changed
The second most difficult is acknowledging that the America we woke up to on Nov. 6th, is the same America we’ve always had. I was just never forced to see it before. I could believe Trump 1.0 was an anomaly, and that we had course-corrected. But Trump 2.0 arrived with wins in both the electoral and popular votes and with it a mandate to act on his worst impulses. Trump didn’t invent indecency, he just brought it into focus for those of us who had the privilege of wearing rose-colored glasses.
We know that this next Trump presidency will be worse than the first. Although he is diminished cognitively, physically, and mentally, we cannot rely on Trump’s incompetence to save us from sliding into authoritarianism. Trump is now girded by people who are stronger and smarter than he is (a low bar, to be certain) and they understand that to ride his coattails to the top, they need to pledge fealty. The GOP’s successful long game also means that the guardrails that were in place during Trump’s first term in office are no longer there to keep him in check.
We have work to do
It is hard to overstate the potential damage Trump can do in this next term, and it is even harder not to be daunted by the enormity of it all. And yet, the risk of shying away from it is simply too great. So, for now, I’ve tamped my rage down just far enough for it to steel my resolve. We have work to do if we want to someday wake up in an America we can be proud of.
Jackie is Co-Founder and Co-Leader of Rise Up Western Mass Indivisible, and is a self-described “accidental activist”.
