In the end, Kamala Harris was the wrong candidate with the wrong message at the wrong time. President-elect Donald Trump won the greatest comeback in American political history — bigger than Richard Nixon’s 1968 victory — by surviving two assassination attempts, a media that was shamelessly in the tank for Harris and a majority of voters who appeared tired of being labeled “deplorables” and “garbage” by a condescending elite.
Trump has transformed the Republican Party from an image of a mostly white, big corporation-loving, country club, rich guys’ party, to a more racially diverse, working man’s party that the Democratic Party used to be. Trump peeled away a significant number of Black and Latino voters to win. He even did well in deep Blue New York City.
Harris flogged abortion as her only issue and Democrats, according to one estimate, spent half a billion dollars on TV ads claiming Trump would sign a national abortion ban. Voters apparently saw through the lie. Significantly, a Florida constitutional amendment that would have barred the government from involvement in the procedure to the point of denying parents the right to know about their daughter’s abortion, failed, as did a measure that would have legalized marijuana and made the state its chief dispenser.
In his relatively short (for him) victory speech, Trump said: “America has given us a mandate,” and so it seems with Republicans winning the Senate and likely to keep their House majority. Trump said his first act as president would be to “seal borders.” He also promised to “pay down debt.” He called his win “a massive victory of democracy,” a slap at The Washington Post’s slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Not on Tuesday. It beamed in brightness.
Trump said it is “time to put the divisions of the last four years behind us.” One hopes that wish comes true. It can start with a promise to cease name-calling. Both sides must make that promise and keep it. Policy is paramount, and success will bring more unity than disparaging fellow Americans.