When I interviewed billionaire tycoon and major Democratic donor Barry Diller last month, he told me that — even more than a Kamala Harris win — he wanted a victory. decisive victory, on one side or the other, to break the great American impasse.
Finally he got his wish.
On Tuesday night, America rejected the liberal plan, its temperament and its future. There is no ambiguity here.
The nation’s wavering districts, where hearts and minds may have seemed uncertain, broke in a big way for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
It turned out to be an early evening.
The nation’s wavering districts, where hearts and minds may have seemed uncertain, broke in a big way for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
Ultimately, America rejected the liberal plan, temperament, and future. There is no ambiguity here.
The choice was emphatic and binary: America chose the opposite of every leftist notion of what is good, right and decent.
The idea that American women would take the lead and protect basic rights over their bodies failed.
The idea that the Democratic Party best represented the country’s minorities crumbled.
The idea that we are a country with untouchable laws, in which the legal system has the final judgment, was pushed aside: a convicted criminal has won.
The idea that Donald Trump was an outlier, however persistent, was shattered.
In the end, it meant nothing that the establishment had come out strongly behind the Democrats.
In fact, in recent history there has not been such a bipartisan gathering, shoulder to shoulder at the barricades, of the great and the good: former generals, foreign policy experts, the daughter of a recent Republican vice president ( Liz Cheney).
And for nothing. Their status, status and experience appeared to have little or no influence on those already in the choir.
In reality, we are simply back to 2016, but now with even more forebodings and fear of the left.
Trump’s 2016 victory, liberals could tell themselves — and has been for eight long years — was a fluke.
2024 cannot be ignored.
The 2016 question, never fully answered, is back on the table: is it the novelty of Donald Trump that the country wants, or is it this sharp rejection of the liberal establishment’s attitudes and precepts?
Well, it’s no longer new.
It would be foolish not to recognize the obvious: Donald Trump and the populist ethos he represents are the dominant political ideology, style and impulse of our time.
And the age is long. For a decade, Trump has been the predominant figure of our time, with Joe Biden and the Democrats offering a mere footnote at best.
Now, barring an act of God, the era of Trump will continue for another four years. This appears to be the longest political period since Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Now, barring an act of God, the era of Trump will continue for another four years. This appears to be the longest political period since Roosevelt and the New Deal.
And just as that era remade the nation — with its methods of governance, its social aspirations, its moral philosophy — so too will the era of Trump. Judging from Tuesday evening, that is indeed already the case.
The internal Democratic blame game will now be fierce and cathartic.
Biden and his old age and his desperate attempts to stay in office, along with his weak management of the Democratic coalition and its tilt toward the left, deserve much of that blame.
Harris, a mediocre candidate with a lukewarm campaign, will also get her share.
But the lack of a compelling message from the party itself will be scrutinized more than anything else. The one-note reliance on abortion caused it to sputter in light of Trump’s ownership of the case against the Biden-Harris economy and their southern border crisis.
The Democrat’s fatal assumption: Donald Trump’s blasphemies would overcome their own weak response to inflation and immigration, the most pressing and emotional issues of the day.
In fact, his profanities seem to have been a net plus for him. His grave faults turned out to be his unique virtues.
The mainstream media couldn’t have banged the drum any louder – especially damning the supposed darkness of his closing rally at Madison Square Garden for the nastiness, the racist comments, the open threats against the enemies of MAGA and all this poison in plain sight .
But if you were there in person, you saw 20,000 people having a great time. It was a WWF wrestling match or even, in the familiar working class, a Grateful Dead rock concert.
Even the Trump campaign has recoiled from its candidate’s obvious profanity and strangeness in recent weeks. But Trump himself has never wavered.
As doubts arise around him, he leans further into the role of Donald Trump – and he is rewarded for it.
Joe Biden and his old age and his desperate attempts to stay in office deserve a lot of the blame. Kamala Harris, a mediocre candidate, also gets her share.
The Democrat’s fatal assumption: Donald Trump’s blasphemies would overcome their own weak response to inflation and immigration, the most pressing issues of the day.
That’s the Democrats’ existential situation: A pretty healthy majority of the country is attracted to this guy. They enjoy him. They admire him. They respect him.
The Democrats’ inability to figure that out — a total inability to understand why anyone wouldn’t completely reject this man and not be utterly shocked by his presence — is what’s mainly throwing them into the wilderness right now.
And so we move beyond an evenly divided nation – always the Democrats’ last refuge.
Even if they lost, their actual majority in the popular vote (which everyone assumed they would win), as well as their moral majority, would have held. It would – without the anomalies of the Electoral College and the deplorable MAGAs – still have been a liberal nation. The establishment would have held firm.
But now the Republicans have handily won the White House, the Senate and probably even the House of Representatives.
Liberals in America are a certain island. And it will take a long time before they can regroup and plan an effective counterattack. If it ever happens.
There is no doubt about what happened. This is Donald Trump’s country.