John Krull
Former President Donald Trump’s sweeping triumph over Vice President Kamala Harris tells us things.
Perhaps the first and most important one is that the fear and anger that stalk the American landscape are not a passing fad.
Voters returned the former president to power to send a message. They didn’t want to tell the world that they were unhappy. They wanted to say they were mad as Hades, so enraged that they were willing to ignore or cast aside both deeply held principles and common sense.
They claimed the economy was the source of their ire and cast their gaze back longingly at a supposedly golden Trump economy.
In doing so, they ignored basic facts.
Inflation has been lower in the United States in the past four years than it has been in virtually every other part of the industrialized world. When Trump left office, joblessness was four times as high as it is now.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit—during which, during the former president’s time in the White House, Americans died at four times the rate of people in the rest of the world—the gaps of wage and wealth disparities grew in favor of the already wealthy on Trump’s watch.
Put simply, when Donald Trump was president, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer and the middle-class experienced evaporation.
During Joe Biden’s presidency, the wage and wealth gaps shrank with wage growth for working Americans during the past year outpacing inflation.
But those are facts, and they require explanation.
There’s a cliché in politics that became a cliché because it’s true: If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Trump’s message required no explanation.
He told his followers that he could fix whatever problems troubled them.
It is a promise neither he nor anyone else can possibly fulfill. If economic forces bent themselves to the will of politicians, we never would have recessions, much less depressions.
But he made his task more formidable by offering solutions that stand in conflict with his pledge.
If, for example, he follows through on his vow to impose mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, he not only will separate millions of families, but he will deprive this country of a vast source of workers. Both labor costs and inflation will soar.
And if he doesn’t follow through on his program of deporting immigrants, he will tell his base that he’s not worried about the threat he said cost them both job opportunities and safety.
The same goes for his promise to end inflation by imposing tariffs on foreign goods. That, too, will drive up prices for the people who voted for him, but he sold his supporters on tariffs as a cure for their economic ills.
In the past, Trump skillfully found ways to blame others—Democrats, the media, non-lickspittle Republicans—for his failures.
That will be harder to do this time around.
He has remade the Republican Party in his image. This Trumpified GOP definitely will control the presidency, the U.S. Senate and the courts—and the signs now suggest that the U.S. House of Representatives will be under Republican control, too.
There will be no one to prevent or even slow him from pursuing his contradictory or even self-destructive impulses.
Nor, frankly, should anyone try.
Donald Trump won this election, clearly and decisively.
He was the first Republican presidential candidate to win majorities in both the Electoral College and national vote. His victory cannot and should not be disputed.
The fact that Trump and his followers did dispute and continue to dispute Biden’s similar triumph four years ago does not justify similar resistance now. Trump and his base have made it clear they do not treasure democratic principles and the institutions of self-government.
Those of us who do, though, must honor those things by recognizing and acknowledging that the people have spoken.
If we believe in this country’s essential values, we must give the agenda of this new president and new Congress a chance to succeed, while remaining vigilant about protecting the things—the rule of law, individual liberty, etc.—that make America special.
That make America … America.
If the plans the president-elect and his minions have for this country make it a better place, more power to them.
And if those plans don’t work?
Well, then, we should hold the president accountable with our ballots.
That’s how democracy works.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com.
