The evening of November 5th was rough for me. As I’ve made clear in previous posts, I was very much hoping for a Harris win and in the days leading up to the election had come to believe that she was not only likely to win but had a decent chance of winning decisively. I knew Trump also had a decent chance of winning, but felt that the odds of a decisive, quick victory for him was the least-likely outcome. I was wrong, again.
I didn’t sleep that night, not because I kept watching returns or commentary, but because I was already starting to process his victory and what it meant. I had anxiety chest pains the following day and poor sleep ever since. I knew before the election that my obsession with politics had reached an unhealthy level and that I’d need to scale back my consumption of news and opinion post-election. That was true regardless of who won, but I knew it’d be especially important if Trump did. I’ve given this guy too much space in my brain for the last decade, and for my own mental health I need to claw some back. I’ll still follow the news but need to do less of it and focus more on publications that take a longer, non-partisan view with less emphasis on the outrage of the day. To put it concisely, less Bulwark and New York Times, more Dispatch and Economist. It’s not that there won’t be things to be outraged about, but I need to focus on what I can control. Remaining an informed citizen without that being my main hobby. Relatedly, my pace of writing on this Substack will likely slow.
So that’s one “positive” outcome for my personal life - hopefully my need to think less about Trump will lead to healthier choices. But it’s not the only bright side. In this post, I’d like to share how I’ve been processing what this result means: from the positive lessons we can (hopefully) take from it, to the things we have reason to be worried but not sure about, to the definite negatives that we can legitimately mourn.
Hope
Would you look at that! A fraud-free election! In seriousness, though, the fact that Democrats responsibly accepted defeat and are committed to supporting a peaceful transfer of power, combined with a suddenly renewed Republican trust in our electoral system will hopefully mean fewer efforts to increase the power of state legislatures to intervene in election outcomes. Maybe we’ll find that the post-2020 willingness of Republicans to doubt the legitimacy of elections they lose will prove to have been a one-time phenomenon tied to Trump’s inability to accept defeat rather than an ongoing threat to our democracy. Time will tell.
A clear victory increases the chances of both sides learning valuable lessons. A contested nailbiter would have let both sides believe they deserved to win, and the loser to conclude that their loss was due to specific tactical mistakes (or cheating) rather than triggering a more holistic rethink of their overall strategy and approach.
Republicans’ victory means they will, in my opinion, take the wrong lessons in the short term (more on this later). But a “mandate” and Republican trifecta in government also means they own whatever happens next. Republicans have been most comfortable in opposition - amplifying every negative thing as the fault of the Democrats and not having to actually work on solutions. As a result, their party has kicked out many serious legislators in favor of glorified social media influencers. Now that they have power, it’s time for America to see how they use it.
Democrats’ loss means the time for learning lessons is now. This will be a chaotic period, and what consensus emerges will make all the difference. I think one of the most positive signals from the election is the clear trend toward both parties having diverse, multi-racial constituencies. If we needed another reason for Democrats to abandon their focus on identity politics, this is it. I also hope they note how Colorado (governed by a moderate, libertarian-ish Democrat) was one of the rare bright spots for Democrats in terms of a shift in support, and how Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both underperformed Harris (as pointed out by ).
Building on my last point, the diversity of Republican support is a flashing red light that Democrats need a different approach, especially on social issues. The excesses of the “woke” movement and cancel culture may have been exaggerated and often misrepresented by the right, but they’re clearly a major electoral liability. Democrats’ insistence on applying a term to Hispanics that they themselves did not accept (“Latinx”) is a pretty perfect encapsulation of the paternalistic, virtue-signaling fad that overtook the left during around 2020. This has already waned substantially, but Democrats need to recognize the harm that came from letting a bunch of elitist academics dictate their platform, both in terms of messaging but also in terms of policy. “Defund the police” was a failure, as was their squeamishness to enforce the border.
If the Trump administration follows through on its more extreme promises - from high, broad-based tariffs to “mass deportation” of migrants - the economic effects are likely to be negative enough (especially to food and housing affordability) to be felt by many of his voters. This, more than perhaps anything else, might go a long way to undermining the protectionist, nationalist movement he helped spawn. This may be a lesson America needs to learn the hard way, and letting Trumpism rip may be the quickest way for it to burn out. Whether liberal democracy re-emerges in its wake is not assured, though, and depends a lot on where Democrats (and anti-MAGA conservatives) go from here.
In the waning weeks of the campaign, I had come to believe (against the primary thesis of my Substack) that most of America was seeing the same things I was. They were aware of the racist comments (immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America), the violent half-jokes (about not minding the press getting gunned down by an assassin), the descriptions of his fascistic tendencies by former staff, his promises to seek “retribution” against his political enemies, etc. I believed he would lose because I had faith in the goodness of my fellow Americans. When he didn’t, my first conclusion was that my fellow Americans must actually be fine with all of it. While I’m sure some are (his rally-goers seem to love it), I need to remember that many saw very little of that or had long ago learned to tune it out. Instead, they were voting based on memories of 2017-2019 being better than 2021-2023, not blaming Trump for the pandemic (and blaming Democrats for extended lockdowns and school closures), feeling like even if inflation has been tamed, the cost of living is still too high, and being put off by Democrats’ obsession with out-of-the-mainstream issues like pronouns. They may have voted for a racist authoritarian, but that doesn’t mean they meant to. This doesn’t absolve them of their responsibility to be informed voters, but it should help us remember that we all voted based on what we knew, and we didn’t all know the same things. Therefore, we shouldn’t assume malice or give up on our fellow Americans.
Fears
It’s important during this time of transition to practice some humility. There are some informed guesses we can make about what the next administration will do, but ultimately, we don’t know. Given his tendency to make decisions based on gut reactions and the last argument he heard, neither likely does Trump.
Trump’s latest cabinet picks of Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for National Intelligence and Matt Gaetz for Attorney General are definitely cause for concern. When we warned that Trump 2.0 would lack the guardrails of the first term and thus posed an unacceptable risk, this is what we were worried about. He’s flexing his muscles by picking nominees for their slavish loyalty above all other qualifications and expecting the Senate to play along. John Thune’s election as majority leader is cause for some mild optimism here, but regardless, it’s a dangerous sign of what’s to come.
Still, when it comes to specific policies, we don’t know how far they’ll go. Here are some possibilities:
Mass deportation. It is not encouraging that Trump has elevated Stephen Miller to a WH advisory role and tapped Tom Homan as his “border czar.” The former is nakedly nativist and opposes immigration of all kinds, and while the latter is experienced and qualified, he is worryingly hardcore. He was involved in the child separation policy of the first administration, which was horrific and immoral in both its conception and execution. He also recently commented that a way to avoid family separations when deporting unauthorized immigrants who have native-born children, is to deport their citizen children too. Not good. That said, cooler heads may point out the cost and disruption of deporting millions of established immigrants and argue for something more targeted at new or recent arrivals. For an aging country that already has full employment and a need for workers to reduce the cost of food and housing, this too would likely have negative economic effects, but they’d be more subtle. It’d also be somewhat less morally outrageous.
Tariffs. Donald Trump famously loves tariffs and is a big believer in protectionism because he has a zero-sum understanding of economics. The pro-trade consensus for decades has resulted in negative effects for isolated groups (e.g. domestic manufacturing) but has led to unprecedented prosperity for both the US and our trading partners. Introducing across-the-board tariffs is a direct cost to importers who will certainly pass this on to their customers (whether American consumers or American manufacturers), and retaliatory tariffs will reduce international demand for American goods. In some cases, it might encourage more domestic production and thus employment, but even then, the cost of those products will necessarily be higher since they won’t have to compete with lower-cost foreign alternatives. That might not be a terrible thing in some cases, and I wouldn’t lose much sleep if Americans consume less disposable crap from China. But the impact on the American economy will almost certainly be negative in aggregate - the only question is whether the tariffs are relatively small or used primarily as a bargaining chip in tit-for-tat negotiations or are as large as he’s promised and cause immediate ripple effects throughout our economy.
Ukraine. This is a tough one to predict. It’s fairly clear that Trump will not be the staunch defender of NATO or Ukraine that Biden has been, at least philosophically. But Biden has been fairly criticized for being slow to arm Ukraine or give them permission to use our weapons offensively, so it’s possible Trump takes a less risk-averse approach and gives them permission to go on offense with a timetable attached. Trump is famously easily impressed by autocrats like Putin, so it’s reasonable to fear that he might want to be seen as doing Putin a favor, but he probably also doesn’t want to go down in history as the President who let Kiev fall. Perhaps the most likely scenario is he pressures Ukraine to accept current “borders” in exchange for promises from Russia to withdraw most of their military. That would likely save lives in the near term, but ultimately reward Putin for his aggression and probably won’t prevent him from making another attempt later on. Hopefully Europe and Ukraine will use the time to ramp up their militaries so they’re not dependent on an ally as unreliable and unpredictable as the US has become, and perhaps let Ukraine into NATO. But best case? Someone gets through to Trump and convinces him that our support of Ukraine is a bargain - we pay American arms-makers to refresh our own weapon stockpiles and give our old stuff to Ukraine, without having to put any of our troops in harm’s way holding off a geopolitical adversary. It’s also a deterrent to China, who will likely be more willing to invade Taiwan if it sees America abandon its allies elsewhere. In short, it’s a genuinely good deal for us, but Trump will have to be willing to burn a bridge with Putin, and Putin will make his own attempts to manipulate Trump. J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard aren’t likely to be positive influences here, either.
Chaos. The first Trump administration was notably chaotic, with very high turnover of top positions and a lot of former officials going public with their criticism of the administration. It’s a fairly safe bet that once the post-victory honeymoon wears off, the unstable alliance of MAGA ideologues like Stephen Miller, professional operators like Suzie Wiles, traditional Republicans like Marco Rubio and nihilist bomb-throwers like Matt Gaetz will start to fray. It happened in the campaign as the discipline of Wiles and LaCivita gave way to the “let Trump be Trump” approach that reigned at the end. Then again, Trump had no idea what he was doing the first time around and didn’t know who would be loyal or compatible with his approach. He’s famously disloyal himself and quick to lose patience, so it’s not clear that anyone (besides his family) will ultimately stay in his good graces for very long, but if he ends up with a crew he works well with, we may see less chaos. Of course, that’s not necessarily a good thing if it means they’re more effective at enacting bad policies.
Federal government reform. “Schedule F” is a means by which conservatives hope the Trump administration will strip employment protections from many government employees, as a way to remake the Federal bureaucracy in their image. The question will be how aggressive they are with this. A shambolic mass-firing of career professionals will likely result in major brain drain and dysfunction of critical agencies responsible for services many Americans depend on. A more targeted approach may still introduce some institutional decay but could reduce some marginal inefficiencies and be less impactful. There’s opportunity to do actual good here, but if the reforms just focus on installing loyalists rather than incentivizing excellence, that won’t be the likely outcome.
Climate. Generally, Republicans range from skeptical to hostile toward policies aimed at tackling climate change, and I think it’s a safe assumption that the Trump administration will not see this as a priority and will instead roll back regulations seen to restrict fossil fuel production. That said, Trump’s newfound appreciation for Elon Musk means there’s at least one EV company he likes, and his pick for the EPA has supported some limited environmental protections in the past. It’s also clear that some environmental regulations are getting in the way of even Democratic priorities like permitting for transmission lines for clean energy and housing construction. I expect the Trump administration will move us backward on our emissions reduction goals and relax restrictions on things like methane leaks, which is bad, but they may also accomplish some positive things that Democrats have been unwilling to touch.
Court appointments. We know they’ll be conservative, but will they be normal Federalist Society conservatives like in the first term, or unqualified partisans who undermine the rule of law for decades? There’s reason to fear that the latter is what Trump will try to make happen, but it only takes a handful of principled Republicans in the Senate to impose some standards. I’m not very optimistic, but let’s hope they do.
Tech. There are a few things Trump has long cared about: protectionism, immigration, himself. Tech isn’t one of these, and in his first term when the tech industry was largely liberal and seen as silencing conservatives, he was oppositional. Since then, there has been a cohort of tech leaders who have become Trump supporters, probably for self-interested reasons. They want to be able to influence his approach to regulating industries like crypto and AI to ensure incumbents maintain their advantage. Trump likely cares little about any of this and there’s reason to doubt his long-term commitment to dumb ideas like establishing a “strategic Bitcoin reserve,” but as a transactional operator, we shouldn’t assume he won’t throw these industries some goodies in exchange for their support. This would be unfortunate, as crypto remains mostly an energy-intensive grift with few legitimate uses, and regulations of AI around intellectual property and safety is needed.
Sorrow
Whatever the exact policy outcomes of a second Trump administration, there are some genuine things of value that I think we can safely conclude will be - or already have been - lost.
Character. As I felt about his first election, the most immediate and perhaps most significant harm from Trump’s election is to America’s character. Whatever you know about Donald Trump, most everyone concedes that he is not a man of great moral character. He dodged the draft, brags about assaulting women (for which he was found legally liable), lies, avoids paying debts, cheats on his wives, says offensive things about immigrants and his political opponents, and is generally not a serious person. The fact that America elected him again, when his opponent was clearly decent and qualified, is a stain on our national character and sends a terrible message to younger generations and the world about what qualifies a person to be President of the “greatest” democracy in the world.
Ethics and Competence. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the second Trump administration will usher in period of greatly increased government corruption and dysfunction. Special interests have always had unfair advantages in our system, and crony capitalism isn’t a new phenomenon in America. But Elon Musk’s ability to effectively buy his way into Trump’s inner circle is remarkable, especially given how dependent both Tesla and SpaceX are on US government subsidies and contracts. And the nomination of obviously ethically and professionally unqualified people like Matt Gaetz for Attorney General is a blaring warning siren that Trump 2.0 will be even more corrupt and unconstrained than the first version. The damage to our institutions and norms may last a long time.
Principled Conservatism. My most hopeful outcome of the election was that Democrats would win decisively - not because I wanted them to have a blank check to implement all of their ideas, many of which I think are misguided, but because it would be the lowest-risk way for the Republican party to finally move beyond MAGA toward something resembling a responsible conservative party again. That project is now on indefinite hold, again, as the only lessons Republicans will learn in the near term is that embracing Trumpism and nominating a convicted felon who publicly trashes long-standing American traditions and principles is a winning strategy. The only possible silver lining, as noted above, is that maybe a disastrous Trump term unrestrained by “grown-ups” was always the only way to put his movement to bed, and we just need to white-knuckle through the next four years while the Democrats hopefully use this period to figure out how to win again. The biggest losers in the long run are likely to be the principled conservatives whose best hope now is to wait for an eventual Republican implosion and try to exert a moderating influence on the Democrats in the meantime.
In conclusion, I think the impacts of this election will be long-lasting, significant and mostly negative in at least the short term. There are reasons to remain hopeful about America long-term and allow for the possibility that the next four years won’t be as bad as we fear. One way or another we’ll survive, and hopefully we’ll emerge from this period with both parties (and voters) having learned valuable lessons. But I am deeply worried about the consequences to Ukrainians, immigrant families, people dependent on the competence of our federal government, and the geopolitical risk of a more adversarial and withdrawn America.