America's Shattered Ideal

On Trump's Big Win

It’s heartbreaking.

Unlike four years ago, I mostly don’t care about the outcomes from a professional level - I stand by what I wrote and think with the information we had Kamala Harris was a favourite. There was a lot of uncertainty, and every time I wrote about things here or for TheLines or did Politics Politics Politics I felt I straddled the line of accepting that uncertainty and also making a case - a case that seemed logical, coherent, and to me plausible. It looks like it’s going to come up somewhere between 1 and 3 points short in the 4 states I tipped for Harris that are likely about to go for Trump.

If you want to come at me for getting it wrong, feel fucking free. Genuinely, this year I don’t care. The suburban shift that propelled Democrats in 2020 and 2022 didn’t show up, and Democratic margins with minorities have been meaningfully slashed. 2.5 years after Republicans got their dream and ended Roe, the electorate made them pay no price. It’s a superficially bad night for my vaunted Global Fucking Realignment in the sense that Dane and Forsyth and etc didn’t save the day, although I’m not sure if it actually is one, given that it’s true that there’s a hell of a lot more decline in working class areas, which does suggest that for a big national swing right, the country did move less in at least some suburbs than in working class areas, especially non-white working class ones. (Take a look at the New Jersey and New York maps, they’re insane.)

This isn’t a piece about me, or about how I am getting pretty fucking close to done with attempting to guess the mind of the American electorate. As self-indulgent as I can be - and lord knows I can be incredibly self indulgent - I’m more captured by the visceral sadness of this for my belief in America. And I don’t think Americans understand just how much damage this is going to do to America forever, because the whole ideal of America has just been destroyed.

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It’s comical that this election is even close. Donald Trump should not be anywhere near a golf course, let alone 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but this is the reality. It is bleedingly obvious to the rest of us that America has never been the Shining City on the Hill that it wants to pretend it is, but we contented ourselves with the idea that it was what America was striving for. In its own imperfect and incomplete ways, we believed that the moral arc of the universe bent towards justice, and that a better America truly was just around the corner.

We wanted to believe it, even when America failed that ambition. The reason the rest of the world got so excited for Obama was we want to believe in the idea of America, the idea of a benevolent power that is truly a force for good. We want to dismiss America’s failings, both historical and current, foreign and domestic, as the product of historical accidents or failed leaders in a given time. We want to because on some level, we have to.

Acknowledging the reality of America - that it is, and always has been, more susceptible to the politics of racial animus and more willing to fall for ideas of grandeur that usually end with a lot of dead people who aren’t white - is hard. It’s hard because it makes the choices the rest of the world has to make almost impossible to fathom. America needs to be trying to be better or else it becomes impossible to justify the price we pay in needing it.

All of that was destroyed last night. Unlike 2016, which could be blamed on Russia and Hillary’s bad campaign and a thousand and one other things, this wasn’t that. The American people know what they were voting for. They were no longer voting for a theoretical solution but one they had seen. They saw the last 8 years and signed up for more of it. It is on them. And now the rest of the world can no longer make excuses.

I feel horrible for the people who did their part to stop this. I feel horrible for those who will pay higher prices, higher mortgages, have less freedom, and face greater animus and hatred, because you don’t deserve the fate America dealt you. But it’s the fate America dealt you. It is now inarguable that a majority of America plainly do not view the protection of their common men, women, and children to be a priority. And that’s horrifying.

I’m just fucking sad. This result is fascinating, and there’s still Senate seats right now that look too close to call. But I don’t care. The conversations about what happened and whether it was knowable can come tomorrow. Today I’m just sad, because the lies I told myself about America just came crumbling down. Frankly, if America is what they showed themselves to be last night, then I don’t know what we do to save ourselves.