The 51 Percent

How that awful man won again.

While most of us here are grieving for the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election, it’s worth noting that slightly more than half of the country—or at least those who bothered to vote—are breathing a sigh of relief. They got their preferred candidate. Or at least their least unpreferred. As much as we fear what this portends for the future, they believe the country has been saved from those trying to undermine it.

Contrary to the prevailing sentiment, they’re overwhelmingly not monsters. Indeed, while we don’t talk about it all that much, at least directly, given the customs of American civil-military relations, I’d guess my students and military faculty colleagues voted for Trump by at least a 2-to-1 margin. And the folks I went to war and to high school with are likely closer to 5-to-1.

This morning, Steven pointed to Carlos Lozada‘s “Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are.” After a long litany of “I remember when . . .” statements, he observes,

There have been so many attempts to explain away Trump’s hold on the nation’s politics and cultural imagination, to reinterpret him as aberrant and temporary. “Normalizing” Trump became an affront to good taste, to norms, to the American experiment.

We can now let go of such illusions. Trump is very much part of who we are. Nearly 63 million Americans voted for him in 2016. Seventy-four million did in 2020. And now, once again, enough voters in enough places have cast their lot with him to return him to the White House. Trump is no fluke, and Trumpism is no fad.

After all, what is more normal than a thing that keeps happening?

In recent years, I’ve often wondered if Trump has changed America or revealed it. I decided that it was both — that he changed the country by revealing it. After Election Day 2024, I’m considering an addendum: Trump has changed us by revealing how normal, how truly American, he is.

[…]

Trump’s disinhibition spoke to and for his voters. He won because of it, not despite it. His critics have long argued that he is just conning his voters — making them feel that he’s fighting for them when he’s just in it for himself and his wealthy allies — but part of Trump’s appeal is that his supporters recognize the con, that they feel that they’re in on it.

[…]

This time, that choice came with full knowledge of who Trump is, how he behaves in office and what he’ll do to stay there. He hasn’t just shifted the political consensus on a set of policy positions, though by moving both parties on trade and immigration, he certainly has done that. The rationalization of 2016 — that Trump was a protest vote by desperate Americans trying to send a message to the establishment of both parties — is no longer operative. The grotesque rally at Madison Square Garden, that carnival of insults against everyone that the speakers do not want in their America, was not an anomaly but a summation. It was Trumpism’s closing argument, and it landed.

His NYT colleague Lisa Lerer piled on with “America Hires a Strongman.”

Donald Trump told Americans exactly what he planned to do.

He would use military force against his political opponents. He would fire thousands of career public servants. He would deport millions of immigrants in military-style roundups. He would crush the independence of the Department of Justice, use government to push public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies abroad. He would turn the government into a tool of his own grievances, a way to punish his critics and richly reward his supporters. He would be a “dictator” — if only on Day 1.

And, when asked to give him the power to do all of that, the voters said yes.

This was a conquering of the nation not by force but with a permission slip. Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.

Their colleague Peter Baker joins in with “‘Trump’s America’: Comeback Victory Signals a Different Kind of Country.”

In her closing rally on the Ellipse last week, Kamala Harris scorned Donald J. Trump as an outlier who did not represent America. “That is not who we are,” she declared.

In fact, it turns out, that may be exactly who we are. At least most of us.

The assumption that Mr. Trump represented an anomaly who would at last be consigned to the ash heap of history was washed away on Tuesday night by a red current that swept through battleground states — and swept away the understanding of America long nurtured by its ruling elite of both parties.

No longer can the political establishment write off Mr. Trump as a temporary break from the long march of progress, a fluke who somehow sneaked into the White House in a quirky, one-off Electoral College win eight years ago. With his comeback victory to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.

[…]

Rather than be turned off by Mr. Trump’s flagrant, anger-based appeals along lines of race, gender, religion, national origin and especially transgender identity, many Americans found them bracing. Rather than be offended by his brazen lies and wild conspiracy theories, many found him authentic. Rather than dismiss him as a felon found by various courts to be a fraudster, cheater, sexual abuser and defamer, many embraced his assertion that he has been the victim of persecution.

“This election was a CAT scan on the American people, and as difficult as it is to say, as hard as it is to name, what it revealed, at least in part, is a frightening affinity for a man of borderless corruption,” said Peter H. Wehner, a former strategic adviser to President George W. Bush and vocal critic of Mr. Trump. “Donald Trump is no longer an aberration; he is normative.”

But also adds some nuance:

Populist disenchantment with the nation’s direction and resentment against elites proved to be deeper and more profound than many in both parties had recognized. Mr. Trump’s testosterone-driven campaign capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president.

And while tens of millions of voters still cast ballots against Mr. Trump, he once again tapped into a sense among many others that the country they knew was slipping away, under siege economically, culturally and demographically.

To counter that, those voters ratified the return of a brash 78-year-old champion willing to upend convention and take radical action even if it offends sensibilities or violates old standards. Any misgivings about their chosen leader were shoved to the side.

The last decade or so has made it pretty clear to me that a larger subset of my erstwhile co-partisans, doubtless including some folks I grew up or served with, are more motivated by racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobic bigotry than I’d understood. It’s certainly more than a tiny fringe of Trump’s base of support. But, no, it doesn’t explain the 72 million folks (and counting)—an actual majority of voters—who voted for Trump.

Folks with columns in the Newspaper of Record ought to understand that Americans overwhelmingly don’t follow politial news, much less read the New York Times, on a regular basis. Probably a hundred times more people can tell you the fate of Peanut the Squirrel than what happened at the Madison Square Garden rally.

After nine years of being told Trump is a fascist and a threat to democracy, it’s not surprising that they’ve tuned it out now that the word is coming from inside the tent.

Rather clearly, Trump’s anti-immigrant rants appealed to a large number of people worried about the economy and the culture. But, no, I don’t think anything like a majority actually supports the measures that would be required to rounding up tens of millions of people. They just want the problem solved and believe Trump cares about it more than Harris.

I honestly can’t explain why the Capitol Riots didn’t create a permanent backlash, but it clearly didn’t. If anything, the multiple felony indictments—and the convictions in the New York case—seem to have galvanized the notion that Trump is a victim. I don’t understand it but it’s true.

By all indications, though, Trump has increased his support. He’s won a majority this time. He is, for the first time in a very long time if not ever, approved by more Americans than disapprove of him. Despite rhetoric that’s obviously racist and anti-immigrant, he’s drawn the largest share of Black and Hispanic voters than any Republican in decades.

In 2016, his shocking win was attributed to a combination of sexism, his opponent’s complacency, and a backlash among blue-collar whites. Eight years later, he’s expanded his coalition considerably.

It baffles and frustrates the hell out of me. Then again, I’m precisely the type of highly-educated professional that has left the Republican Party as it has attracted more blue-collar voters of all races who once upon a time were the base of the Democratic Party. Alas, there are a lot more of them than there are of us.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, Media, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Kathy says:

    they’re overwhelmingly not monsters.

    When something dreadful happens and they say “that’s not what I meant or wanted!” they will not be forgiven.

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  2. Michael Reynolds says:

    He’s won a majority this time.

    I suggested he might in a comment a few weeks back and you dismissed it. I didn’t expect it, but I thought it was quite possible.

    Contrary to the prevailing sentiment, they’re overwhelmingly not monsters.

    Contrary to what some might imagine, neither were the people of Nazi Germany. It doesn’t take a population of monsters to perform monstrous deeds. Like the ‘good’ Germans, these Trump voters will carefully look away as people’s lives are ruined. They will never admit they were wrong, and they will never stand up to him, they will back him in anything he does.

    Let me put this bluntly. If Trump ordered all trans people to be arrested and held in concentration camps, Trump voters would not so much as frown. And he would find plenty of men and women ready to be guards, just as he will find plenty of thugs to tear immigrant families apart.

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  3. Jake says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    You’re a true idiot.

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  4. de stijl says:

    I don’t get it.

    R’s in the early part of my lifetime were fairly decent and cool. Then Reagan happened.

    The Reagan Era was when Rs leaned into all or nothing. Partial policy gains were no longer acceptable. All or nothing. No prisoners.

    Then there was Newt Gingrich who essentially mandated that practice as a rule.

    I have no problem with divided government. I am, sort of, an incrementally minded person to a degree. Personally, I’d prefer radical change now, but we’ve got to get friends and neighbors on board too. Fucking layabouts!

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  5. Matt Bernius says:

    Again, I think we need to avoid making sweeping statements until we have more data (including around theorized demographic shifts).

    Once we have more data, then I think we turn to this:

    It baffles and frustrates the hell out of me.

    I agree. And I think–to the degree your existing teaching/research load allows–trying to really explore the baffle is an important thing for us to do (especially those writing on the front page). I, for one, want to see lots of defensible unpackings of what happened and why.

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  6. Stormy Dragon says:

    Contrary to the prevailing sentiment, they’re overwhelmingly not monsters.

    To steal an appropriate line from Sondheim: they’re sooooooo nice… they’re not good; they’re not bad; they’re just nice…

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  7. Not the IT Dept. says:

    @Jake:

    Stop posting when you’re looking in the mirror.

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  8. James Joyner says:

    @de stijl: @Matt Bernius: I agree that the data are somewhat sparse but we’ve clearly seen at least a small-scale realignment of the party systems at this point. The scale of it is really all that’s in question.

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  9. Jake says:
  10. Lounsbury says:

    Frankly that you all are baffled is an indication of the closed off circle of “acceptable” listening that has developed amongst the a US Left that has become autistically closed off from all “non acceptable” opinion, hectoring and pious modern versions of Edwardians… althoughbthevdetials have shifted to BoBo Leftism.

    The European example, where we are seeing similar although not identical reaction, showed rather clearly there is a wider reaction on the level of the labouring working class to combined socio economic change.

    The tone deafness, the reaction, maga as nazi scum, unfrequentabke bigots… Well maybe Reynolds feels better, but the dominant mode evident here is a path to continued losses

    Personally it is not hard to see the charlatans appeal although it has none for me, but being of the over educated Uni degree holder elite, that’s no surprise – however given the interaction with anyone not in the proper Uni educated Lefty professional class discourse…. the réactions to the typical piousvarchness that dominates is not difficult to understand

    But I expect the majority here will attack and reject, as like reaction to Andy note about reflection

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  11. steve says:

    For various reasons I ended up driving a lot the days right before the election. It was notable to me here in PA that essentially all of the GOP ads were primarily focused on trans issues and also on immigrants claiming immigrants are responsible for disease, crime (especially fentanyl) and everything bad in the US.

    Steve

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  12. al Ameda says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Let me put this bluntly. If Trump ordered all trans people to be arrested and held in concentration camps, Trump voters would not so much as frown. And he would find plenty of men and women ready to be guards, just as he will find plenty of thugs to tear immigrant families apart.

    @Jake:

    You’re a true idiot.

    Honestly, what part of Michael’s statement is wrong or farfetched?
    Or do you believe that Trump’s style of malevolence and cruelty is all an act, and that his rallies were just a lot of good family fun?

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  13. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Lounsbury:
    For the record, I am not “Uni educated”, I’m a High School drop-out. I collected rents in a slum for a year, worked as a waiter for ten years, and cleaned homes and offices for two. I’ve been homeless, slept on the streets and spent time in jail. I was working class growing up and was quite poor, and constantly on the edge of real disaster until the age of 42. I’m now 70.

    I agree we need to change our message and approach, and if that’s what I was hired to do, I’d execute that and do a fucking great job of it because I’m a professional. But I’m not working on a campaign or making policy or writing ads, I’m here, communicating with people who already know all of the above, and I am not reluctant to call a prick a prick.

    Now, do we need some outreach to these scumbags, yes we do. But just between us here . . . shhhh. . . they are scumbags.

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  14. Bill Jempty says:

    @al Ameda:

    cruelty is all an act, and that his rallies were just a lot of good family fun?

    It depends on which family we’re talking about= The Borgias? The Corleones? We know for sure it is not the Von Trapps.

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  15. Bill Jempty says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    For the record, I am not “Uni educated”, I’m a High School drop-out.

    Raising my hand and saying I am not a uni educated either but I am a high school graduate. Was trained by the Navy to be a Hospital Corpsman and Radiology technician.

    Take a deep breath and hold it before labeling me next time.

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  16. Jc says:

    It’s the internet. Prior to its invention, evolution and access to all, the ignorant were not as dangerous. Now with the help of the webs spread you see how dangerous they can become. You can downplay it, but it has played a massive part in bringing this to a boil, just needed the right demagouge to add to the stew to bring them all together and change the makeup of our political landscape.

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  17. Kathy says:

    @Michael Reynolds:
    @Bill Jempty:

    Same here. I took some college classes, but came nowhere near graduating. I just read a lot.

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  18. wr says:

    @Matt Bernius: “Again, I think we need to avoid making sweeping statements until we have more data (including around theorized demographic shifts).”

    You mean like this? “The majority of American voters are either evil, stupid or both.”

    Nah, I’m sticking with it until data comes along to prove me wrong. Meanwhile, my lease is up in April of 2026, and so I’ll be dividing my time between charting the barbarism here and scouting out a desirable area of The Netherlands to settle in.

    I don’t have it in me to spend another four years watching the champion of the stupid and evil destroy people’s lives based on his sick whims.

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  19. Matt Bernius says:

    @James Joyner:

    @de stijl: @Matt Bernius: I agree that the data are somewhat sparse but we’ve clearly seen at least a small-scale realignment of the party systems at this point. The scale of it is really all that’s in question.

    Totally agree James. And I also will gently push back that scale makes a hell of a difference.

    Admittedly, some people have a bias towards magnifying the scale. Others have a bias towards minimizing it.

    In all honesty, I most likely fall into the latter. So, on a day like today, I’m resisting writing ANYTHING about it until there is more data, and we can also do some necessary contextualization while doing our best to control for bias.

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  20. Lounsbury says:

    @Michael Reynolds: And?
    I don’t see anything particularly useful in such – MAGA as scum, MAGA and anyone voting Trump as unwashed vulgarians, unfrequentable by polite society etc.
    The majority of the priggish Left holier-than-thou fraction with their fine secular culutural religion has spent something like almost 10 years (since 2016) in this mode. It seems neither particuarly effective either as therapy nor as understanding nor… really anything
    (and apparently self-entertainment is somewhat beneath the very important and serious comments – I will grant you do self-entertainment but then do get beyond that which makes you more interesting than the pious priggery, the arch ironic-egalitarian pretence snobbery)

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  21. wr says:

    @Lounsbury: Do you find that people cross the street to avoid you when they see you coming?

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  22. wr says:

    @Lounsbury: “I will grant you do self-entertainment but then do get beyond that which makes you more interesting than the pious priggery, the arch ironic-egalitarian pretence snobbery)”

    I hope Michael realizes what a compliment this is — these are the same words Lounsbury used to propose to his wife!

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  23. Gustopher says:

    Trump won because roughly half of America preferred a felon, rapist, senile, autocratic, ancient, orange white man to a black woman.

    Because roughly half of America doesn’t understand how tariffs work.

    Because half of America wants a government that stays out of their lives, but really fucks with their neighbors.

    Because half of America is the worse half.

    Not sure it requires that much analysis.

    Because that Black woman was a Ni Neoliberal Cu Communist.

    Once and future President Creamcicle, assuming that he doesn’t stroke out before then, or get lost shuffling around Mara Lago and fall into a ravine.

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  24. Matt Bernius says:

    @wr:

    You mean like this? “The majority of American voters are either evil, stupid or both.”

    Yeah. Actually exactly like that, especially when it may turn out we’re talking about a 1 to 2% difference between the “evil, stupid or both” voters and those of us who are “good, enlightened, and just all around better human beings” (note the silent /s on that second one… I’m trying not to get too invested in an ‘us vs. them’ narrative).

    I know I’m coming across as a scold, and that isn’t needed while folks are processing feelings.

    That’s why I’ll wait until we have more details and a bit of distance to share my hot take on why I think “this IS who we are” takes are both wrong and fundamentally unproductive.

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  25. Jack says:

    Might I humbly suggest that you folks re-examine your base assumptions. Read more than just far left news or blog sites, and spend less time slapping each other on the back. And perhaps you can actually evaluate alternative opinions rather than just piss on people who disagree. As best I can tell you all live in the proverbial echo chamber.

    Objectively, the Trump years were good. The economy did well. No new wars. A border somewhat under control. No firing squads. Imprisoning political opponents. And so on. You all beclown yourselves with these hysterical musings.

    Harris is vacuous. Her policies, despite the convenient reversals, are those of a miserable Biden presidency. You need more than Trump is Hitler to win votes, except for the tribalists I guess.

    The people unlocked the code. And the progs took an arse whippin’.

    It will happen again unless you WTFU.

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  26. Bill Jempty says:

    @Kathy:

    I just read a lot.

    I read a great deal also.

    Most of which is

    Espionage or thriller fiction
    Biographies of politicians, diplomats, or members of the military
    And very occasionally Dystopian fiction or current affairs non-fiction

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  27. Bill Jempty says:

    @Jack:

    Might I humbly suggest that you folks re-examine your base assumptions. Read more than just far left news or blog sites, and spend less time slapping each other on the back.

    As I have stated many times, I read both the National Review and New Republics. And as for back slapping, I’ve been accused of being a troll and told I should run for President for holding views like the polls were wrong, Trump is going to win, and that Biden is unfit to run for President.

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  28. al Ameda says:

    @Jack:

    Might I humbly suggest that you folks re-examine your base assumptions. Read more than just far left news or blog sites, and spend less time slapping each other on the back. And perhaps you can actually evaluate alternative opinions rather than just piss on people who disagree. As best I can tell you all live in the proverbial echo chamber.

    Right back at you, Jack.
    Some one on the Left could have written that paragraph as very descriptive of the Right.

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  29. Gustopher says:

    @Matt Bernius:

    I’ll wait until we have more details and a bit of distance to share my hot take on why I think “this IS who we are” takes are both wrong and fundamentally unproductive.

    It may not be who we are, but it’s who a lot of us are. Trump was pretty clear about his plans for a second term.

    Sure, the election was decided on the margins by low-information voters, but easily a third of us are people who looked at Trump, saw him for what he is, and said “I want that.”

    These are the people who Trump appealed to when he was appealing to our worst nature.

    With 1-2% margins, you also have to factor people who are angry that Biden overturned Roe v. Wade, and voted Trump to punish him, and other amazing beliefs, but at the core it’s that a lot of Americans are terrible people who saw every warning about Trump and said “don’t threaten me with a good time!”

    They is us. As much as our nation’s most noble aspirations define us, our worst impulses do as well, when they are so widely embraced.

    A quarter of Seattle voted for Trump (in 2020, I haven’t looked for breakdowns like that this year, but don’t expect it to be different). These are not the best people, they’re the Nazis Next Door.

    @Jack: I regularly check out right wing media. When half of America is very certain that I am wrong, I check it out, because maybe they’re right. What I’ve found is charlatans selling hate to fools. In an earlier era they would be selling snake oil and ranting about the Chinese railroad workers.

    You have to want to believe their shit to believe it, or be really, really stupid. And maybe I give people too much credit, but I don’t think most of them are that stupid.

    ETA an apostrophe, in honor of the late and lamented Teve. Shitty people with shitty values.

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