Discussing the outcome of the election with my students, most of whom are 25 years or more my junior, this week, I noted that Wednesday marked the 40th anniversary of my first vote in a Presidential election and Tuesday was my eleventh time voting for President.
For the record, my voting history is Reagan, Bush, Bush, Dole, Bush, Bush, McCain, Romney, Clinton, Biden, and Harris, which makes my record 5-6. Indeed, that’s true whether we’re going by the Electoral College or popular vote since my happiness over Bush squeaking by in 2000 was offset by Trump’s shocking win in 2016.
Over the same span, the straight-ticket Democratic voter would also be 5-6, with Electoral College wins in 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020 and losses in 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, 2016, and 2024. The straight-ticket Republican voter, naturally, would be 6-5. It’ll be exactly 20 years each of Republican and Democratic control of the White House between Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration and Trump’s. Caring a lot about American politics, then, has come with being disappointed with the outcome roughly half the time.
Is this time different? Like most of you, I worry that it is. While Trump is clearly more interested in running and winning than in governing, he has displayed increasingly authoritarian tendencies and a shocking lack of regard for the rule of law. I fear that the guardrails—bureaucratic procedure, “normal” Republicans in key administrative posts and Congress, and the judiciary—that reined him in last time will be gone or weakened.
Do I think we’re going to have a reign of terror that deports millions of illegal immigrants and harasses American citizens who “look foreign”? Or literal concentration camps for trans and queer people? I don’t. But it’s likely that we’ll further erode liberal norms and that violence will be employed in service of those aims.
At the same time, the Trump supporters that I follow from my high school and Army days—almost none of whom are anywhere close to as obsessed with the day-to-day of American politics as me—seem to be as elated as we’re concerned. I’m not seeing any of the vitriol that’s getting amplified elsewhere among the Extremely Online. They’re just relieved that the country is back on the right track.
While my politics are considerably less conservative than they were when I voted for Reagan in 1984, or even when I launched OTB in 2003, the reactions this week have again reinforced my conviction that, if millions of American are crying or in gut-wrenching fear as the result of a presidential election (or a Supreme Court retirement/nomination), those offices are too powerful. The shifting of a few thousand votes in a handful of states really shouldn’t have that drastic an impact on our everyday lives.
