There's a little bit of CYA at play in this piece, but I think there is an underlying truth here. A lot of handwringing has, is and will go on about polling data and how "wrong" it was, though it might not be as wrong as we think it was on Tuesday. Still, there is no doubt that Trump has activated voters that are difficult to pick up in polls. It's not that they weren't being weighted properly, which was the assumption from 2016. It's that they simply don't pick up the phone when pollsters call.
Back in 2012, Karl Rove had an on-air freakout at Fox over Ohio being called for Obama. This is because they were counting on a certain non-college white voter to show up for Romney. For a lot of reasons, they did not and Obama won pretty handily. Certainly more than pre-election polls suggested. The "missing white voter" became a problem for the GOP. As the country became more diverse and cities moved away from them, they needed to find votes somewhere, and white people was where they had to find them.
Trump became the catalyst for these voters turning out. Biden built on Clinton's vote totals just about everywhere. Joe Biden got 5,270,000 votes in Florida. Clinton got 4,505.000. The problem is that Trump added a million votes to HIS total. Biden is currently sitting on 3,336,000 votes in PA. Trump earned 2,970,000 in 2016, but he's upped that number to 3,308,000 so far this time.
What was and is disillusioning about this is that millions of Americans not only looked at the last four years and wanted more, millions more Americans WHO DIDN'T VOTE in 2016, looked at this and said, Yeah, I want to endorse this. Biden is sitting on 74,443,000 votes nationally - that number will grow - whereas Clinton earned 65,853,000 votes; again Trump went from 62,985,000 votes to 70,287,000 so far. (Maybe some of it was that the pandemic increased the ability to vote, by opening up more early voting, but I don't know.)
Why?
I think there is some reasons that would seem counterintuitive to many left-learning citizens.
1) Back when the BLM protests erupted across the country, it was striking how much support that they had from Whites. It now seems clear that they only had support from Whites who respond to pollsters. The data that showed that civil unrest triggers a retreat to authoritarianism...actually, that might have proven true. Trump's constant harangues about antifa and scary Black people coming to your suburbs...may have worked.
2) As crazy as this sounds, I think the raging pandemic and Trump's inept response to it helped him. I know there were conspiracy theories about his own infection, but I don't think that was quite it. The fact is, Covid is very dangerous...and also not. By the time Christmas rolls around, Covid deaths will eclipse 300,000 and potentially hit 350,000. Tough to say as younger people are getting it. The fact is, there are a sizeable portion of people who just want to live their lives and don't care if they risk their health, that of their neighbors and family members in the process. Covid restrictions suck. I'm spending my days in a mask, "teaching" below my expectations of myself, exhausted by the whole thing. A vote for Trump was a vote against masks and kids home from school.
3) There is a profound disconnect between how more educated people see the world and how those who aren't educated see this. My wife and I had a bit of a debate over this. Does going to college make you more open-minded and empathetic? Or do open-minded (and therefore empathetic) people go to college? If you are genuinely curious about the world, is that a product of or a pre-condition to college? I lean towards pre-condition. There is increasing evidence that your psychological profile predicts your politics. Less curious and mentally adaptable people prefer traditionalism and hierarchical authority (especially when their race and gender place them higher on that hierarchy). People endeavoring for a more tolerant, just world are - in these people's minds - "woke" "PC" "social justice warriors." This is a bad thing for them, because the movement to a more just, more tolerant world challenges where they are in the hierarchy they were raised into.
4) And of course, there is simply partisan polarization at play.
The question that will shape the future of this country is this: Did Trump awaken a force in American politics permanently? Or was this simply tied to him as a person? Authoritarian movements are often linked to a cult of personality, and Trump certainly manifested that. For various reasons, I don't THINK he will run again in 2024. For one, he will lose the protection from prosecution on January 20th. He's going to spend the next four years in court, and it will not go well for him. He will whine and whine about it, but Courts don't care. He will also be much older. But mostly his "brand" was based on being a "winner" and a "big man." He's going to lose and that loss will sink in eventually. The coming bankruptcy and seizure of assets...it could get grim.
So, the question is: Is there another Trump on the horizon?
I don't think there is any question that there are a host of Republican politicians that will try. The reason the GOP has not broken from this clown is that his voters are very real. The GOP base is Trump's base. They may be college educated and understand that what Trump does is wrong, but they can't say that or they will be primaried by a sentient reddit thread extolling QAnon.
Trump was a charismatic figure to his followers. His brazen bullshit and verbal cruelty were - in their twisted way -authentic. Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley can try them on, but will it really work? Trump was a TV celebrity for a TV nation. Can Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis tap into that? Or will we have a guy like Tucker Carlson try and re-capture Trump's coalition?
I do think the Georgia run-off is important. A lot of voters were motivated to vote against Trump in 2018 and again in 2020. With Trump off the ballot in 2018, Democrats won swing districts. When he was on the ballot, he delivered the margins to knock off some Democratic Representatives. If that pattern holds, Ossoff and Warnock should benefit from Trump having lost, and his minions staying home. However, will Democratic voters show up for the abstract idea of flipping Senate control? They haven't in the past. Will Trump being off the ballot demotivate Democrats, Republicans or both?
Presidents can extend their influence past their terms in office. Jefferson did; Jackson did; Lincoln did even in death; FDR did; Reagan did. I assumed that Obama would be a similar figure (Dubya disappeared down the memory hole.). If Trump and Trumpism extends past the man himself, we have not turned any corners. We are still left to cope with a white ethno-nationalist movement that will become more extreme as they decline in numbers.
Defeating Trump felt good. He's simply an awful human being who represents the worst devils of our nature. Hopefully his politics fades into obscurity and defeat along with him.
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