America has made its decision.
Former Apprentice host and convicted felon Donald Trump will be POTUS for a second time, having beaten Kamala Harris with 277 of the required 270 electoral votes as of this writing. Trump has thus far secured just over 71 million votes against Harris’ 66 million, per the latest numbers. The Associated Press called Trump as the winner following his victory in the state of Wisconsin. Meanwhile, the Senate will also be controlled by Republicans.
Initially, the 2024 presidential election was playing out as a second round, of sorts, to 2020’s Biden and Trump showdown. Biden won that election, ultimately securing a record 81 million votes. What followed, a fatal Capitol riot involving Trump supporters and the spread of made-up claims of voter fraud, has dominated the U.S. political discussion in the years since. Numerous charges were filed against those who took part in the storming, while Trump was formally accused of inciting an insurrection.
The would-be 2020 repeat first started to falter with concerns among Democrats regarding Biden’s ability to serve, ultimately reaching a peak in June of this year after a disastrous debate performance against Trump. By July, Biden had dropped out of the race and named Vice President Harris as his pick for the new Democratic nominee. Harris went on to select Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, as her VP running mate. Trump, meanwhile, picked Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance. Two days prior to announcing Vance as his VP, Trump’s right ear was struck by a bullet during an attempted assassination in Pennsylvania.
For those quick to assume Trump’s second term will merely mirror his first, that’s not likely to be the case. Such concerns have been raised repeatedly amid the run-up to the 2024 election, including by Harris, who warned at a Washington rally in October that Trump was “obsessed with revenge” and “consumed with grievance.”
Trump’s second term, per Harris, will see him prioritizing an “enemies list” over the daunting problems facing everyday people.
“This is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better,” Harris said at the time. “This is someone who is unstable.”
Over the next few days, we can likely expect plenty of finger-pointing with regards to how, exactly, Trump was able to clear a path to victory a second time. In fact, many in varying positions of power may try to point the finger at Democratic voters themselves, erroneously laying the weight of the world on their shoulders. This scapegoating fails to acknowledge the party’s usual repeated mistakes and the blatant dragging-its-feet approach taken amid the earliest questions about Biden’s viability.
It can be tempting at times like these to lean into a checked-out cynicism, one that provides a false sense of distance from the world at large. Expected, even. But maybe this time, we try to keep that tendency at bay. Maybe we take a hard look.