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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Even the anti-Donald Trump graffiti on the streets of West Hollywood is scarce and half-hearted these days. Eight years ago, California was the “resistance” state. It’s a different situation that a visitor will encounter in 2025: resignation, boredom with the subject, an attitude that comes between thoughtful Democrats and, sometimes, something approaching curiosity about the potential of America’s economy under a deregulated president.
A big liberal shrug continues. It’s been happening all over the world since Trump won his victory in November, and it’s natural. You are not always angry. In the autocracies of the 20th century in Europe, people with an unwilling conscience often made what was called “inner migration”. In other words, instead of running away or fighting, they withdrew into private life while the political realm darkened around them. Separation like this is smart, not weak.
Just don’t overdo it, that’s it. I feel like liberals are allowing a healthy acceptance of the reality of the election to cross over into a hope that Trump’s second term won’t be so bad. Please.
Three things softened Trump’s impact last time. None of them are available now. First, he wished for re-election. This makes him poised to challenge the median voter at some point, but not by a long shot. (The speed with which he rejected the slow theocratic Project 2025 last summer shows how much the said hothead is willing to avoid unnecessary popularity.) Unless something happens to the 22nd Amendment, Trump is now freed from the inherent discipline of electoral politics. Even the midterms are small, as the race to replace him begins immediately. Second term presidents have two years.
What else? His first administration was filled with enough old Republicans — Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson — to curb his excesses. He is now spoiled by officials and cabinet secretaries who are in the mold of Maga. Tulsi Gabbard could be head of US intelligence soon. There is nothing Stoic or urbane about rubbing that.
Above all, the world of 2017 is strong enough to absorb a certain amount of chaos. Inflation is low and Europe is peaceful. The last major pandemic in the west was a century ago. It’s into the flimsier webbing that Trump will throw his tariffs and foreign escapades this season.
We can continue in this vein, dealing with practical and deterministic reasons for concern. We can talk about the federal judiciary, which is more Trump-tinged today than when he first took office. Will it stop him? We can also mention that he will be 82 when he stands up. Last time, he had to think about the legal exposure, earning potential and social reputation he would have in his post-presidential life. Could that be the reason now?
In the end, though, my argument — and a lot of political commentary — boils down to instinct. There’s a hubris in the Maga-world today that wasn’t there in 2017, in part because Trump didn’t win the popular vote. Talk about higher economic growth, territorial conquest, putting a US flag on Mars: if it doesn’t make you proud before falling, in the near overreach, then we have different antennas . (And I hope I’m wrong.) In all democracies, a party is never more dangerous than when it is riding high on recent electoral success. The difference in the US is the size of the stakes for the outside world. Think of George W Bush after his historically good midterms in 2002, or Lyndon Johnson’s progress in Vietnam after 1964, when his vote pool could be seen from space.
Yes, a war of choice is unlikely under Trump. (Although events can push leaders into unnatural actions. Remember, Bush’s view before September 11 was that he was a helpless isolationist.) Presumably, a tariff spree would start a uncontrollable response to the world, or the economy will run. heat up, or the constitution will creak to the breaking point as Trump seeks to reward friends and foes alike. At the very least, there will be internal criticism when it becomes clear that the public debt, urban squalor and other issues in America cannot be accommodated by a techno-libertarian fix.
Whatever the precise shape of the coming chaos, the relative lack of concern about it is a holdover from eight years ago. The liberal line in 2025 looks like this: we overreacted to panic about Trump last time, so let’s not repeat that mistake. Not half of this proposition survives the slightest intellectual audit. The horror is Affirmed, unless the two impeachments – one for seeking to overturn an election result – somehow do not count. Also, even if the first term isn’t so bad, why assume the second is the same? Trump and his movement are very serious entities today. His inaugural address this week was terrifying in vision and expression.
None of this means that people who don’t like Trump should take the man’s advice to “fight, fight, fight”. Protest and activism are dead-ends for Democrats. But if pride is bad, so is self-doubt. The lesson of the 2024 election for liberals is, or should be, narrow: stop electing useless candidates. This somehow grew into a broader crisis of confidence about whether their basic assessment of Trump as a threat was correct. Vindication for years to come is never fun.
