Donald Trump, President-Elect
Let me point out a couple of things at the outset here; my personal view of Trump has not changed since before 2015; I have never supported Trump for political office, I categorically reject his signature immigration and tariff policies, I supported his conviction on both impeachment charges and all his recent civil and criminal lawsuits. Second, I was not influenced by the fact the fact that Time also named him Person of the Year earlier. If anything, I considered varying twists, like the Trump judges or prosecutors because I didn't like the appearance that I was influenced by their process. I have not accessed their related post and any similar points they discussed are coincidental. Some of them are fairly obvious in nature.
Probably the most compelling reason is Trump became only the second President in American history to win nonconsecutive terms. Only Democrat Grover Cleveland in the late nineteenth century had achieved it.. I was personally skeptical that someone with such highly unfavorables could win over independents; I thought that that he had topped out at about the 46% level. I also thought that he had had highly toxic issues running against him--the whole 2020 spoiled loser tantrum never to this day conceding his loss, his pressure on Pence to reject enough slate slates to throw the election to the House where he expected to win the votes of a majority of states to prevail, his attempts to convince GOP leadership in red/purple states he lost to reverse election results/change the electoral college slates. then there was the J6 riot from his mob on Capitol Hill that interrupted ratification of electoral college results; it would be at least 4 hours before National Guard units appeared on site to secure the Capitol under Trump's dereliction of duty. His second impeachment trial, over J6, resulted in a majority (57) for conviction but short of the 67 for removal and ineligility for future office.
I wasn't sure how Trump would ever survive the stigma of his loss; Hoover, Carter, and George HW Bush are prior Presidents who never attempted a follow-up run after losing, but those were more blowout losses. Trump had come close enough in multiple battleground states to potentially win despite a record number of votes by Biden, millions more than Trump received in the recent election, although electoral votes, not popular votes, win the election. How do I explain it?
i think Biden didn't manage expectations very well. For one thing, he ran as a centrist but ran his Presidency from the left. Biden heavily pushed for EV's and related infrastructure like charging stations, while EVs, despite government subsidies, have been struggling to maintain market share. But the majority of car owners ran on gas, facing global supply chains, never mind the access to Russian exports after the Ukraine invasion, Biden had been closing off new oil exploration. Despite record production off preexisting fields, energy prices skyrocketed on his watch. He tried to empty the strategic reserves in an effort to drop prices. Trump benefited from reduced driving and lower gas prices during the early pandemic
But energy prices were only part of the inflation prices, in large part reflecting easy money polivies of the Fed which misjudged early signs of inflation as temporary, not to mention massive federal spending. (Trump himself contributed to that but a lot of stimulus spending was on Biden's watch.) We also had a sluggish economy and real household income fot the most part fell on his watch.
Biden had a blind spot on economic uncertainty; Bidenomics was working; voters just needed to be educated on economic numbers. But Biden also badly stumbled over the border, which played to Trump's advantage. Biden had not anticipated the overwhelming response to the expiration of Title 42 nor had he set expectations for a more orderly migration process.
Trump had certain advantages in his pursuit of a third nomination; he had an unusually personally loyal activist base; he had a high job approval with an overwhelming majority of the party base. Unlike his lesser known competitors for the nomination, he is universally known, he is media-savvy, and is highly charismatic, unlike many politicians.
What has astonished me is that Trump has become somewhat of a Teflon politician. Back in the 1964 GOP campaign Nelson Rockefeller found himself dogged by his affair, divorce and remarriage. In contrast, Trump bragged in one of his books of his affairs; He's had children with each of 3 wives. He cheated on his third wife, when youngest son Barron was a baby, with a porn actress, later paying hush money during the 2016 campaign, illegally passing it off as a business expense. yet through it all, he has held unflinching support from evangelicals like Franklin Graham This is no longer the "Family Values" GOP.
Then there were all the lawsuits: the Carroll civil suit from an encounter in the mid-1990's where Trump was convicted of sexual misconduct (digital penetration) and a relevant defamation suit over Trump 2019 comments, which he also lost; the NY state criminal case where Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over hush money to Stormy Daniels; the Georgia state 2020 election interference criminal case against Trump; the federal criminal 2020 election obstruction case against Trump; and the federal criminal classified data case against Trump. Sentencing on the second case has been delayed in part pending consideration of a SCOTUS ruling on Presidential immunity. The latter case has also deferred action on the two federal criminal cases. The latter federal case was also dismissed on the novel ground that the Special Prosecutor is constitutionally ineligible despite the Nixon precedent and it's under appeal. The Georgia case has been on a hold because the Fulton County DA was involved in a possible conflict of interest with a personal relationship on the team.
It's not clear why voters shrugged off the lawsuits, especially the guilty verdicts. perhaps they bought his self-serving rationalization that he was a "victim" of a "weaponized" Justice Department, despite the Special Counsel (in this context, Jack Smith) is technically independent and the indictments came through a grand jury. Perhaps they felt the offenses were minor or that Trump would be exonerated. i can only speculate because I didn't support him.
Then there's the improbable election campaign. We hadn't seen an incumbent President withdraw from a race since LBJ. Biden did it after he clinched the nomination, Then came the infamous debate with some Biden incoherent responses, shining the spotlight on Biden's unprecedented age. Biden had been struggling in the polls against Trump, in part, struggling with a near 40% approval. Of course; I wasn't sure of the accuracy of polls, given what I call the "bashful Trump voter". (Not every Trump voter necessarily wants to admit they are supporting a socially undesirable Trump.) Personally, I thought Trump had topped out at 46% of the vote in his 2 prior runs. I didn't think independents would flip back to Trump. I was wrong.
Then Biden withdrew leading the Dems to replace him with VP Harris. Harris did flip the age issue back on Trump. The Democrats seemed reinvigorated behind Harris and the polls appeared to surge modestly ahead of Trump, including a debate most saw as a win over Trump. Harris, like Biden, heavily ran on abortion post-Dobbs. She tried to run as a moderate in contrast to her 2020 campaign as a progressive, but I don't think she ever adequately responded to Trump's issues on inflation and the border. One should note that her candidacy was just a little over 3 months long.
The end result was a decisive electoral college win sweeping all the battleground states, the biggest electoral vote count since Obama's reelection. He did win the plurality vote just under a majority. I don't agree whe won a mandate with slender majorities in Congress. (Four Senate seats went to Dems in the battleground states he won.)
