People and pundits have been wondering why the House of Representatives lost so many Democratic seats at the same time that Joe Biden got 7 million more votes than Donald Trump. My theory is that 2020 was a surge election on both sides. The focus of the Democratic surge was to get Donald Trump out of office, so I think that many of those voters may have simply voted for Biden and ignored the down-ballot races. As part of that surge, Biden picked up many independents and moderate Republicans who couldn't stand Trump's style and wanted a return to normalcy. But Republicans voting for Biden would still support down-ballot Republicans instead of Democrats. Also, it has been my observation that Independents tend to be more conservative than liberals, so many independents may have also voted for down-ballot Republicans. And then you have Hispanic voters who didn't like Trump but were afraid to vote for down-ballot Democrats because the Republicans had successfully convinced them that Democrats are socialists. Many of the suburban women that Biden won over may have conservative leanings, and so may have favored down-ballot Republicans. And certainly, the evangelicals that Biden won over would have voted for down-ballot Republicans.
Republicans in general seem to be more focussed on their "brand" than Democrats are. Thus, Republicans may be more likely to vote the party line in all races than Democrats are. With the demographics of the country changing, Republicans are worried about becoming a permanent minority party, so many of them vote Republican in every race. Certainly, all of Trump's voters must have voted for down-ballot Republicans, especially since Trump talked about Democrats as if they were the enemy.
It should be added that it is easier to be conservative than liberal. Conservatives are "against" and liberals are "for". For reasons I don't fully understand, it is easier to be fearful of something new or different than it is to unhinge one's thoughts from old preconceptions. Being "for" requires that you re-think your prejudices, and that can be an uncomfortable and painful process. It requires a realignment of ideas that causes you to see things in a new way -- it may even require you to change your identity.
In summary, I think this election was a repudiation of Trump, not a repudiation of Republicans in general (no matter how much they deserved it). As the nation becomes more divided along partisan lines, the dirty tricks of Republican politicians are meeting with approval from the Republican base, who see our democracy as a competition with two opposing teams. This seems to suggest that the Republican party will survive the Trump era better than anyone imagined. After all, the nation's deplorables must have a home, and the Republican party is their choice.
As for why Trump managed to expand his support among blacks, Latinos and gays, I think that has to do with his macho, strongman style, which generally appeals to men. There is little doubt that most men would prefer to live in a patriarchy than a matriarchy. Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a very aggressive candidate, and I think the nation's men recognized that a matriarchy was about to arrive, and so they spurned her. Trump also appeals to the bigot in many people, so I think he won over those people for whom pluralism and liberalism were never a comfortable fit.
A day after the election, my younger brother struck up a conversation with an elderly black man at a gas station. The black man said that this election was so important to him that he voted for the first time in his life. Given that Trump is clearly a racist, my brother assumed that the man had come out of his life-long civic slumber to vote against Trump, but no, it turned out that he had voted for Trump. Among other things, the man said, "I am really afraid for my church. Trump's support of religion is really important for my church." Trump and the Republicans, of course, have made a point of painting Democrats as anti-religion, the main reason being that Democrats don't believe that religious organizations should be able to discriminate against groups they don't like, like gays and transgender people. Prejudice against gays has always been high in black communities. So here we have another reason why some blacks may have voted for Trump but not for down-ballot Democrats.
Ultimately, I see Trumpism as a cult of personality. While many of us were becoming increasingly disgusted with Trump because of his bad behavior, some of us were becoming accustomed to him, and those were the ones who changed their minds from one election to the next. Like Lindsay Graham, the Senate's resident jester, they saw that Trump was aggressively implementing their conservative agenda, and that made them converts. In 2016 Trump was an engaging side-show, but by 2020 it was clear that Trump was giving conservatives everything they wanted.
Before the election, I had an exchange with a man on the internet who seemed to confirm this. He told me that his entire family opposed Trump in 2016, seeing Trump as a crude and unserious candidate. But by 2020 they had all changed their minds, especially the men. He rattled off a list of male members of his family who had come to support Trump and were going to vote for him. My take on people like that is that they were conservative to begin with, but they had standards of civility that meant something to them. But civility was fake. Conservatism -- i.e., denial of other people's rights and dignity -- is by definition crude, and what Trump did was to unmask their natural crudeness as conservatives. I mean, if you are going to be a bigot against, say, blacks or gays, or you believe that the natural environment is there just for mankind to exploit, then that makes you crude by default, and it is merely hypocritical to pretend to be civil.
Given that Trump is a sexual predator and has been married three times, his support among evangelical Christians has been pretty remarkable. I think that's because evangelicals in general are more conservative than they are religious, so they were voting their conservative views more than their religious views. I also believe that Trump appeals to evangelicals because he mirrors the cruel, paternalistic god of the Old Testament (really the Jewish god of the Torah). The Judeo-Christian god is a capricious god, and Trump is nothing if not capricious, given that he changed his mind every day or two depending on what was good for him politically. Like Trump, the Judeo-Christian god is selfish, narcissistic and controlling. He is a god who wants to be worshipped and obeyed, and being worshipped and obeyed is what Trump wants more than anything else. Also, it makes perfect sense to many Christians that God should have a separate set of rules for himself, which is precisely what Trump does. If God wants to grab women by their pussies, that is his right as the Supreme Deity.
As with conservatives in general, Trump also fulfilled evangelicals' religious agenda: opposition to abortion, a focus on religious rights, discrimination against gays and transgender people, and conservative appointments to the Supreme Court. That Trump has no love for the poor didn't matter to them because modern Christians don't care about the poor.
But now that Trump's term is over, Christians have little to show for their support except a religion-friendly Supreme Court, and all it will take is two appointments by a Democratic president to turn it back into a liberal court. So the transformation of the Court may turn out to be a pyrrhic victory. In the mean time, the reputation of Christians for moral righteousness is in tatters. President Grabby Hands sullied evangelicals, just as he sullied everyone else he came in contact with. The irony is that the religious freedom of Christians was never actually threatened. What they have lost over the years is influence -- i.e., the influence to set society's moral standards. That's what they wanted to get back; but in supporting Trump they showed that their moral standards are low. Now, when they say disapproving things about homosexuality or promiscuity, not many people are listening. Since Trump has no values, he just made the status of Christians in our society worse. Christians have lost their bully pulpit.
I didn't mean for this article to turn into a religious rant, but one thing leads to another.
Trump's reaction to losing the election has been extraordinarily satisfying to watch. There is nothing in the world that he hates more than a "loser", and now Donald Trump is the biggest loser of all, having lost to the candidate who got more votes than any other candidate in history. Trump, being the con man that he is, deserved to lose. His usual tactic of giving his opponent an insulting name -- in this case "Sleepy Joe" -- was so crude and petty that he deserved to lose just for that.
The fact that Trump has refused to acknowledge his defeat for more than a month shows how much he is hurting -- and he deserves to be hurting. Perhaps the most delicious aspect of his fruitless campaign to overturn the election is the large number of judges that he appointed who ruled against him, including the three justices that he appointed to the Supreme Court.
The chances are good that Trump will end up in jail, and if he does, he'll deserve that too -- not just because of his illegal activities, but because jail was what he wished on Hillary Clinton in 2016. "Lock her up!" was the chant that he led at his rallies. If Trump goes to jail, that will reduce the chance that he'll make a comeback in 2024.
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