Biden May Win, But Trumpism Is Still With Us
Barack Obama won election in 2008 with 69.4 million votes. It was the most votes cast for a presidential candidate in history until this…
Barack Obama won election in 2008 with 69.4 million votes. It was the most votes cast for a presidential candidate in history until this year, when both candidates for president surpassed Obama’s total. Let that sink in. Both candidates.
Put another way, Donald Trump won more votes than any presidential candidate in history, aside from Joe Biden. Donald Trump won 69.7 million votes — and we are not done counting.
So, while Joe Biden is likely to be president, while Biden won more than 73 million votes, more than anyone ever, we can’t look at the 2020 election as a repudiation of Trump or Trumpism. That cannot be ignored.
As I walked around my neighborhood yesterday, two days after the vote, I was struck by the disappearance of election signs. Most were gone, especially the Biden-Harris signs, which were scarce to begin with. I live in a Democratic neighborhood in a Democratic town in a Democratic county in a Democratic state. The council is 5–0 Democrats. The county board is 7–0 Democrat.
What’s notable is that most of the small number of Trump signs and Trump flags are still in place, hanging from flag poles and trees. They are there. They are prominent. Their presence, like he 69.7 million Trump votes cannot be ignored.
It’s why I keep telling people that Biden may win, but Trumpism has not been defeated. Trumpism exists on a plane outside of traditional politics. It is a grievance-driven, toxic mix of false machismo, white supremacy, and American mythology that coalesced around a corrupt, self-absorbed businessman with autocratic tendencies and an instinctive understanding of how to reach people in their guts. Trump was the perfect vessel, though he may not be the only possible vessel.
Again, we cannot ignore this.
It is Friday, three days after a record number votes were cast, three days into a slow count that is slowly accumulating states in Biden’s favor. There have been protests, mostly peaceful. Biden has asked that the calm continue.
Trump, for his part, is defiant. He continues to demean the election process, attempts to delegitimize the result. His supporters are calling for vote-counting to stop, and Trump is claiming that he has won, that illegal votes are being counted, that the election is being stolen. He is angry. He appears unhinged. Perhaps he is unraveling, which has some Trump critics gleeful.
That’s a mistake. The AP reports that election officials “are worried about the safety of their staffs amid a stream of threats and gatherings of angry protesters outside their doors, drawn by President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the race for the White House.” And ABC reports that police foiled a planned attack on the Philadelphia Convention Center, where the region’s votes were being counted.
This comes after a series of Trump caravans last weekend that shut highways around the country, including the Garden State Parkway, that made clear that Trump’s main support is cultish in nature and feels as if it is never far from violence. One caravan, as I wrote earlier in the week, engulfed a Biden bus and forced it off the road, an action applauded by Trump himself.
The question is where is all of this heading? Trump is not going to leave office easily. There will be lawsuits, and there could be competing slates of electors, though that seems unlikely. Vox reported yesterday one what remedies might exist were he to not vacate the White House. What the piece does not consider is what happens should Trump’s supporters back his refusal to leave, possibly with armed resistance? What then?
We are not living in normal times. There is a pandemic that shows no signs of abating. The economy is in tatters. And we have a narcissist in the White House, who does not believe he has to abide by the rule of law, who has willingly conflated himself and the nation, who has convinced his core of rabid, cultish supporters that he is the nation incarnate.
We cannot ignore this.