For those who believe the voters’ decision Tuesday to grant Donald Trump a second presidential term will be bad for the country and dangerous for democracy — and this Editorial Board is firmly among them — there is plenty of blame to go around.
There was President Joe Biden’s selfish insistence for too long on pursuing a reelection campaign that no one wanted. There were the leading Democrats who decided to summarily tap Vice President Kamala Harris with zero intraparty discussion, let alone the kind of mini-primary that might have given the ticket more legitimacy. There was Harris’ apparent belief that she could glide to the presidency solely on the dark winds of Trump’s manifest unfitness for office, without giving Americans something to vote for.
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But what Trump’s opponents should not blame for Tuesday’s results is some primal MAGA backlash of xenophobia and misogyny. Not only is that trope worse than counterproductive at this point, but the inexorable math indicates these are some of the same frustrated voters who elected Barack Obama. Simply put, it just isn’t that simple.
What now?
For those reeling from Trump’s victory and understandably fearful for the nation’s future, here are some suggestions going forward:
Trump won. Accept it. In 2016, he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million ballots en route to an Electoral College victory that was unexpected even by () Trump himself.
Tuesday’s results came with no such asterisk. America knew this time, far better than last time, exactly who Trump is — and the voters returned him to power with clear margins in both the popular and electoral votes.
Acceptance of that fact isn’t capitulation to Trump’s constant attacks against the norms of democracy; it is, in fact, a defense of those norms.
Harris’ graceful concession to Trump, along with Biden’s post-election invitation to him to visit the White House, marked a return to those norms. This after Trump himself refused (and refuses to this day) to acknowledge his 2020 defeat or participate in any way in the peaceful transition of power back then. Reminding the nation what true respect for America’s electoral process looks like is the first step to restoring something like normalcy to that process.
Heed the voters’ message. To those who ask how America could elect a lying, undisciplined, name-calling bully who admires autocrats and threatens the Constitution, we would turn the question: How, exactly, did Democrats manage to lose to such a character?
Among the answers is the Democratic Party’s embrace in recent years of far-left ideologues who tend to focus on culture-war distractions and ideas that sound like satire (remember “defund the police”?).
Policy-wise, Democrats remain the party of working people, health care, reproductive rights and other priorities that most Americans share. But that’s easy to forget when the party’s loudest voices are fixated on pronouns and other cultural minutia while seemingly ignoring everyday concerns like crime and inflation.
With Republicans now fully committed to descend even further down the MAGA rabbit hole, Democrats have more reason than ever to reject the radicalism in their own ranks and move toward the center, where most Americans dwell.
Prepare for the midterms. The 2026 congressional elections provide the next opportunity for the nation to put up some guardrails against an incoming president who will be dangerously free of them within his new administration.
Trump’s supporters stand ready to convert his various pathologies into policy with Project 2025. That governing blueprint includes truly dystopian notions like using the military against Americans on domestic soil, turning the FBI into the president’s personal police force and politicizing thousands of federal civil-service jobs. All of which would serve Trump’s personal fixation with vengeance against his perceived enemies.
Americans (even, we’d bargain, most pro-Trump Americans) don’t want their government transformed into a banana-republic-style spoils system in which the leader is above the law. Congress can gird Trump on that front, but only if Democrats control Congress.
Based on Tuesday’s results, Republicans will hold the Senate for the next two years; the House outcome is still unclear. But if Trump 2.0 proves as dark and chaotic as his rhetoric indicates, it may well create an opening for a Democratic takeover of both chambers next time — though only if (again) the party moves away from its leftist cliff.
ʰdzٱpeacefully. Trump’s second administration, like his first, will undoubtedly provide plenty of motivation for Americans to take to the streets. They should. But allowing demonstrations to descend into violence, as they too often did during Trump’s first term, will only help this convicted felon paint Democrats as the real criminals. Peaceful protest, in addition to being the right thing to do, is the right strategy.
None of this is to dismiss the genuine anguish many feel at America’s election of a man who aims dehumanizing rhetoric at entire swaths of his fellow Americans — a man whose threats to political norms, the rule of law, the free press and democracy itself are real.
But the resistance against this assailant of democracy’s norms will only be legitimate to the extent that it works within those norms. That, in the end, is the most effective resistance of all.
