Before We All Go Off the Deep End

Nov. 10, 2024

Both sides are taking it to the extreme in their reactions to Tuesday’s election.

President-elect Trump interprets the result as a mandate.  Actually as “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” One can see where he might get that idea, given the large margin of his victory and likely GOP control of both houses of Congress.

On the other side, the sky is falling. Peter Baker of The New York Times writes, without conceding even the slightest exaggeration, that “Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.”

What ties these views together is the belief that this is a watershed moment, that we are embarking on a new era and there’s no going back. There’s little doubt the next four years will be tumultuous. Unfortunately, all the apocalyptic talk only adds fuel to the fire. Extreme views repeated over and over have a way of becoming self-fulfilling.

As always, however, we should approach such unbridled assessments with considerable caution. There are two ways to construe Tuesday’s result:

 The one supposed above suggests we’re witnessing a long-term structural change. Trump is deemed to have created a movement that extends well beyond his MAGA base, for instance among Latino voters, who have re-aligned behind him and his successors for the long haul.

 The other perspective is much more short-term in nature. In this view, Trump’s new-found support could be here today, gone tomorrow. That’s what happens in a democracy.  Whenever blocs of voters are unhappy with the state of the country, they shift their weight in the other direction. As a result, the political pendulum swings back and forth on a regular basis.

The sitting president takes the blame, fairly or unfairly, for anything that goes wrong on his watch. Voters unhappy with their lot in life (think pandemic) rejected Trump in 2020. In similar fashion, voters unhappy with their lot (think inflation) rejected Joe Biden, and by extension Kamala Harris, in 2024.

This is not anything new. Since 1988, neither party has occupied the Oval Office for more than two consecutive terms. And on top of that, control of Congress has slipped from one party to the other in sometimes disastrous midterm elections.

Our system of democracy is self-correcting. The extensive polling done by Our Common Purpose over the past few years shows as much as anything that the voting public wants balance between too much of this and too much of that. The system has a sixth sense that the country is drifting too far in one direction or another, and it tries to fix that by reversing course in the next election.

So which was it on Tuesday? Is the new support for Trump permanent or provisional? No question, Trumpism is a phenomenon.  But then so was Barack Obama in 2008.

Here’s a humble prediction. Caught up in the aura of a mandate, the Trump administration will overreach. It will ram through too much of one thing or another, with damaging consequences. Voters will react accordingly.

Assuming Democrats can get their act together between now and then, our system will again self-correct by electing a Democrat to the White House in 2028. The victor’s substantial majority will be deemed a mandate, and excited observers will proclaim the dawning of a new era. All that will soon prove overstated. In truth, it will be just another case of the system trying to re-balance the country.

These wild and frequent swings back and forth wouldn’t occur, wouldn’t be necessary, if someone were to put a premium on establishing and maintaining balance in the first place.

— Richard Gilman