For those of us who witnessed President George W. Bush’s victory over Vice President Al Gore in November of 2000, the disputes that played out following the contested results in Florida were very divisive. Worse yet, the slim margin that put Bush in the White House provoked Democrats to see his victory as illegitimate. From the first moments of his presidency, his former opponents castigated him, making fun of his rhetoric, and belittling his intellect. All of it was an expression of bitterness. His critics seemed intent on undermining his close victory, one that had to be sustained by a controversial—but correct—Supreme Court opinion. It would take a terrorist attack on 9-11 before the nation as a whole would rally behind Bush. That was an unfortunate delay.
The right way for a constitutional people to respond to an election is to affirm the result. The winners will clearly be joyful. The losers not so much. But all of us should be willing to acknowledge once the votes are in to move on to govern justly or dress our political wounds as the case may be. Fortunately, that was the case in the election of 2004 when Bush won reelection and in 2008 when Barrack Obama was elected as America’s first Black president and reelected in 2012. To be sure there were many people dubious about the unambiguous results of those elections. But there was a modicum of acceptance and both parties focused on improving their appeal to the American voting public.
Nonetheless, political discontent persisted as both sides of the political divide fought to preserve or regain ascendancy. It was often hard fought, with Congress changing hands to rebalance power in Washington as voters thought that necessary. The democratic process that our constitutional republic envisions worked from 2000 to 2016, even as the presidency changed hands between Republicans and Democrats.
In 2016 that would change with the election of the 45th President, Donald J. Trump. The bitterness of his opponents then was profound and unforgiving. Those who supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were devastated that an upstart billionaire they considered unworthy of election soundly defeated their candidate. They mocked Trump from the first moments of his election, declaring in the days that followed that he should be impeached. Protesters went into the streets in a coordinated expression of teenaged petulance to howl toward the sky to the gods of secularism over Trump’s election. At his inauguration, protests were visible and noisy. Democrat members of Congress refused to attend his swearing in. And the media and political forces in Washington would falsely claim that Trump and Russia had conspired to win the election. That utter lie persisted throughout his four-year term and resulted in a flimsy impeachment that he used his office to solicit dirt on his political opponents. He was correctly acquitted.
Even after Trump left office, he was hounded by his opponents for the riots that took place at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when angry supporters disrupted the counting of electoral votes. Democrats would impeach him again, even after he left office. Unsurprisingly, there was no conviction.
Then he signaled his intent to seek reelection in 2024. His political enemies responded by renewing the charges of their failed impeachment in federal court and further pursued him over his retention of presidential papers in 2021 when he left office. So too he would be harassed in state courts for alleged election interference, past business practices, and personal entanglements. His true offense in all of these was that he won in 2016 and upset the fondest hopes of the far-left and threatened to do so again in 2024. On 5 November, he did so, winning in a landslide.
Donald Trump’s victory this week was fueled by Democrat bitterness, revenge, and abuse of judicial procedure. It was as if the Democrats embarked in 2020 on a strategy to reelect Trump in 2024 as opposed to blocking his path to the White House. The Biden/Harris Administration improved Trump’s reelection prospects through the odious policies that exacerbated inflation, illegal immigration, government overreach, national debt, and a feckless foreign policy. On election night 2024, 70 percent of voters thought the nation was on the wrong track. Yet Trump spoke to them in ways that made sense where his opponent did not. Consequently, he assembled a new Republican populist majority of all races, creeds, and generations to secure an impressive victory.
Despite the malevolence of his detractors, many of whom are now seething with hatred, he triumphed over them. And the lesson? In 2000 Democrat unhappiness resulted is introspection. In 2016, it was bitterness. In 2020 it was revenge. In 2024 Democrats should not seethe but be introspective, even as President Trump governs with a newly formed majority of joyful Americans.
0 Comments