To repeat (one last time): For Democrats, and for anyone else who hoped to keep Trump out of the White House, November 5 was a crushing blow — both in terms of what it portends for the future of the Democratic Party and more generally for democracy itself. As the BBC wrote:

“Donald Trump swept to victory by chipping away at groups of voters which Democrats once believed would help them win the White House for a generation…’Demography,’ these left-wing optimists liked to say, ‘is destiny.’ Sixteen years later, however, that destiny appears to have turned to dust.”

The resistance takes shape…

Now, it’s time to move beyond lamenting the past — and toward preparing for the dangers that lie ahead. Unfortunately, Democrats are far from certain as to how best to proceed. As CNN wrote:

“In CNN’s conversations with two dozen top Democratic operatives and elected officials since Election Day, the fear isn’t just that no one knows the answer to what’s next – it’s that they don’t even know what the question is at this point.”

On a more optimistic note, there is an emerging Democratic consensus, as described in The New York Times, on what an “Anti-Trump Battle Plan” will look like.

And, as noted in USA Today: “The Donald Trump resistance is ready for when Democrats are done grieving.” Exactly what form Trump resistance will take remains a work in progress. One thing is clear: the old rules for opposing Trump and MAGA will not apply. This is not 2017. Trump 2.0 will be far worse and much more difficult — and risky — to navigate successfully.

…and so does the capitulation

That’s why one of the most troubling signs, as we begin the fight against the Trump agenda, is that people and institutions who actively fought against Trump in 2017 are now deciding to capitulate instead. Nowhere is this more evident than in the media.

Ominous warning shots appeared in the days before the election, when the publishers of The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post blocked intended endorsements for Kamala Harris — just before they were about to be printed. This was generally viewed as a shameful move to avoid a Trump retaliation, should he win. *

In the wake of the election, capitulations have begun to accelerate. Almost immediately, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (of MSNBC’s Morning Joe) “went to Mar-a-Lago for a fence-mending meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.” It was widely panned as a sell out. Even staff within MSNBC viewed it as “a troubling early sign of capitulation to Trump. ‘Normalizing Trump is a bad idea,’ wrote Katie Phang.” **

A few days later, Comcast announced plans to “spin off its NBCUniversal cable TV networks, including MSNBC” within the next year. There is speculation that this could lead to the end of MSNBC altogether. Even worse: guess who half-joked that they might purchase the network? Elon Musk! [By the way, the ongoing right-wing takeover of mainstream media is very far from a joke. It’s happening.]

Of course, fears of retributions after Trump takes office are not unwarranted — as he has vowed revenge on his enemies, especially the media, on numerous occasions.

More generally, as The Guardian wrote a few days before the election:

“A lot has changed since 2016 – including the increasingly conservative bent of the US supreme court after three Trump appointees. If Trump is elected in November, the laws that protect news organizations might crumble or be weakened.” “Donald Trump poses a clear threat to journalists, to news organizations and to press freedom in the US and around the world.”

The Brookings Institute similarly asked:

“Donald Trump has threatened to shut down broadcasters, but can he?”

The answer: Possibly, yes. “A president of the United States already has powers beyond coercing the FCC. These powers could be exercised not only against broadcasters, but also against those who operate the internet.”

So some prudence is justified. The question is how much and in what way. What we are now seeing is too much and in the wrong way. ***

Not surprisingly, capitulation extends beyond the media. Eight years ago, Democratic governors were more than willing to do battle with Trump. Now, not so much. As Politico wrote:

“Dems’ new Trump resistance strategy is ‘Playing nice.’ As Democratic governors game out how to deal with a second Trump administration, one thing is clear: It’s not 2016 anymore. Governors face a more politically sophisticated version of Donald Trump, and are calculating that they need to choose their battles more carefully — and find ways to cooperate — after their anti-Trump strategy led to a nationwide shellacking.”

In the months ahead, I expect the list of left-wing capitulators to continue to grow.

In other words, if you are someone who remains determined to fight the Trump agenda, you may find yourself increasingly isolated as the people and organizations you’ve counted on as allies succumb to the fear of and pressure from the Trump White House.

In case you are still unclear as to what this all means: This is the beginning of how democracies end.

A starting point

Yes, it can be disheartening to watch these capitulations and realize that a huge swath of this country not only seems unconcerned about Trump’s promised retributions…they are positively enthusiastic at the prospect. But let’s not forget that, while Trump won the election, more than half of the country (75 million people!) did not vote for Trump (with the latest count, Trump’s vote total is now less than 50%!). There are a whole lot of people out there who are on our side — who oppose Trump and understand the danger he represents. This is a starting point to counter any sense of isolation and to instead join the resistance.

_____________________

* Update December 5: The situation at The Los Angele Times is far worse than I realized at the time this column was first posted. Harry Litman lays it all out here, making it clear that he “doesn’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons.”

** Update December 6: The situation on Morning Joe has gotten worse since this column was first posted. David Frum describes how he was “excused” from the show (and will likely never appear on MSNBC again) for a rather mild critical comment he made about Pete Hegseth and Fox News. Shortly afterward, co-host Mika Brzezinski read an apology for his remarks. Frum continues: “It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.”

More generally, Marc Elias has echoed the sentiments expressed here, writing: “”What has surprised me, depressed me and ultimately angered me are the voices that have gone silent. So many who were so loud in warning about the dangers of Trump now speak only in whispers if at all. The critics who were bold and brash when they thought Harris would win are now tamed and seeking accommodation. Media figures who claimed to be the bastion of protection for our democracy now make pilgrimages to temper Trump’s anger.”

*** Update December 16: Yet another bowling pin falls. This time ABC News capitulates…making a $15 million settlement in a court case that Trump brought against the network and where ABC would have likely prevailed. It involves statements made by George Stephanopoulos  during an interview with Senator Nancy Mace — regarding a court’s finding in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit that “Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of rape by a jury.” Trump claimed he was defamed. It’s a win for Trump that he does not deserve…and allows him to avoid what would have been an embarrassing deposition. If Trump were not President-elect, the settlement would almost certainly never have happened. To read all the gory details, check out this column by Harry Litman.

Even as Election Day recedes in the rear view mirror, I continue to survey the wreckage.

There is not just one reason Kamala Harris lost the election. But some things mattered more than others. Much more.

In particular, Kamala Harris — and the Democrats in general — did not lose the election because of mistakes her campaign made (too conservative or too progressive; I’ve heard both). And it was not because of inflation, illegal immigrants, racism, misogyny, Gaza, elitism, identity politics or any of the other usual suspects. I am sure some of them contributed to her loss. But they were not determinative causes.

In fact, all of those potential causes are largely irrelevant. They should not have mattered — because Trump should never have had even the slightest chance of winning in the first place. In a sane world, he would have never even gotten the nomination. 

Harris lost because of the huge numbers of people who were willing to overlook Trump’s obviously disqualifying attributes — and vote for him anyway. People decided they were okay with voting for a convicted criminal, a rapist, a fraud, a con man, an inveterate liar — and someone guilty of attempting to overthrow an election leading to a violent insurrection — and all the rest (as I’ve detailed in previous columns, starting with this one). Under any other circumstances in American history, Trump’s baggage would have been way more than enough to end his political career — in an instant. Period. But not this time. This time he had the full backing of the GOP and went on to win the Presidency. The key question then becomes WHY? Why were so many voters willing to give Trump a pass he did not deserve?

Back in July, many people said they couldn’t support Biden, even though they voted for him four years ago and generally liked him, because of his obvious and serious mental decline. Ultimately, that’s what led to his withdrawal. Trump should have faced a similar reckoning — in spades — due to his moral, ethical and legal failings. Even people who supported him at one point should have said the bar is now too high for them to get over it. But they didn’t. Again, the question is WHY?

One key answer, as detailed in a The New Republic article, is the dominance of right-wing media:

“Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country.”

“I think a lot of people who don’t watch Fox or listen to Sinclair radio don’t understand this crucial chicken-and-egg point. They assume that Trump says something and the right-wing media amplify it. That happens sometimes. But more often, it’s the other way around. These memes start in the media sphere, then they become part of the Trump agenda.”

“To much of America, by the way, this is not understood as one side’s view of things. It’s simply ‘the news.’ This is what people—white people, chiefly—watch in about two-thirds of the country.”

On Fox News and other right-wing outlets, viewers never heard about the extent of or legitimate basis for Trump’s legal problems. When told, for example, that Trump had been held liable for sexual assault, a common reaction among his supporters was to express disbelief: “That can’t be true.” At best, viewers were told a lie: that Trump’s legal problems were all the result of Democratic “lawfare” — the Biden administration and a weaponized Justice Department targeting Trump. Trump was portrayed as the victim rather than the culprit. When that is the only story you hear on the “news” — not just from partisan ads, but from what you likely view as unbiased reporting — you not surprisingly come to believe it. So you wind up giving Trump a pass.

[A related effort was a $45 million disinformation ad campaign created by political advisers to Tesla founder Elon Musk, designed to suppress votes for Harris. Once again, to the extent this was successful (and it seemed to be, as the Democratic vote was down several million from what it was in 2020), the success was based on falsehoods that came to be believed.]

Here’s one other recent example: As reported by NPR, the right-wing media successfully convinced millions of Americans that FEMA (and thus indirectly Harris and Biden) was failing in their effort to help victims of Hurricane Helene. It was all a lie. But it worked.

“Rumors, misinformation and lies about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene in the southeastern United States have run rampant since the storm made landfall, especially around funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The claims have become so widespread that FEMA set up a response page to debunk many falsehoods around how disaster funding works and what the agency’s response has been.”

So how do we break the stranglehold right-wing media have on the news and the people who consume it? How do we stop the massive spread of lies? I honestly don’t know; but people are working on it. If we can’t come up with an answer, Democrats’ efforts to regain power is likely doomed to fail — no matter what else they do. Many Democrats are hoping to capitalize on an expected backlash to Trump’s policies — as the policies inevitably fail to produce the promised results. Maybe that will happen. But it seems more likely that a backlash, if one even occurs, will not lead to defections from Trump supporters. Instead, Fox News and related media will claim that any troubling news is all due to Democrats and their efforts to block what Trump is trying to do. Or something like that. It will be a lie. But people will believe it. Because the right-wing media control the narrative in politics today. And MAGA will succeed in the midterms — just as they did this past election. And this will continue to repeat — unless and until we find a counter to the right-wing media dominance. I am not holding my breath.

Update: November 21: It turns out that that giving a pass to Trump’s past behavior may be the lesser of two mistakes voters made this election. The greater error was underestimating — or outright dismissing — the future harm he is now posed to wreak. It’s already begun — with Trump’s cabinet nominations. And the consequences, as outlined by Timothy Snyder (author of On Tyranny), are likely to be devastating. Here’s a quote:

“Taken together, Trump’s candidates {for cabinet positions etc.} constitute an attempt to wreck the American government…It is a mistake to think of these people as flawed.  It is not they will do a bad job in their assigned posts.  It is that they will do a good job using those assigned posts to destroy our country…And citizens, regardless of how they voted, need now to check their attitudes.  This is no longer a post-electoral moment.  It is a pre-catastrophic moment.”

Donald Trump has been re-elected to be President of the United States. I find it hard to even type those words. But this was no fluke. Nor was it the consequence of the quirks of the Electoral College. He won every swing state and a majority of the popular vote. It was a clear-cut and unambiguous loss for our side. And one that I fear will have dire consequences for the future of this country.

But enough. I already went through all of this in my prior post: Shattered.

This time, I am penning a memo mainly to myself — suggesting ways I might have thought about things differently, perhaps done things differently and hopefully learn something — so that I can do better going forward.

Truth is not necessarily persuasive

If you’re a Trump supporter, the first thing you might say I should learn is to have some humility. Our side lost. Big time. Accept it.

Agreed. I do accept it. It is humbling…and shocking.

Trump smeared Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals — and now threatens mass deportations. And yet he captured nearly a majority of the Latino vote. Trump hosted dinners with known white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers. And yet he drew significant support from Jews. Trump has repeatedly attacked unions and said striking workers should be fired — and unions could hardly have had a more supportive President than Biden. And yet much of the union rank and file voted for Trump. And on and on — in nearly every demographic.

And, of course, Trump was the perpetrator of an insurrection against our own government. He stands justly accused of (and convicted of) numerous crimes. And yet…he won.

For all this to have happened, something has clearly gone very very wrong.

Throughout this election, there was a voice inside me that kept saying: “Trust the American people. There’s no way that they will return someone as terrible as Trump to the White House.”

That voice was wrong.

Frank Bruni similarly put it: We were confident that “Americans — at least the ones whose minds weren’t firmly made up — would surely abandon Trump now. There was a limit to the cruelness and craziness they’d abide.”

It turns out there was no limit.

This is the thing that keeps punching me in the gut. Yes, the economy was uppermost on many voters’ minds. But shouldn’t saving the country from an autocratic take-over trump (pun intended) the economy?

Trump voters did not agree. “If you actually sit down and talk with many Trump voters, you’ll hear some version of this: ‘Look, I didn’t like Jan. 6 — and I don’t want it to happen again — but it didn’t affect my life nearly as much as the price of eggs, milk and gas.’”

In the end, “persuadable” voters were never sufficiently persuaded that Trump was the existential threat we claimed he was. In some sense, they didn’t believe Trump would do what he said he would do. So they either voted for Trump or they didn’t vote at all.

I don’t think there is a single explanation for this. But one explanation is that just because something is true doesn’t mean you can convince people that it’s true — especially if people have a vested interest in believing otherwise.

Back in the mid-20th century, when the dangers of smoking were first becoming clearly evident, anti-smoking PSAs began appearing on television. Many of them attempted to scare people into not smoking — using graphic depictions of the consequences of getting lung cancer. It turned out the ads were a complete failure. Why? The ads were too scary, too anxiety-provoking; smokers refused to watch them or simply rejected the truth of what the ads were saying.

The strategy was a mistake. But it did not alter the basic fact: Cigarette smoking was dangerous. Just because smokers refused to believe it, didn’t mean they wouldn’t get lung cancer.

I believe the same is true for Trump. He remains a “clear and present danger” — even if a majority of the country finds reason to minimize the danger.

So, what, if anything, could I/we have done that might have been more convincing? I’m not certain. Perhaps nothing. Or perhaps (even though it pains me to say it) we should have talked about “democracy issues” in a way that was less “scary” — as they eventually did with cigarettes. Maybe. But that doesn’t imply that discussion of these issues should have been avoided altogether — as some have claimed. That’s a bridge too far for me.

Regardless, in the end, I placed too much faith in the belief that enough people would ultimately vote for Harris because they would vote against Trump.

The truth is definitely not “out there”

A related reason our arguments were not persuasive enough is that persuadable voters too often never got to hear them. They were too insulated in their TikTok or Fox News bubbles.

An avalanche of disinformation and outright lies — plus the sane-washing and normalizing of Trump by mainstream media — led to an environment where truth got lost in the rubble. Legitimate concerns about Trump were too easily discounted as partisan hyperbole and hysteria.

Added to that, as Frank Bruni points out: “Those of us who get hourly updates, have nightly freak-outs and can hold forth on Trump and the shark, Trump and Hannibal Lecter, Trump and windmills aren’t normal, but we’re arrogant: We assume our experience is everyone’s and our knowledge ambient.” In other words, most people were completely oblivious to the news items that consumed our days; so there was no chance of any sort of persuasion.

And so you wind up in an incredible world where, as you probably know, nearly two-thirds of Republicans — even now — believe the 2020 election was stolen. “Fact-checking” does nothing to move the needle. That’s why Trump can lie about immigrants who eat pets and not lose any support. Attempts to “censor” disinformation are not going to work either; the First Amendment will rightly prohibit most of it.

OK, I didn’t exactly learn any of this as a result of the election. I already knew it. And I still have next to no idea how to effectively combat it. But what I did relearn…or at least confirm…is how devastatingly effective these lies continue to be. I can laugh at how ridiculous they are; but many voters taken them very seriously. And so I should too.

Don’t ignore the warning signs

Up until the very last minute, I/we remained “cautiously optimistic” that we would win. How could this be? Easy. I believed the hype coming from within my own bubble. I didn’t take the signs (and there were many) that pointed to a Trump victory seriously enough. Certainly they would not be determinative — or so I thought. And I overestimated the effect of the good things that Harris was doing. I need to be less myopic next time.

Stop shedding constituencies

In the wake of the 1960’s Civil Rights movement, the Democrats lost almost the entire South. From the Reagan Democrats in the 1980’s to the Latino and Arab votes in 2024, we seem to be losing more constituencies over time than we are gaining. We can’t keep doing this — and expect to win. It’s simple arithmetic.

Democrats claim we represent the majority. We believe Republicans only succeed by manipulating the system, via gerrymandering and the electoral college and such, which allows their minority to retain power. We believe our numbers will continue to grow over time — as the demographics shift to a minority majority — and we will wrest control from the GOP once and for all. Perhaps it will play out that way eventually. But it certainly didn’t work out this way in last week’s election.

That’s why, going forward, I want to make a greater effort to reconnect with and repair our relationship with the groups that have left us — starting with the white non-college-educated working class. I’m not saying that no effort has been made to do this; but the efforts were clearly not successful in this election. Certainly, I should not condescendingly dismiss these voters as too ignorant to realize they are being duped. As much as possible, I’d like them as an ally — not an enemy. We need their votes.

The ground game is less effective than we would like to think

At the Presidential/national level, when it came to our “ground game” (canvassing, phone-banking and such), nothing we did this year made a discernible difference. By that I mean, Kamala Harris did not get a single electoral vote that she would not have gotten had we stayed home and binge-watched reruns of The West Wing instead of making phone calls and knocking on doors.

Of course, one side is always going to lose — no matter how much of an effort they make. And one can try to make the case that our work made a difference even if it wasn’t sufficient to alter the outcome. I remain skeptical.

Yes, it’s true that there are vast numbers of people who did not vote. If we could find a way to significantly mobilize those non-voters who agree with us — and our opponents did not do the same, at least not as effectively — we could potentially make a difference. But there is little to suggest that we were doing that. In fact, in this election, everything I read suggested that our ground game was far superior to that of the GOP. And still we lost.

There was probably a time, decades ago, when grass roots efforts had much more influence than they do now. But in the age of the Internet, social media, mobile phones, targeted ads, Fox News and disinformation, that time has largely passed.

This is not to say that there is nothing we can do to advance our cause. There are. Especially at the state and local levels. As well as by influencing Congress. But, if we want to affect the outcome of a Presidential election, I believe we are best off shifting away from traditional ground game actions. [I know there are good people who disagree with me here; I am open to talking about it.] 

Give up waiting for the backlash

There are those who believe that, after Trump and the GOP screw things up, as they will inevitably do, the electorate will throw them out. Voters will see how Trump failed to deliver on his promises: prices will not come down, tax cuts will benefit only the wealthy, the immigration problem will not be fixed and tariffs will be an economic disaster. And Trump’s autocratic goals will become too evident to ignore. The voters will have buyers’ remorse; they will dump Trump and MAGA.

Unfortunately, I consider this to be magical thinking.

I know I am repeating myself a bit by now. But it bears repeating. Over and over again, I/we have kept waiting for Trump’s day of reckoning. From the Access Hollywood tape to January 6 to the criminal conviction in New York to the Madison Square Garden rally, there was always something (or collection of things) that we assumed would make Trump so toxic that all but his most loyal supporters would abandon him.

It hasn’t happened yet. It may never happen.

Trump won in 2016, almost won (except for the pandemic) in 2020 and won again “more bigly” in 2024. The country wants what Trump is selling even when it seems to us like they shouldn’t. Trump’s America is who we are right now. It’s not going to change just because Trump messes things up. If that’s all it took, Trump would have been forced off the stage several acts ago. Trump supporters will find a way to make peace with whatever negative news emerges — and still maintain their support for him.

Trump will be as bad as he said he will be; probably worse

Some pundits are already hedging their bets: “Don’t worry…Trump won’t be as bad as you thought. He will turn out to be a lot more normal than you feared. He won’t try to do all those terrible things he promised. We survived Trump last time without serious consequences; we’ll do it again. Democracy is not in any real danger.”

I call bullshit. Trump will be exactly as bad as we feared. Probably worse.

As these headlines show, the hurricane winds are already forming — and it’s barely been a week since Election Day:

• House Fast Tracks Bill That Would Give Trump Power to Target Nonprofits
• Trump Tells GOP to Bypass Senate Confirmation Process, Block Biden Judicial Appointments
• Matt Gaetz as AG is laughable if it weren’t so horrific and dangerous
• Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk

I would caution against expecting too much success in efforts to block Trump from carrying out his agenda. With the GOP having achieved the trifecta of the White House and both houses of Congress — plus already having control of the Supreme Court — they will have a clear path to accomplish almost anything they set out to do. They won’t succeed in everything. And there may be a few things we can stop — or at least slow down. But that is cold comfort.

From making MAGA judicial appointments, to dismantling the education department, to radicalization of health services, to weaponization of the justice department — Trump is poised to take a wrecking ball to the structure of our government. And he is much better prepared than he was 8 years ago. What makes it especially egregious is that, even if democracy somehow survives and Democrats retake control of everything in 2028, so much long-term damage will have been done that it will take decades to recover from it. There is no sugar-coating this; we are in for a very bad time.

It remains tragic to me that what lies ahead could so easily have been averted if Trump had lost. What a better world we would be living today if November 5 had produced a different outcome. But it didn’t. And now we have to pay the price.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all of this — and slide down into a pit of despair. Frankly, I am quite near that point. Especially because, given my age, I likely won’t be around long enough to see any big turn-around.

But I am determined not be overwhelmed. And I am heartened that I am far from alone here. Change will come eventually. Just not anytime soon. In the meantime, we need to hold on to any life raft we can find — and do whatever we can to work our way to shore.