True Left

Mainstream journalists are finally starting to get it:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/democrats-look-trump-voters-wonder-000638494.html

The Trump victory in 2016 was blurry, and therefore relatively easy for people to distance themselves from larger meaning. Hillary Clinton, the logic went, had singular vulnerabilities. There was Russian interference. Lots of Trump voters likely didn’t think he was going to win but were eager to use their votes to send a message of protest to the establishment of both parties. Plenty of people regarded his persona as a flamboyant put-on, and assumed he would embrace moderation and restraint in the event he was invested with real responsibility.

The 2020 results remain blurry but the central question on the table in this election was vividly clear. Is Trump’s norm-shattering governing style OK with you? Former president Barack Obama framed it sharply in at the summer convention: “That’s what’s at stake right now—our democracy.”

Here is an uncomfortable reality for Obama and anyone who agreed with his words. Trump is on track to grow his popular vote total by millions of people, not one of whom could have been under any illusions about what they were voting for. Unlike 2016, there is no way to dismiss this as a flukish accident of democracy, or an illegitimate manipulation of democracy. His support was a robust expression of democracy.

We have been saying this from the beginning. It is obvious that Trump could never have become head of state if he had been born in China. What made it possible for him to become head of state in the US?