What Donald Trump’s Win Means

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Three groups of people love a head-first deep dive into statistics: insurance actuaries, baseball fanatics and political junkies. These subsets of the population literally can’t get enough of numbers that put most of us to sleep.

Following Donald Trump‘s stunning electoral win – and surprise popular vote victory – last Tuesday over Kamala Harris, political junkies are enjoying Christmas seven weeks early. Sifting through the stats is turning up revealing details rocking the foundation of the current political paradigm. A case can be made that Trump’s victory on November 5, 2024 may be the most consequential election since Ronald Reagan’s romp to victory on November 4, 1980.

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Trump shook up voting patterns in ways that hadn’t been seen in decades:

• Nearly one in three voters of color went for Trump
• Black men voted Republican by the biggest margin seen since 1960
• Hispanics voted for Trump by double digits over 2020
• Trump’s support among the 18-29 crowd was up +10 percent
• Trump came within 5 percent of Harris in New Jersey and almost 10 percent in New York
• Blue-collar and other working-class voters, long the bedrock of the Democratic base, deserted Harris in droves

If the gains realized by Trump can be sustained – and his new MAGA constituency expanded – it could reshape the GOP’s long-term outlook for decades.

How did the former/future president manage to pull it off? Simple: By appealing to the bottom line, which knows no color. Blacks and Hispanics felt marginalized in the present economy – and are especially hurting from the inflation that unleashed by the Democrat spending spree of the last four years.

“I had it better under Trump,” was a refrain repeatedly expressed to exit pollsters.

Student loan forgiveness, endless shrill (and untrue) claims that Trump would ban abortion, an unfathomable obsession with transgenderism, incessant warmongering, the coddling of militantly anti-Israel Gen Xers, and the favorite bugaboo of all – “our democracy is in danger”- all fell flat beyond the Democratic base.

Democrats referred to Trump as “literally Hitler” – but all it did was expose their desperation.

What independent swing voters saw instead was a true uniter – as opposed to what they saw in Harris, a candidate representing a party more devoted to appeasing its radical progressive wing than addressing the needs of everyday Americans.

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RELATED | TRUMP CHOOSES FIRST-EVER FEMALE CHIEF OF STAFF

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It’s easy to dismiss all that by saying, “Harris was a flawed candidate.” And she was. But what Democrats are unwilling to accept is that Harris was merely the personification of their party’s bigger troubles. Replacing her with a still-to-be-named new face of the Democratic Party (just as they replaced their former standard-bearer to make way for her) won’t address the underlying disconnect revealed at the ballot box last Tuesday.

But before Democrats can find a new way forward, they must get beyond the Blame Game that’s now raging with the fury of a category five hurricane as the party’s power players try to distance themselves from the disaster.

It’s CYA in overdrive.

Consider former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who’s offering the most disingenuous excuse of all. Rewind just a few months ago, when she was the driving force behind the soft coup that forced president Joe Biden to drop his reelection bid. Consider what she said on July 22 when she endorsed the vice president almost immediately upon her entering the race: “Politically, make no mistake: Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute – and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”

But that was then. This is Pelosi now: “Had the president [Biden] gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race… Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward… And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”

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Translation: “It’s all Joe’s fault,” which is a common thread, as he’s shaping up to be the fall guy for the election debacle.

Then there’s the circular firing squad underway among the Harris-Walz campaign’s big brass. The campaign had assembled a Democratic ‘dream team’ of sorts with Obama brain-truster David Plouffe, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, and communications guru Stephanie Cutter calling the shots. With such an assemblage of political talent – buttressed by $2 billion in cold hard cash – how do you manage to lose all seven swing states?

These campaign honchos – who thought they’d be jockeying for position in “Obama’s fourth term” – are now playing the blame game. Plouffe posted on social media it was all Biden’s fault – then quickly deleted his X account. Other Harris acolytes told CNN that Plouffe, O’Malley Dillon and Cutter so ruthlessly hoarded power within the campaign they essentially suffocated Harris’ voice and didn’t allow her to be her own true self.

Which brings us to our final point. Four fateful decisions were made during the 2024 race. Some were made by Harris and her campaign; others predated her ascension as the nominee. Either way, all were made by Democrats. Here they are, in ascending order:

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4) CHOOSING TIM WALZ

The decision said all you need to know about Kamala Harris’ leadership ability, or lack thereof. As one veteran observer put it, “passing over Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro for Minnesota governor Tim Walz was political malpractice.” Walz was expected to shore up Democrats’ critical Blue Wall in the upper Midwest. Instead, Trump broke through it – carrying Pennsylvania to boot – and left Walz with a dismal four percent win on his own home turf.

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 3) HARRIS’ ANOINTING

In fairness, the Democratic Elites didn’t have much choice on this one. Their backs were up against the wall last July. Once they could no longer deny that the emperor had no clothes after the Biden-Trump debate, Biden squandered a precious month angrily resisting calls for him to drop out. When it finally happened, the nominating convention was just weeks away. Passing over Harris would have unleashed a firestorm of protest from progressives, blacks, and feminists – so they were forced to play the only card they had. Still, they bet the house on a lousy candidate. And they lost. Bigly.

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2) BIDEN’S DEBATE

Whatever top Democrats advocated for it, they should be prevented from working in professional politics ever again. It’s widely suspected first lady Jill Biden and presidential son Hunter Biden were driving the “Let Joe debate” train in a desperate bid to cling to power. In retrospect, they should have listened to those who counseled against it. Biden’s appalling performance in Atlanta opened the floodgates, and from there on Democrats were powerless to stop events…

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1) WEAPONIZING JUSTICE 

Trump was by no means a sure thing to win the GOP nomination when Democrats decided to unleash a flood of criminal charges against him at both the state and federal levels. Rather than taking him out – or turning Republicans against him – the MAGA base was galvanized. Trump’s numbers after the indictments went through the roof, and his GOP challengers were left fighting for relevance. The 2024 GOP primary could have been a bruising, divisive slog for Trump – potentially weakening him irreparably ahead of the general election. Democrats’ overreach turned it into a Trump coronation.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

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