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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Even anti-Donald Trump graffiti on the streets of West Hollywood is now scarce and half-hearted. Eight years ago, California was a “resistance” state. It’s a different mood that confronts a viewer in 2025: resignation, boredom with the subject, an us-it-is-coming attitude among thoughtful Democrats and, at times, something close to curiosity about America’s economic prospects under an out-of-control president.
A great liberal shake is going on. It’s been happening around the world since Trump won his victory in November, and it’s normal. You can’t be angry all the time. In the autocracies of 20th-century Europe, dissenters often had what was known as “internal migration”. That is, instead of fleeing or fighting, they retreated into private life as the political landscape darkened around them. This isolation is wise, not weak.
Just don’t overdo it, that’s all. I feel that liberals have allowed a healthy acceptance of electoral reality to overtake a hope that Trump’s second term won’t be so bad. please
Three things softened Trump’s influence last time. None of these apply now. First, he sought re-election. This makes him willing to excite the median voter to a certain point, but not too far. (The speed with which he repudiated the flimsy Theocratic Project 2025 last summer showed just how much this supposed hothead tries to avoid unnecessary unpopularity.) Barring the 22nd Amendment, Trump is now freed from the inherent discipline of electoral politics. Even the middle position means little, as the race to succeed him will begin soon after. The term of the second term president is two years.
What else? His first administration had enough old-fashioned Republicans — Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson — to curb his excesses. He is now spoiled for officials and cabinet secretaries in the Maga mould. Tulsi Gabbard may soon be at the helm of US intelligence. There is nothing stoic or urbane about putting it off.
After all, the world was stable enough in 2017 to absorb a certain amount of chaos. Inflation was low and Europe was at peace. The last major epidemic in the West was a century ago. Trump will throw in his tariffs and foreign exodus this time around, with a much weaker webbing.
We can go into this vein by mentioning the practical and contingent causes of anxiety. We can mention the federal judiciary, which is now more Trump-tinged than when he first took office. Will it stop him? We may also mention that he will be 82 when he stands up. Last time, he had to think about legal exposure, earning potential and social reputation in his post-presidential life. Will that be such a factor now?
However, in the end, my argument – and a lot of political commentary – comes down to instinct. There’s a mood in the mega-world right now that wasn’t there in 2017, because Trump didn’t win the popular vote. Talk about much higher economic growth, territorial conquest, planting the US flag on Mars: if that doesn’t make you proud before the fall, before the impending over-reach, we have different antennas. (And I hope I’m wrong.) In all democracies, no party is more dangerous than new electoral success. The difference with the US is the size of the stakes for the outside world. Think of George W. Bush after his historically good midterms in 2002, or Lyndon Johnson’s surge in Vietnam after 1964, when his poll pile was visible from space.
Yes, the war of choice is impossible under Trump. (Though events can push leaders into unusual actions. Remember, before 9/11, Bush thought he was a do-nothing isolationist.) Perhaps, the tariff spree would create an uncontrollable world reaction, Or the economy will run too hot, or the Constitution will break down as Trump seeks to reward friends and predatory enemies. At the very least, there will be internal convictions when it becomes clear that public debt, urban malaise, and other problems in America are not amenable to techno-libertarian solutions.
Whatever the precise form of impending chaos, the relative lack of concern about it stands out eight years on. The liberal line in 2025 seems to be something like this: We overdid the panic over Trump last time, so let’s not repeat that mistake. Not even half of this proposition survives the slightest intellectual scrutiny. panic was carried, unless the two impeachments — one for overturning the election results — somehow count. Also, if the first term isn’t so bad, why assume the second will be exactly the same? Trump and his movement are now a much more serious entity. His inaugural address this week was powerful in vision and expression.
None of this means that those who dislike Trump should take the man’s advice to “fight, fight, fight.” Protests and activism have ended for Democrats. But smugness was bad, so was cringing self-doubt. The lesson of the 2024 election for liberals was, or should have been, narrow: stop picking useless candidates. It has somehow turned into a broader crisis of confidence as to whether their implicit assessment of Trump as a threat was ever correct. It won’t be fun at all to prove in the coming years.
