To paraphrase Bette Davis, it’s going to be a bumpy ride
Russ Yarrow is founding parter of Centerpoint Advisors and a former general manager, corporate affairs, at Chevron — where he led external communications, strategic planning, issues and crisis management, and more. This blog was originally written for and published to Russ' Substack newsletter, Just Exactly Perfect.
One thing JEP readers don’t need today is another post-election analysis, especially from someone whose only armchair expertise is the oeuvre of the Grateful Dead. But here goes anyway — publisher’s prerogative. I’ll try my best to make it worth your while.
Full disclosure: I voted for Kamala Harris, but not enthusiastically. As Thomas Sowell once said, “We can only make our choices among those actually available.” So, I offer this piece not so much as an analysis as a coming-to-terms of what happened on Tuesday and how to adjust to a new reality.
There were many dramatic tipping points in the 2024 presidential election. Biden melting down and bowing out, Kamala’s annunciation, a debate watched by 60 million people that Kamala ran away with, the Madison Square Garden rally, the two assassination attempts, a candidate for Vice President who admitted he is a “knucklehead.”
But maybe the biggest tipping point was P’Nut.
Here we are in America today with a border that can’t be controlled. Under the Biden Administration, undocumented border crossings have approached 10 million, with nearly a half-million of those entries by people with criminal records. Instead of catch-and-deport we have catch-and-release. Every American has experienced some level of dismay at our lack of competence and resolve around protecting our own borders.
But illegal squirrels? We’re on it.
New York resident Mark Longo adopted a wild squirrel seven years ago after its mother had been killed. He named it P’Nut and the furry rodent became a star on Instagram and TikTok, dressed in ridiculous costumes and running up and down Longo’s arm. Then the hammer came down. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, responding to complaints about P’Nut, raided Longo’s house, grabbed P’Nut, and euthanized him.
Anyone who pays attention wondered why we can be so vigilant about an undocumented squirrel while undocumented criminals roam free.
When the election results came in, they probably surprised even Trump. This was supposed to be a close election, decided by an eyelash. Instead, it was a red wave. Trump won decisively. Republicans took the Senate and may end up retaining a majority in the House. We can argue about why this happened (which we’ll do for a long time), but we can’t argue with the results. America has spoken.
Three quick takeaways:
The Democratic Party is broken. They failed to read the room. Simply put, people are fed up. The last four years gave us inflation, bigger government, the metastasis of woke culture, corruption and incompetence, all of which stuck like glue to the Biden Administration. Out of blind loyalty or a sheer lack of discipline, the party for too long backed the candidacy of a man who was clearly not fit for another term. By the time Nancy Pelosi and George Clooney gave Biden the pink slip, it was too late. The only alternative was Kamala Harris; an open primary would have been a mosh pit.
What Trump did was historic. He raided the Democratic base, gaining near-majority votes of Black and Hispanic men. He picked up young people and independents. He dominated the working-class vote. The only voting blocs definitively won by Harris were college-educated women and people over the age of 65.
And yet, Democrats still can’t read the room, passing off Trump’s win on darker forces, or worse.
Joe Scarborough said the morning after on MSNBC: “It’s not just misogyny from white men; it’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from black men — things we’ve all been talking about — who do not want a woman leading them.” He added that it “might be race issues with Hispanics. They don’t want a black woman as president.”
Nice, Joe, let’s just call the winning side racists and women-haters. It’s this kind of condescension from the media elite that drove a lot of people, especially independents, away from the Democrats.
The editor of Scientific American, Laura Helmuth, was worse. In a post that’s now deleted she said: “I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of f——g fascists.” (Fifty-four percent of Gen X voted Trump.)
The first step in recovery is recognizing that you’re acting in self-destructive ways. The Democrats haven’t shown any signs they’ve reached that first stage yet.
Trump outmessaged Harris. He was supremely undisciplined, going off-script at every rally, speaking gibberish at times, but his message got through: I will fix the border, I will fix the economy, I will keep you safe. I will make you prosper. Harris started her campaign on “vibes” before she tried pandering for votes with promises of $25,000 to buy a house, then moving on to a series of platitudes (“I grew up in the middle class”) and finally to simple name-calling (“weird” and “fascist”).
She dodged interviews for too long and when she did open up, did so on dubious platforms like “Call Her Daddy.” She couldn’t answer a simple question on whether she supported taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for convicted felons. Trump was a ball of bloviation and chaos, but Harris was a cipher; people just didn’t trust her.
Joe Biden’s “shadow candidacy” was a disaster. Biden flamed out during his only debate with Trump. His candidacy was over at that point despite the gaslighting from his supporters who tried to convince us he was sharp as a tack. When he finally bowed out, he seemed to age even more before our eyes. It’s a wonder he has any feet left; every time he opened his mouth he put one in. The “garbage” comment will live in infamy, like Michael Dukakis at the helm of a tank.
All of this left Harris in an impossible position. On the one hand, she was running as an incumbent and a record that spoke for itself. On the other, she was trying to distance herself from Biden as much as she could. She ended up running on a kind of pretzel logic — I’m proud of my record and accomplishments, she said, but it’s time to “turn the page.” It reeked of expediency and manipulation.
It also left voters in a difficult position. For partisans, an election is always an easy decision. For people who pause to think, not so much. This was a transactional election, in which either vote was imperfect, and character took second seat to policy. In the final analysis, Trump appealed to a coalition that was much broader than just the high school-educated working class. Bright lights like Bill Ackman, Chamath Palihapitiya, Stephen Schwarzman and Marc Andreesen endorsed him. I have good friends who are highly educated, affluent, principled, and socially conscientious. They voted for Trump, aware of all his guffaws and flaws. This means something.
A big part of Trump’s appeal to his supporters is his promise of disruption. If he stays true to his vow of “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” we’re in for a bumpy ride. The next four years may be the cultural equivalent of Schumpeter’s economic model of creative destruction. In business, old models or companies are rolled over by change to make way for new models (think of NASA and SpaceX). Trump has ushered in a new political model with a broad mandate. There will be some glass broken in the process.
With creative destruction comes great apprehension. I don’t look forward to a Trump administration that trucks with people like the two Steves (Miller and Bannon), Laura Loomer, or a long list of weird pilot fish that have attached themselves to Trump. His administration could easily end up looking like the bar scene in “Star Wars.” I don’t look forward to tariff-fueled inflation, political intervention in Federal Reserve policy, or a ballooning national debt. I do not look forward to four years of Trump breaking out his old-man disco dance.
But if we’re honest, most of us think America is broken in some ways. Two-thirds of voters went into this election thinking America is “on the wrong track.” This metric reflected the previous four years, not the previous eight (Americans have short memories). With this mindset, voters faced two choices: one candidate represented the so-called “deep state” — a perpetuation of dominant political culture whose end state is on display every day — while the other reveled in setting fire to that political culture.
Despite the unknowns that a Trump presidency brings — and there are many unknowns — one thing is certain. There will be disruption.
But we get what we pay for in America. In that regard, we’ll let H.L. Mencken, the great political sage from Baltimore, have the last word. “Democracy,” he said, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Let’s see what we get over the next four years.
Peace out.
