Why Did Trump Prevail Again?
Perspective from a chastened "never-Trumper"
Election 2024
WHY DID TRUMP PREVAIL AGAIN?
Perspective from a chastened “never-Trumper”
Greg Thomas
The people have spoken resoundingly: red over blue, Trump over Harris. As Van Jones said on CNN about the Democrats, “We got outflanked, outplayed, beat.” I had indications about Trump’s appeal even before 2016, but I couldn’t read the writing on the wall.
How I became a never-Trumper
During my teens and 20s, I was a student of self-help books. So, in the late ‘80s, I read Trump: The Art of the Deal. When my wife Jewel and I moved to New Rochelle in 2008, Trump’s The Apprentice was popular. I watched several seasons of that show because of the challenges of leadership and teamwork it displayed, as well as the drama of who’d be fired and who would ultimately win. Around that time, I got my first inkling of Trump’s appeal to Hispanics.
I hired a Lincoln Town Car to take me to the airport. The driver was a dignified Latino man, an elder, who had suffered a horrible tragedy. A decade before, his wife and children had been killed in a car accident. He told the story twice, on an agonized loop of painful memory, tears welling up in his eyes each time. Near the end of the drive, he told me that he was one of Donald Trump’s drivers. After one ride, he had asked, “Mr. Trump, why do you need to make so much money?” “So when times are tough, I have enough to survive,” Trump reportedly replied. Saving for a rainy day is a common refrain for those who grow up lacking money and is generally wise advice. A billionaire using it to communicate with one of his workers made me think of him as a sales and marketing guy with keen audience insight. His answer displayed how he could meet the psychology of his audience, in this case, an audience of one, his driver.
But I also thought it was cynical. A billionaire has much more than enough for a rainy day. Cynical insight likely also drove him to take out a full-page ad in NYC newspapers in 1989 calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. This ad appeared not two weeks after a shocking assault on a young “white”1 woman, the so-called “Central Park Jogger,” Patricia “Trisha” Meili, who was an investment banker. Five teenage boys—four of them “black” and one Hispanic, dubbed “The Central Park 5”—were painted as a wolf pack accustomed to “wilding” in Central Park. They were quickly charged with beating and raping Meili. In 2002, they were exonerated after a sick serial rapist, Matias Reyes, confessed to the crime. In 1989, however, Trump wasn’t content to let the criminal justice system take its course; he waded into this racially charged scenario, declaring his hatred for violent criminals and, by implication if not by name, for these young boys who, it later turned out, had been falsely accused and railroaded.
That put me on notice about Trump as more than a rich real estate mogul who knew how to play bankers and the media to his own benefit. What sealed my distrust and suspicions about Trump was his questioning of then-President Barack Obama’s legitimacy as an American and as President, that is, the infamous “birther” controversy. Obama’s administration ended up releasing Obama’s long-form birth certificate to tamp down the nonsense that Trump’s accusations had prompted. But that wasn’t the end of Trump’s racialized attacks: he also said that Obama played basketball too much and doubted he had the smarts to get good grades in law school, let alone serve as the president of the Harvard Law Review.
Trump’s playing into racial stereotypes—insinuating that “black” people couldn’t be “real” Americans, and that they were only good at sports and not intelligent—was what tipped me into becoming a “never-Trumper” even before he decided to run for President. After Obama publicly mocked him at the 2011 White House Correspondent’s dinner, the night before announcing that Osama bin Laden had been killed, Trump was red-faced and humiliated. Some say that Trump began seriously charting a course to run for President that very night.
And now he is having the last laugh.
Democrats Miss the Boat…Again
I think it’s a mistake for Democrats to double down on Harris’s so-called race and her gender as the primary factors in her loss. Sure, those factors likely played a subliminal role for some, maybe even for many. But clearly, bread-and-butter pocketbook issues were predominant in the minds of most, with high inflation causing millions to look back fondly at the first three years of Trump’s first term—after he inherited an economy brought back from the brink of disaster by Obama following the 2008 financial crisis. Ten million immigrants flooding the southern border during the Biden administration was another black eye for the Democrats. My own mother spoke to me with resentment about the benefits illegal immigrants were receiving in NYC.
Let’s dig deeper into the claim that Kamala Harris lost due to her race and gender.
If race were the predominant factor, then how could Barack Obama have been elected to two terms? If gender was the main reason Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, how could she have won the popular vote? Even Bill O’Reilly admits that if Michelle Obama had run, she would’ve had a much better chance of overtaking Trump than Harris. Al Sharpton’s intersectional “because she’s black, Asian, and a woman in a multiethnic marriage” falls flat. It relieves the Democrats from looking in the mirror to take responsibility and accountability for becoming a party run by coastal elites looking down on those less educated than themselves; a party that hectors people into using “Latinx” to de-gender the Spanish language when Latinos and Latinas themselves aren’t down with that re-frame; a party that released directives at the end of Obama’s second term giving transgender students right of access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and participation on athletic teams corresponding with their claimed gender, but in the eight years since has not adequately addressed some parents’ concerns and perceptions that trans women may have an unfair advantage in women’s sports.
Further, Democrats haven’t reckoned with the social and cultural damage done in 2020 and beyond after George Floyd’s murder. Riots in cities were called “peaceful” as footage of burning stores and police stations played in the background. BLM morphed from a movement declaring that black lives indeed matter to a golden egg for its leaders to buy expensive homes while not providing significant assistance to victims of police brutality. DEI became all the rage in corporate America while college faculty and scientists were compelled to sign highly ideological diversity statements as a condition of being hired.
So, Biden’s administration not only bungled the exit from Afghanistan, over-heated the economy during the pandemic, resulting in inflation, and sat by idly as millions of immigrants streamed in without permission from other countries, but they had the nerve to gaslight the nation regarding Biden’s capacity to run for a second term. Are you going to believe us or your lying eyes? they seemed to ask U.S. citizens, most of whom had already thought for several years that Biden was too old to run again. The Biden administration hid him from public scrutiny for as long as possible, and then his campaign refused to have Harris face interviews until the second month of her run.
When Harris finally began doing interviews, her unwillingness to separate herself from Biden and explain why exactly she had changed from her far-left positions in 2019 and 2020 was telling. Not being forthcoming on these matters allowed voters to presume, not without basis, that she would continue the same status quo Democratic party approach that many Americans felt was ineffectual and out of touch with working- and middle-class concerns.
I was given an opportunity to see much of this as long ago as 2016, but I didn’t take it. Jewel and I still lived in New Rochelle, NY back then. I called a taxi. An older “white” man picked me up and we began discussing the contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He said he felt that Trump cared for struggling working people like himself. I couldn’t believe my ears. “Do you really think he cares about you? He doesn’t; he cares about himself,” I declared. The gentleman was quiet for the rest of the trip and likely went on to vote for Trump. To him, I was likely just another dismissive Democrat who wouldn’t even take the time to ask why he felt that way.
I should have paid more attention—the Democratic party should have paid more attention—to voices like his. I failed to grasp that the other side of “Trump cares for me” is “the other side doesn’t care for me.” Until the Democrats recalibrate their messaging and policies to reach people like the two men who drove me to insights about Trump’s appeal and the other demographic groups that chose Trump over Harris, they are guaranteed to remain in the wilderness of discontent and election failure.
Greg Thomas is CEO of the Jazz Leadership Project, a firm that uses the principles and practices of jazz music to enhance leadership success and team excellence in organizations such as JPMorgan Chase, Verizon, Center for Policing Equity, TD Bank, and Google. He is Co-Director of the Omni-American Future Project and Co-Editor of The Omni-American Review. In October 2021, he co-produced the two-day broadcast, "Combating Racism and Antisemitism Together: Shaping an Omni-American Future," which may be viewed here and here. He blogs at Tune In To Leadership, where a version of this essay originally appeared. He co-authored Reimagining American Identity with his partner, Jewel Kinch-Thomas, and Amiel Handelsman. He is currently working on his memoir, The Making of An Omni-American: My Journey from Race to Culture to Cosmos. He has published previously in the Journal of Free Black Thought here, here, here, and here.
I put racial terms like “white” and “black” in scare-quotes, because I do not believe race is real. See my post on this topic in the Journal of Free Black Thought, “Deracialization Now.”
Great piece, Greg. I first came to know of you through Glenn Loury's podcast with John McWhorter, and became a fan immediately. This last paragraph struck me:
" Until the Democrats recalibrate their messaging and policies to reach people like my two drivers, and until they gain some insight into Trump’s appeal among the demographic groups that chose him over Harris, they are guaranteed to remain in the wilderness of discontent and election failure."
Only the Democrats can't recalibrate their messaging and policies. If they do, but don't go all the way, they'll lose some of their progressive base, if not all of it, and they'll lose elections as a result. If they start to adopt more common sense policies, they'll be accused of abandoning their commitment to "social and racial justice", and their own side will eat them alive. I'm afraid they're doubling down on their rhetoric, which can be seen daily in the failing venues of cable news outlets like CNN and MSNBC, and online newspapers like NYT and WaPo- both before and after the election. They're simply not interested in exploring what they did wrong, or what Trump's appeal is.
No one on any of these networks are talking about the rust belt, other than to call them all bigoted troglodytes, and the fact that a lot of people there had their pensions wiped out by the 2008 collapse. Correctly or incorrectly, many of the rust belt denizens blame Obama for that, and like it or not, all they remember is Obama and Geithner and Paulson as the face of corporate bailouts. This was completely missed by almost everyone other than Trump. This, in my opinion, is why he was able to eek out a win in 2016, though he was clearly less popular than Clinton. This election should have sent everyone reeling, because the polls were wrong, the analysis was wrong, and everyone was put on their heels. But they're now repeating these errors en masse.
In addition, middle class families now scorn the upper class, starting with private high schools and the Ivy League. The media and the Democrats (now largely part of the same apparatus, in my opinion) completely avoided the fact that Asians were being systematically denied a seat at the intellectual table simply because they score too high on tests. People like myself and others see this as utter hypocrisy, and we don't forget.
Then there's the absolute shredding of social norms almost overnight and the gestapo-like enforcement of these very new social norms. I believe this to be the major issue here. People began seeing the justice system as a lopsided way to enforce cultural changes via not only legislation and regulation, but also through cancellation, public shaming and encouraging young people to ostracize anyone that doesn't agree with them on socio-political issues.
If one were to ask me pre 2020 "What are the odds that two men from different states and backgrounds at a place of business that only employs 25 people would have children that ostracized these men and their families because of gender ideology?" I would have first asked "what is gender ideology?" and then I would have said that is highly unlikely. Yet that has happened to both myself and a coworker, and roughly around the same time. Our stories aren't unique.
To us, this puts a nail in the coffin of any hope of either of us voting Democrat ever again. There are scores and scores of us. There are support groups where people like us, both men and women, mourn the loss of their children to this ideology. I haven't talked to my daughter since her 20th birthday earlier this year. She left in the middle of the day, moved her things out and hasn't spoken to anyone in her family since. The only inkling I got as to why this might have happened is an SMS text notification because she was on my health insurance that her prescription of testosterone was ready to pick up at the pharmacy. The support groups that exist, and I know they exist because I've thought about joining them, stay clandestine for fear of social and legal reprisal. This cultural power is being wielded less now, but in the throes of socio-political upheaval starting in the spring of 2020, it was used as a cudgel to try to metaphorically beat people into submission.
This too does not escape peoples' memories, and is in fact permanently seared into mine. The woke language games and the penance for not playing along has become more than the collective consciousness of this country can bear. I think that this alone would be enough to win an election in opposition of these cultural changes, but there was oh so much more than that.
Besides white people in general being demonized as the root of all that's evil; corporate corruption, racism, nepotism, favoritism, unearned privilege, islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, etc. it was also broken down in a more granular way. Straight white men, to be specific, became the popular whipping boys (pun intended) of the left. It's no mistake or mere coincidence that the biggest shift in demographic voting patterns for Trump were young white Gen Z men, and other straight men that are black and hispanic and Asian. Obama's chiding of "men of color" and insinuating in various ways that if they didn't vote for Kamala Harris, they were sexist at the very least, didn't help either. His political influence is a thing of the past I believe.
The FBI tracked and followed female parents that spoke out at school board meetings because they oppose biological boys sharing bathrooms and private changing spaces with their biologically female daughters. So, just consider that for a moment. Not only were their concerns not taken seriously or addressed by school boards, but they were sometimes added to watch lists because of their political and social opinions.
I myself, along with dozens of other people I know were stopped at intersections and had demands leveled that I hold up a raised fist in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement by threat of violence. I would have said this was impossible before 2020 and things like this only happen in Central Africa, Eastern Europe and South America (I have seen this in a couple of those locations with my own eyes). Put plainly- it freaked me the fuck out.
The SANCTIONED GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP VIA BACK DOOR CHANNELS IN SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS of anyone with conservative ideals, whether they be "nobody" citizens or 200+ year old newspapers like the New York Post is another reason why people voted for any option other than Democrat in this last election, and a big reason why I think they'll continue to.
Formerly loyal Democrat familiars saw their social safety nets in cities decimated by the reallocation of funding to support migrants that are in the country illegally. This is the only portion of any of this that I see seriously discussed outside of any independent venue such as this one, or on Fox News. Instead what we see in the dying, decaying airwaves of left-dominated media is "well now we know for sure that over half of the country is racist and sexist". That's it. That's the sum total of in-depth analysis of the political shellacking that was witnessed on November 5, 2024.
This is what leads me to believe that Democrats won't win an election for a while. With more and more people tuning into alternative media, with the insanity of the last 4 years becoming realized in greater detail, and with Democrats doubling down on the very talking points and ideology that pushed people like me away, I don't see how they recover from this before the next national election. It's possible, I guess, but not very likely.
I don't think the boys were railroaded. Multiple people had called the police about a group of boys robbing and striking and intimidating park goers that night (which included the boys, by their own admissions, I think). They were in the park harassing people that night and they each confessed and implicated the others. I (really) have no idea if they were involved or not but you can see why a jury might think that. Trisha's body was so badly beaten that investigators assumed there had to have been more than one perp. Like 5 bones were broken, her skull was fractured, an eyeball crushed... and she had no memory. It's been some time since I watched the documentary When They See us but from what I understand it was a highly dishonest and incomplete portrayal of the investigation and the trial. The city settled with the boys for millions of dollars-which the victim and investigators all STRONGLY objected to. In my uninformed opinion that decision had more to do with political considerations... but perhaps it was the just move. I really don't know enough to make a claim there.