The scale of Trump’s moment

By now, most of us are fully apprised of the situation. The most controversial political figure in a generation has won a second term as president.

In his first election, Donald Trump won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote. His opponents and political enemies immediately attacked him over the results, constantly questioning the legitimacy of his election—and the legitimacy of the constitutionally mandated Electoral College. When he was sworn in as president, his influence in American politics was under a cloud of disillusion and suspicion, and he lost his first bid for a second term. But he won his third electoral contest decisively. In addition to garnering well over the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch, he secured the popular vote as well—and it wasn’t even close. The victor still inspires consternation, vitriol, and disgust in Democrats, but he can look over a political landscape that he has more potential to shape into his own image than ever before.

In 2024, President George W. Bush secured a mandate in his reelection win over Sen. John Kerry. But we all know how that worked out. Bush quickly squandered his hard-earned political capital in advocating for a well-intentioned but failed scheme of privatizing Social Security early in his second term. His administration was bogged down by unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the Great Recession sunk the fortunes of millions of Americans in 2008 while the federal government bailed out banks and businesses that were deemed “too big to fail.” Democrats swept to victory in the 2006 midterm elections to retake control of the Congress. In 2008, their presidential ticket cruised to an easy victory under the banner of “hope and change.”

Donald Trump’s resounding victory on Tuesday came as a surprise to most people. We were all told by the pollsters that this contest was close—maybe the closest in American history. Most of us were resigned to the prospect of having to wait days, weeks, or maybe even months before the winner could be declared. But as the dawn streaked over the skies of the nation the morning after Election Day, the scope of Trump’s victory was obvious to all. Trump secured a massive mandate with his win over the Harris-Walz ticket.

We are still coming to grips with the meaning and scale of his triumph. Pundits on the right (like the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal) and on the left (Chris Cuomo of NewsNation) have observed that American voters repudiated wokeism, callousness to the economic and security interests of ordinary Americans, the chaos of illegal immigration, and the hollowing out of a strong military deterrent abroad that all emanated from the hard left turn taken by the Biden-Harris administration.

Voters also demonstrated that they were fed up with leftist anti-democratic antics—from the Biden-Harris pandemic regime of 2021 and 2022 to the soft coup that unironically and unapologetically overthrew President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and handed the Democratic nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris without a single primary vote being cast with her name on it. There is more to that story, but suffice it to say that American voters turned out to be more concerned with pressing issues surrounding the economy, the border, crime and personal security, cultural imperialism, and foreign affairs than they were about demonizing Trump and something about “joy” in politics.

At the Trump victory celebration, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance said that Trump pulled off the biggest comeback in American political history. This is one bombastic statement that is actually correct. What other national political figure in American history has secured as deep and unqualified a vindication as this man? I can’t think of a single historical precedent that can match the political resurrection engineered by Donald J. Trump.

Still, the temptation on the right is to interpret this remarkable election as a permanent transformation in American politics. Maybe it is. But it is much too early to think in these terms. Doing so can lead to politically fatal consequences.

I think Daniel McCarthy is right in his assessment of the Trump victory: “Trump and Trumpism speak to, and for, America’s democratic majority. Every institution of American life, conservative or otherwise, has to adjust to that.”

But Trump has dizzyingly complex work to do in domestic and foreign policy, not to mention his task of fostering unity in this troubled and splintered nation. One thing needful is a restored vision of conservatism that can transcend politics and effect change in America’s moral and intellectual character. True transformation requires such change. Is Trump up to the task?.

An opportunity like Trump now faces is golden. Let us pray that he wisely and artfully makes good on it in this fleeting moment.