Former President Donald Trump completed an extraordinary comeback early Wednesday morning, becoming the first president to win nonconsecutive terms in more than a century by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in an unprecedented battle for the White House.
The comeback is remarkable for a host of reasons.
Trump’s political career seemed to be over after he sought to overturn his 2020 election defeat and spurred his supporters to march on the Capitol, an event that led to a riot and the evacuation of Congress.
Before that event, Trump became the first president ever to be twice impeached; was charged in four separate criminal cases; was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case; and was convicted in criminal court of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
But Trump was buoyed up by a fervently loyal support base — most of whom believe his narrative that he has been unfairly victimized by a corrupt political, legal and media establishment.
“We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible,” Trump told supporters at West Palm Beach, Fla., in the early hours, calling his win “a magnificent victory for the American people.”
He also gained from public dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden’s record.
Here are the main takeaways.
It all went wrong from early on for Harris
The writing was on the wall from early in the evening for Harris.
The first warning sign was a very early call that Trump would win Florida. The result itself was no shock — but the fact that Trump was winning by roughly double the 6-point edge that polling averages had predicted was ominous for Harris.
The pro-Trump pattern continued for much of the night, with supposedly safe Democratic states like Virginia and even New Jersey hanging undecided for uncomfortably long stretches for Team Harris, while Trump jumped into early leads in every swing state.
Harris left her event at Washington’s historic Howard University without speaking publicly. She is expected to speak later Wednesday.
The big demographic surprise: Latino men swing heavily to Trump
Much media coverage in advance of Election Day had focused on whether Trump would make inroads with Black voters, especially Black men, or with younger voters.
In fact, changes within those demographic groups were modest — at least according to the current exit polls, which may still shift somewhat as fresh data is added.
But there was one real shock.
Latino men shifted toward Trump by a breathtaking margin, according to the CNN exit polls.
In 2020, those exit polls showed Latino men voting for Biden over Trump by a 23-point margin, 59 percent to 36 percent.
The current iteration of Tuesday’s CNN exit poll showed them voting for Trump over Harris by a 10-point margin, 54 percent to 44 percent.
The astonishing 33-point difference is going to lead to a lot of searching and uncomfortable questions.
Trump supporters will contend that his cultural conservatism and promise of a better economy helped turn the tide.
But that explanation doesn’t really make sense of why Latina women shifted only very slightly in their partisan support.
It’s tough to find a plausible argument that doesn’t include some level of sexism.
Harris, of course, now becomes the second female Democratic nominee to lose to Trump, after Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The abortion issue failed to make the difference
A lot of Democratic hopes were riding on the idea that women would come out in unprecedented numbers to elect the nation’s first female president, just two years after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
It didn’t happen.
There was a wide gender gap, to be sure — but the exit polls so far don’t indicate it was bigger in a meaningful way than four years ago.
To the contrary, women went for Biden over Trump by 15 points in 2020, according to the CNN exit polls. So far this year, the exit polls show Harris carrying female voters by just 10 points.
That doesn’t mean that abortion has been transformed into a winning issue for Republicans. It hasn’t.
For example, a ballot initiative on abortion in Florida didn’t get the 60 percent supermajority it needed to pass. But a clear majority, about 57 percent, lined up on the liberal side of the question.
Still, the bottom line is that the abortion issue didn’t prove nearly as potent as Harris needed it to be.
There will be serious Democratic infighting
The result is a cataclysm for Democrats. Their nominee has lost to a man whom many in their party consider an active danger to American democracy.
So, the finger-pointing will immediately begin.
Many Democrats will dwell on the sequence of events that led to Biden’s withdrawal from the race in July. That came after a debate debacle in late June.
The number of people who believe the president would have done better than Harris is vanishingly small.
But his decision not to step aside after one term — and the party’s lack of appetite for a competitive primary against him — will be second-guessed by those who feel such a process would either have strengthened Harris or produced a better nominee.
The messaging of the Harris campaign will also be subject to harsh scrutiny.
Did she spend too much time arguing that Trump was a “fascist” in a way that was merely preaching to the choir?
Was the attempt to win over disaffected Republican voters by campaigning with figures like former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) always doomed to fail?
Would a more vigorous concentration on working-class concerns have helped stanch Trump’s appeal, or would a more adventurous media strategy have paid dividends?
At some level, it’s possible these questions are unfair. Maybe the headwinds Harris faced on the economy — and as the deputy of a president with mediocre poll ratings — were just too stiff to overcome.
But that won’t stop those questions from being asked.
Trump might well have unified GOP government
Trump will have a Republican majority in the Senate — and quite possibly in the House as well.
Democrats were always going to have a hard time in the Senate, where they were on the defensive in several states.
Deeply red West Virginia was always a near-certain loss once Democratic-turned-Independent Sen. Joe Manchin announced he would retire. Republican Gov. Jim Justice was duly elected there.
Elsewhere, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) lost his seat to GOP challenger Bernie Moreno. Incumbent Sens. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) are in trouble too, though they could yet rally and prevail.
In the House, the picture remained unclear in the early hours of Wednesday, and may take several days to be settled. But it is certainly possible that the Republicans could retain a narrow majority.
If that happened, it would be a remarkable sweep by the GOP.
(Photo: Donald Trump, courtesy of the Associated Press)
By The Hill
