By MARC BOND
The dust is settling on the 2024 election cycle in the United States. There will be many interpretations of the outcome, and a lot of shuffling in the world of statistics.
Before I dive into my thoughts, let me concede that imposing a mindset on 140 million voters is a fool’s errand. People vote the way they vote for many reasons. Some have one dominant and excusive issue; abortion for instance. Despite the secrecy of the voting booth, others feel pressure from family, friends, or co-workers. Some vote for a candidate, and others vote against a candidate. For most people, there is a combination of factors which include issues, personalities, and personal experience.
When I comment on the meaning of the 2024 election, I am looking at macro trends which become apparent (at least to me) from the way large numbers of people voted.
Many are calling this a “Red Wave” election. It is important to define that term before discussing it. A Red Wave or a Blue Wave means an election which because of the size and depth of a shift from one party to the other is a real inflection point. The outcome doesn’t mean merely that one of the major parties has been installed in power in a convincing way. The election outcome is a portent of future elections for, say, the next decade. It is a shift in attitudes that goes beyond the current candidates and current issues.
I don’t think the 2024 election was a Red Wave in the sense that the Republicans have cemented tenure of the White House and a majority in Congress for the next decade. The Trump personality phenomenon will pass in a little over four years, and, at 78 years old, Trump himself will pass through the veil in the not-too-distant future. Other Republicans will follow Trump, and their success will depend upon their personalities, the issues then current, and what the Democrats have to offer at the time.
If 2024 constitutes a Red Wave, I think it is as a revolt against the wonky ideas that pass for currency among the political elite, such as:
We can be nice to terrorist countries and they will be nice to us; We can spend the federal fisc like drunken sailors and it will result in general affluence, the federal debt will not be a problem, and any inflation will be “transitory;” we can transition the entire world economy from petroleum-based energy to wind and solar-based energy in 10 years with no depletion of essential resources and without any impact on the standard of living; your daughter can become boy and enjoy a sterile life without any ongoing medical, emotional, or psychological problems; your son can become a girl and play in girls’ sports with no effect on the fairness and safety of the game; we can admit men to women’s bathrooms and locker rooms without any increase in sexual assault; we can let tens of millions of illegal immigrants into our country and it will have no impact on our safety, security, and economy; we can threaten the SCOTUS with court packing and investigations, and it will result in beneficial court rulings; we can enjoy all manner of drugs recreationally without any influence on depression, suicides, and personal productivity; we can impeach, sue, and try our political opponents and deny we are acting like a banana republic; and we can discriminate based on race and pretend it will heal our country.
When one examines many of the issues listed above, one realizes that they do not draw lines on sex, racial, ethnic, or nationality bases. They cut across those lines. It turns out no man or woman wants a boy in the locker room of their daughter’s athletic team.
Amazing though it may sound, legal immigrants from Latin America do not want illegal immigration from Latin America. Blacks and whites alike want economic opportunity in obtaining employment and operating small businesses.
Although befuddling, people generally like to awaken in a heated or cooled homes, take hot showers, eat foods that have been gathered from around the world, put on petroleum-based clothing, drive cars that don’t cost an arm and a leg, and enjoy the company of family and friends. Hispanic, Native, Black or White, people see the inherent unfairness in lawfare as a weapon of political influence and determination.
Almost all people realize at bottom that the way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. It is our elites who are out of step.
How else can you account for Trump’s amazing increase in voting share in Blacks, Hispanics and Asians? These folks are people first, sentient people with hearts and brains that can think for themselves. They can see the impact of a lousy economy in their lives. They know that humans come in two forms, male and female. They understand human nature and incentives and disincentives. They put the information available in this election in their calculator and concluded that more of the same from the Democrats was not going to help them and their families.
The ”Wave” … the movement of perception and perspective … is fragile at this point. The worst thing that could happen is for the Republicans to fail to understand what got them back in power. At that point, the newly interested voters would conclude that their 2024 vote was wasted.
There are two things that need to happen quickly to reinforce our constitutional system and general civility. First, the president and the Republican Congress need to deliver on the economy, crime, immigration, DEI, and transgenderism. They need to do so expeditiously but in a magnanimous, honest, open and constitutionally correct manner, with full transparency. They need to drastically cut the size and omnipresence of government in the lives of Americans.
Second, the Democrats need to forego the surface arguments like Biden would have been a better candidate, the minority voters were temporarily insane, the country is so misogynistic and racist that it can’t vote for a minority woman for president, etc. They desperately need to take a serious inward look about why the American people dumped them. In chief, they need to ignore the fringe elements that currently dictate the party agenda, and reconnect with the everyday folks they now only pretend to represent.
One more thing: America and Americans need to regain the moral basis for our constitutional republic.
We are currently driven by “expressive individualism,” a term coined by Robert Bellah. Expressive individualism holds that human beings are defined by their individual psychological core beliefs. Happiness and human flourishing are solely driven by each individual’s inner sense of psychological well-being or peace. Anything that challenges it is deemed oppressive. There is no such thing as a common human nature which ties us together and limits our activities to those which conform to and promote that human nature.
It turns out that this is a wholly dysfunctional basis for an operating society. People have obligations to each other in addition to the right to exercise freedoms. These obligations and rights come from something bigger than individuals or a collective. They come from a Creator, and they cannot be ignored with the hope that a free society can be maintained.
John Adams said, “We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
We have spent the last half century undercutting the moral basis of public life. The foundation is now a shell, and yet we think we can keep the building intact. Rebuilding that foundation is more important than any other work on the building.
Marc Bond is a retired Anchorage attorney.