Andrew Sullivan takes something of a victory lap, not only of the rejection of Trump’s literal madness:
The last refuge of a scoundrel.
The key fact is that Donald J Trump has been decisively defeated. He will be a one-term president. This was by no means inevitable. But in a massive turnout, where both sides mobilized unprecedented hordes of voters, and when the GOP actually made gains in the House, and did much better than expected, Trump lost. A critical mass of swing voters and moderate Republicans picked Biden over him. Our nightmare of four years — an unstable, malignant, delusional maniac at the center of our national life — is over.
Take a moment to feel that relief. Breathe. Rejoice. He’s done.
But also of “woke” ideology:
And this was also clearly and unequivocally a rejection of the woke left. The riots of the summer turned many people off. In exit polls, 88 percent of Trump voters say it was a factor in their choice. On the question of policing and criminal justice, Trump led Biden 46 — 43 percent. For the past five years, Democrats have been telling us that Trump and his supporters were white supremacists, that he was indeed the “First White President” in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ words, that all minorities were under assault by the modern day equivalent of the KKK. And yet, the GOP got the highest proportion of the minority vote since 1960! No wonder Charles Blow’s head exploded.
We may find out more as exit polling is pored over, but in the current stats, Trump measurably increased his black, Latino, gay and Asian support. 12 percent of blacks — and 18 percent of black men — backed someone whom the left has identified as a “white supremacist”, and 32 percent of Latinos voted for the man who put immigrant children in cages, giving Trump Florida and Texas. 31 percent of Asians and 28 percent of the gay, lesbian and transgender population also went for Trump. The gay vote for Trump may have doubled! We’ll see if this pans out. But it’s an astonishing rebuke of identity politics and its crude assumptions about how unique individuals vote.
I’m not sure I would conflate the riots over the dangers for black men and women from police with the woke left. Simply the selection and backing of Joe Biden by the Black community may serve to refute that suggestion.
And it would be a little dangerous to suggest that people weighed 20,000+ lies against wokeness and pulled the lever for 20,000+ lies. We need those exit polls to expose the knowledge base of the average voter, first. How many voters knew about the lies (and believed that wasn’t fake news!), and the children in the cages? How many knew if their local Democratic candidates, House and Senate, were sympathetic to woke ideology – or if their opponents had misleadingly labeled them as woke?
Hell, how many have an even ballpark definition of woke? I’m not even sure I do. Although, given its supposed connection to critical race theory, I suppose that there is a certain pleasure in a supposed rejection.
But I don’t know that I can accept Sullivan’s analysis. Our shared knowledge base isn’t. Our fellow citizens are not necessarily interested in politics – they may not go out bowling and drinking beer, like they used to, but similar activities have taken their place. People often find politics to be less than imperative.
And perhaps this lack of interest, this lack of knowledge, is one of the great liabilities of a democracy, and one of the great challenges for future champions of democracy. Although I cannot suggest that rival political systems don’t suffer the same liabilities, as history easily teaches. People as incompetent and indifferent to the rules of society as Trump reaching the pinnacle of power: they litter history like black flies on dung.
Wise selection of governance remains a conundrum.
