Calling it Almost Right, But Still Disappointed

Calling the outcome of the 2024 presidential election correctly but missing the major shift in the electorate towards Donald Trump leaves me disappointed in roughly half of my fellow Americans.

The Make America Great Again movement worries me. It echoes the movement of the same name from the 1930s. It’s the same policies: isolationist, anti-immigrant, pro-tariff, and anti-intellectual. The Republicans of the era were not the same as MAGA.

Nobody could seriously describe Herbert Hoover as anti-intellectual. The man was incredibly smart, if not a great president. A former Secretary of Commerce, Hoover mistakenly signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, likely worsening the Great Depression. Trump does not seem to know much about history. Later in life, Hoover was modest enough to eventually serve both Democrat Harry S. Truman and Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Trump and modest rarely appear in the same sentence, except when listing qualities he lacks.

A week before Election Day, I gave Trump a 65% chance of winning the Electoral College, while my spreadsheet calculated a popular vote margin of 3 million votes for Vice-President Kamala Harris. I used the aggregate polling data from several websites and then added 2-4% for Trump by state because his poll numbers have been consistently lower than his actual vote percentages.

I really, really missed the margin by which Trump defeated Harris. I had considered the “Blue Wall” states along the Great Lakes unlikely to fall completely. Instead, my math suggested Trump losing at least one of the toss-up states. Instead, he won them all… along with the southern toss-up states.

Trump is not a fiscal conservative. His administration was spendthrift, which means far from thrifty. Not that the administration of Pres. Joe Biden has reigned in spending. Now, Trump promises to spend whatever it takes to deport undocumented immigrants and some legal visa holders. Spending “whatever it takes” to remove as many as 11 million people will certainly blow a trillion-dollar hole in the budget. He also promises a long list of tax cuts while clinging to the mythical savings of cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse” that has eluded previous administration. You cannot spend more, cut taxes, and balance the budget.

Trump doesn’t promise a path toward a balanced budget. That era of conservatism is gone.

Nor is Trump an internationalist. The hallmark of Republican presidents was fostering alliances against the threat of authoritarian governments. The GOP was actively anti-Communist, with a capital C for the Soviet and Chinese Communist Parties. Trump is an isolationist who flirts with authoritarians, including Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orbán, who is possibly his favorite authoritarian and a model for what Republicans now wish to do in the United States.

Orbán was democratically elected in Hungary. He then twisted the branches of the Hungarian government to support his continued dominance. Putin had done the same in Russia, but at least most Republicans don’t openly embrace Putin. Many Republican officials embrace and outright celebrate Orbán’s control of every aspect of life in Hungary. His brand of nationalistic social conservatism appeals to the Trumpian GOP.

I voted for Harris, assuming she would lose. I am a realist. There was no likelihood of Harris winning the state of Texas, where I live. However, I wanted to officially register my disdain for Trump and his MAGA movement.

My values have not changed.

Trump is the only one of the two candidates to have tried to overturn an election. Many Republican (and former Republican) election officials and lawyers agree. He’s a horrible person and has turned the GOP into a cult of personality. I hope he is eventually held accountable for his actions in business and in politics, but I doubt he will ever be.

I can relate to writer David Brooks. I understand The Bulwark and The Dispatch.

I used to listen to and read the conservative voices. They went nuts. Absolutely insane. Tin foil hats. I kept spreadsheets of their errors for a few years. (I do that for “progressive” books I read, too.) The talk radio and cable “news” hosts drifted into caring more about the ratings and not offending the audience than adhering to clear ideological frameworks. The defamation suits Fox has settled prove the audience and ratings took over.

Like most self-described libertarians, I dislike government while recognizing the need for “referees” to keep society, especially markets, functioning fairly. As the blog title states, I am almost a classical liberal. I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and without a political home. (I consider myself of the libertarian left, nowhere near the Libertarian Party in the U.S.)

I vote based on my values and for the candidates least likely to impose their morality on me.

My values remain what they were in 1990. I am a defense hawk who recognizes the need to reform military spending. I want simplified taxes, free trade, and easy legal immigration. I remain opposed to a lot of federal spending and absurd regulatory mandates.

I believe in local control, always. I dislike even state mandates on counties or cities.

Keep the government out of my life. Off my property. Out of my parenting. That includes social conservatives and progressive liberals playing games with education.

I defend free speech, always, even offensive speech. I do not defend threats, even implied threats. Private businesses do not owe free speech to anyone. I am a free speech extremist. People should have the right to be horrendous bigots. Businesses are more complicated since they receive benefits from state and federal governments. What business doesn’t accept money that has been laundered through government?

I desire an absolute separation of Church and state because once they get entangled, the government will win. The “Religious Right” is taking over Texas. That’s not freedom. I do not want the Ten Commandments in school, interference in medical decisions, or state laws that try to overrule what my county or city wants.

I want to return to the 1980s understanding of the Second Amendment. Requiring licenses and training for gun ownership is a good idea. You’d have a difficult time proving that the proliferation of guns in America hasn’t contributed to mass shootings. Maybe it’s time for states to regulate their militias.

Admittedly, I was never a loyal Republican voter. After January 6, 2021, I had some hope. It seemed the GOP was ready for a return to some sanity. I was mistaken then, and I was mistaken this year.

Half of the voters in this country were willing to overlook all the flaws and dangers of Donald Trump to punish the Democrats for not taming inflation after the pandemic. That really was the single biggest issue this election. But if someone believes the answers to inflation include trade wars and tax cuts, they are as mistaken as I was about Trump’s margin of victory.