There is nothing we don’t know about Donald Trump — except how and why he might be elected again as president.
There are theories, of course. There are many theories. I’ve tried out about a million of them myself.
But none of the explanations, even those from the most astute political analysts, are good enough because, well, how could they be? What I know for sure is that historians will be puzzling over Trump’s hold on America for the next hundred years — that is, if historians are still allowed to puzzle.
And yet.
On Friday morning, in its final rendering of the election season, the New York Times/Siena College poll — maybe the most respected national poll working — has the election tied.
Polling voters in the seven swing states that are likely to determine who wins in the Electoral College, the Wall Street Journal has Trump leading Kamala Harris. By a single point.
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So, the election is apparently tied despite a rash of recent revelations about Trump and his Hitler infatuation, despite Trump’s increasingly unhinged rhetoric, despite the use of the F-word — yes, fascist — from former Trump officials and even Harris herself to describe Trump. Despite everything.
By everything, I mean the centerpieces of Trump’s closing campaign promise to the American people:
He will deport millions of unauthorized migrants, including those who have lived here for decades and even those who may never have eaten anyone’s pet.
He will impose tariffs on, well, everything, despite the certainty from economists of all stripes that such tariffs would wreck the economy.
He will exact retribution on his political enemies, from politicians to reporters to prosecutors to, just guessing here, pop singers, to anyone else he deems “the enemy within.”
Oh, and he won’t let trans kids play girls’ sports because that’s the issue tearing the nation apart.
By everything, I mean the fact that he’s an adjudicated rapist, that he’s a convicted felon, that he’s the promulgator of the Big Lie and thousands of assorted smaller lies, that he tried to overturn the 2020 election, that he sicced a violent mob on the U.S. Capitol, that he promises to pardon January 6 rioters, that, well, I could go on, but what’s the point?
We know all this. Trump makes no secret of what he intends to do if elected. He, uh, brags about it. Of course he brags about it.
As one of the earliest Never Trumpers, David Frum tweeted the other day: “Do you think somebody possibly has video of Trump mocking the handicapped, demeaning U.S. prisoners of war, boasting about sexually assaulting women, praising Vladimir Putin or urging a violent attack on the Capitol? That would be huge.”
As CNN commentator Van Jones said in pointing out the double standard the media and others seem to have in judging Trump vs. Harris: “They’re not taking the same exam. He gets to be lawless. She has to be flawless.”
And yet.
One group that seems to understand the stakes is women, who, from long experience, recognize a dangerous man when they see one. You’ve seen the gender-gap numbers in the polls. In the Times poll Friday, women preferred Harris by a 54-41 margin. Men preferred Trump by a 55-42 margin. A recent USA Today poll had the gap at 17 percentage points.
Yes, this gender gap has been present since at least the 1980s. But this year?
Some are calling 2024 a boys vs. girls election. But that doesn’t really cover it. As Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse noted, it’s not as if “girls want to elect a Barbie doll and boys want to elect a monster truck.” It’s more like a majority of men are apparently happily prepared to elect a sexual predator.
Trump has clearly earned women’s mistrust/disgust. It’s not just the insults — racist, sexist and otherwise — he hurls at Harris. It’s not just the Supreme Court that Trump and Mitch McConnell fashioned to upend Roe v. Wade. It’s not just that Trump has been found in a court of law to be a rapist. It’s not just his creepy “I am your protector” speech to women. It’s not just his affinity for violence. It’s not just because he picked a running mate who scolds “childless cat ladies.” It’s not just his bizarre rant about the late golfer Arnold Palmer being a man’s man because of the apparent size of his penis.
Let’s go to the recent Trump rally in Georgia where insufferable Trump supporter Tucker Carlson, uh, explained in his warmup act that Trump was America’s “dad” and that Democrats were basically like the “hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter” who flips her parents the finger on the way to slamming her bedroom door.
“When Dad gets home,” Carlson told the crowd, “you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl, you’ve been a bad girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.’”
He continued: ‘And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you’ve earned it. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl.’’’
Let’s set aside the question of whether anyone has ever used the word “vigorous” when it comes to spanking his or her kid and just concentrate on the utter insanity of the metaphor itself. And the further insanity of the wildly cheering crowd.
Back here on planet Earth, Tom Nichols wrote a recent piece in The Atlantic trying to explain the appeal of Trump’s outrageous behavior and the behavior he spawns in his more rabid supporters. He says many Trump supporters know exactly who Trump is — and they love it.
And that the recent warnings of Trump’s fascism won’t change any of that. To this point, nothing Trump has done has seemed to change anything.
“For millions of the GOP faithful, however, Trump’s sad attempts to breach new frontiers of hideousness are not offensive but reassuring,” Nichols writes. “They want Trump to be awful — precisely because the people they view as their political foes will be so appalled if he wins.”
It’s a provocative piece, but of course there is much that the idea of “owning the libs” doesn’t explain. Yes, there are the Trump cultists who certainly fall into Nichols’ category. But there aren’t nearly enough of them — let’s hope, anyway — to win an election. It doesn’t explain the normies — the normal Republican people that you and I know who will vote for Trump because he’s on their team and who will somehow willfully overlook the rest.
Does anyone know how to reach these people? You think if people like George W. Bush or Mitt Romney had endorsed Harris that it would have helped? Maybe, at the margins. Maybe not.
The best I can do is offer up a warning. People are afraid of what Trump might do. You want to know how afraid?
A week after the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, where I once worked, killed an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris and refused to endorse in the election, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, among the richest and most powerful people in the world, did the same thing.
The Post, the paper of Woodward and Bernstein, the paper that adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” after Trump became president in 2017, has bent the knee.
It’s no coincidence, I assure you, that Trump continues to threaten the “fake news” media at the corporate level, where the real power exists. And where the real money flows.
Former Post Editor Marty Baron called Bezos’ decision “cowardice.” At least one prominent Post columnist and editor have resigned. At least three L.A. Times editorial board members have resigned.
Yes, it’s hard — maybe even futile — to try to explain just how and why we, the American people, could possibly elect Trump again.
But it’s easy — so very easy — to guess what might happen if we repeat that mistake. We’ve already seen it happen once. This time, with fewer guardrails for Trump, would almost certainly be worse.
And yet.
And yet.
Election Day is almost upon us, and somehow this is the world we face.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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