The Age of Trump

Certain parties, figures, and coalitions define entire eras of American politics. There was the Era of Good Feelings. There was the Jacksonian Era. Now, there is the Trump Era.

In the final days of the campaign, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’s messages was that voters were exhausted with Donald Trump and ready to move on. Late Night host John Oliver, on the brink of tears, bitterly spoke about having to care about Donald Trump rather than having the “joy of not caring anymore.” Celebrity Jennifer Aniston said it was time to end this “era of fear.” Even when out of power, Donald Trump still somehow ruled.

However, to borrow the Kamala Harris campaign slogan, We Are Not Going Back. 2016 was no fluke after all, and future historians will have to grapple with the phenomenon of Donald Trump. Patrick Buchanan’s book The Greatest Comeback about Richard Nixon’s political career must be updated, because Donald Trump’s is now the greatest comeback, perhaps in all modern history. He defeated political dynasties in both parties, remade the GOP in his own image, and installed a young, smart, and capable vice president who is far better suited to take Trumpism forward than Mike Pence ever was. Defeating Donald Trump in 2020 was a poisoned gift for the Democrats, because 45/47 enters office with a clear mandate, more experience, better advisors, and possibly with the support of a Republican Congress.

Mr. Trump has a chance to be one of the all-time great and historically memorable presidents, the kind after whom we name schools and cities. He has also been “normalized” in a way he was not in 2016. There were no massive protests in response to his victory, few prophecies of economic or military doom, and a far greater willingness by supporters to champion MAGA publicly without fear. The warnings about “fascism” fell flat, probably because Donald Trump was already in office and the Republic survived.

What does Donald Trump’s victory mean for white advocates and the future of our movement? His victory was built on the backs of white voters, who remain most of the electorate, at 71 percent according to exit polls. Data from the Washington Post show whites supported Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by about 57 percent to 41 percent. Not surprisingly, blacks — 11 percent of the electorate — backed Kamala Harris 85 percent to 13 percent. Asians supported her 54 to 39 percent — a figure that is less skewed than many expected. But Hispanics were the real story. Miss Harris won them just 52 percent to 46 percent. Mr. Trump won Hispanic men outright by 55 percent to 43 percent. To put that in perspective, that was better than his vote among white women, which was just 53 percent to 45 percent.

Credit Image: © PJ Heller/ZUMA Press Wire

Miss Harris did better among white voters than “Scranton” Joe Biden according to exit polls from NBC. Then-president Donald Trump won 58 percent of white voters in 2020 but just 55 percent in 2024. However, he improved by a staggering 13 points among Hispanics and a few points among Asians. According to CNN exit polls, Miss Harris actually lost support among black voters compared to Joe Biden. Mr. Biden won an incredible 92 percent of black votes, but Kamala Harris got only 86 percent. Reports that black turnout was down were among the earliest warning signs for Democrats, and early exit polls showed many blacks were staying home.

Even American Indians broke for Donald Trump despite Joe Biden’s last-ditch pandering campaign. So much for Indigenous Peoples’ Day:

64% of American Indians voted for Trump pic.twitter.com/XFVMWA77UA

— Wyatt Graham (@wagraham) November 6, 2024

Kamala Harris improved among the highly educated compared to Joe Biden, winning this critical group by 7 percent rather than Mr. Biden’s 3 percent. These people obviously punch far above their weight in media influence and donations.

But that result may reflect bad strategy. There are no numbers to “prove” this, but the Harris campaign always seemed to be trying to win over the media and the Americans who pay the most attention to pundits. It acted as if it were auditioning to write for The Daily Show, trying to troll Republicans with internet-savvy slang and delighting reporters by saying Donald Trump and JD Vance were “weird.”

This missed something essential. Donald Trump often exaggerates, but if he lies, he lies like Napoleon, pushing bombast that has a strange kind of authenticity. JD Vance’s initial rollout as the vice-presidential nominee was awkward because liberal reporters seized on past statements about “childless cat ladies” and his untested skill at retail politics. Yet both candidates countered by aggressively seeking out long interviews with podcast hosts, which let them take their message to huge audiences.

Donald Trump talking about addiction with Theo Von or JD Vance closing out the campaign with Joe Rogan were masterstrokes that humanized both men. Far from being “weird,” Mr. Vance came off as far more approachable and normal than Tim Walz, with his flamboyant mannerisms and “Coach” persona. Mr. Vance is also far better than Mr. Trump at handling hostile reporters, and his convincing defeat of Tim Walz in the vice-presidential debate set the campaign back on track. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s rambling and sometimes hilarious interviews, stunts such as working at McDonald’s and wearing a garbage-man outfit, and closing his rallies with dancing made it very difficult for charges of “fascist” to stick. Barron Trump’s reported advice for Mr. Trump to go on podcasts unquestionably helped with young voters, especially men. Miss Harris skipped Joe Rogan for a sex podcast to talk about abortion, and wasted time on SNL instead of trying to outwork Donald Trump in campaign rallies.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that Donald Trump would win, but his campaign did seem to be scrambling after Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden. Her popularity soared and she landed a few blows. That changed with this post on X.

Absolutely HEARTBREAKING moment Springfield, Ohio, resident tells mayor that she “can’t take it anymore” as Haitian migrants squat on her lawn, litter in her yard and harass her and elderly husband daily.

The mayor of Springfield does NOT want people to see this: pic.twitter.com/OJtAy7LSXX

— captive dreamer (@captivedreamer7) September 7, 2024

Others had already covered Haitian resettlement, including mainstream reporters and some on the Dissident Right, such as Warren Balogh and Emily Youcis. However, this post was picked up and drove coverage going into the only Trump-Harris presidential debate. Kamala Harris arguably won that debate and rose in the polls, but immigration came back as a campaign issue. Months earlier, I had said that if the election was about abortion, Republicans would lose, but if it was about immigration, Republicans would win. It was about immigration and Donald Trump won.

What kind of coalition is taking shape? On one level, a core premise of American white advocacy is in question. Many have always argued that if mass non-white immigration continues, Republicans are finished. Republicans won a majority of only the white vote, so this still seems true at some level. However, with Hispanics moving increasingly Republican, some may say that “demographics as destiny” is over, because the GOP could continue to win in a majority non-white country.

Credit Image: © Apolline Guillerot-Malick/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire

For those who worked in the conservative movement, all this is especially amusing because the Republican Party has long tried to woo Hispanics with promises of amnesty. George W. Bush and Karl Rove had some success with immigration liberalism, and tried to sell amnesty to the whole party. In the famous “autopsy” after Mitt Romney’s defeat, the GOP purged hardline thinking on immigration. There were only a few holdouts in Congress, notably Tom Tancredo, Virgil Goode, and Jeff Sessions.

Donald Trump shattered conventional wisdom by winning Hispanics through a message of immigration patriotism. The GOP convention was filled with signs that said “Mass Deportation Now.” Donald Trump name-dropped Pat Buchanan. He never backed down from saying immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” Most critically, he said his victory would be a “Liberation Day” — the end of an “occupation.” White advocates, if running for office, would say the same things. It turns out this is the approach that wins Hispanics, or, at least, does not repel them. If there is a debate between white nationalism and civic nationalism, as Jared Taylor and Steve Sailer once had, civic nationalism has won a victory.

There is an argument about whether “Hispanics” are a meaningful racial category. Many Latin American countries may soon be whiter than the United States. Right-wing victories in El Salvador and Argentina suggest that they are not inevitably doomed to become left-wing dungheaps, though Venezuela is a powerful counterexample.

Race is a biological reality but also a social category, and at least some Hispanics are “becoming” white, racially and socially. Rates of intermarriage between whites and Hispanics are relatively high, leading to whiter offspring. An immigration pause (no small thing) might encourage more assimilation, particularly if it comes with a push for English as the official language and an end to race preferences.

Steve Sailer wrote in the past that the Democrats risked becoming the “Black Party,” something that would repel many other Americans. Racial politics in the United States has always been about whites and blacks. While most white Americans will not tolerate open racism, they do not want to be in the “black party” either. Neither do Hispanics.

White advocates should be encouraged. Young men shifted convincingly towards Republicans by greater margins than young women shifted Democrat. While abortion triumphed in most ballot referendums (even in Montana), it was not enough by itself to make white women abandon Donald Trump. Naturally, progressives are criticizing white women for not doing their duty to the sisterhood. “Black voters came through for Kamala Harris, white women voters did not,” said Joy Reid.

This is the second opportunity that white women in this country have to change the way that they interact with the patriarchy. . . . [I]f people vote more, you know, party line or more on race than on gender and protecting their gender, there’s not much you can do . . . [other than] tell people what the risks are and leave them to do the right thing.

If people do do the right thing, where does that leave us? White advocacy is a response to potential disaster. If moderate candidates and the system can avert disaster, what’s our purpose?

The answer is that “moderate” solutions may slow down disaster but they can’t avert it. Mr. Trump has vowed to scrap birthright citizenship on day one (he made the same promise in 2016) and that mass deportations will start right away. The media will give us countless crying non-white children and screaming protestors. NGOs now funded by the government will fight for their lives. The “resistance” we saw in the first term is nothing compared to what is coming. Radicalization and polarization have barely begun.

Both are necessary. We face dispossession in all our historic homelands, largely because of media indoctrination, brainwashing, and the “woke mind virus.” Is that simplistic? It’s how Elon Musk sees transgenderism.

The woke mind virus killed my son

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2024

Politics is like war: The key element is willpower. The media raised the stakes in this election with almost every shaming technique they have, ultimately ending with “fascist.” It didn’t work, but the war is far from over. All the election did is set the stage for the harder battle that is about to begin.

Whites must have a realistic path to a collective identity, fair treatment by the government, and eventually political sovereignty. Race defines progressives and they will fiercely oppose President Trump. Race will become even more salient.

As white advocates, it is not our job to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. It is not our job to invent an extreme ideology and berate Americans for not following it. Our job is to speak for our people regardless of circumstances, and to build social, economic, and political power. Our ideas, memes, and subculture are spreading. Free speech, while not secure, is opening ways to win new people. Most importantly, the American people have just shown they cannot be so easily cowed by propaganda and shaming. The Obama years are over.

White advocates should stay involved with real people. More than ever now, our approach should not be to shock or to seek attention. We should be the vanguard of the Right and count on the Left’s temper tantrum to make our position more acceptable. Already, ideas thought unthinkable are within the mainstream. At the same time, we should not expect or seek credit or recognition from those who co-opt our ideas. That is the price we pay for telling the truth.

The choice in the last election was, ultimately, America: yes or no? Should America be a nation or a vehicle for anti-racism? The people have answered: America lives and marches on. They may be motivated by the cost-of-living or foreign policy, but they rejected a media campaign that tried to dictate the outcome. Thanks to Elon Musk, the people can even talk back. We must meet our people where they are, and we may find that they are closer to our position than we thought.

I was very pessimistic about this election. I doubted that Americans could resist media shaming. I have never been happier to be wrong. There is work to do and a world to win.

Original Article