Charles Haywood had an interesting response when asked by an interviewer: “I don’t think it matters who is sitting in that [presidential] chair next year, since our problems are so deep-rooted now. Do you agree?”
He answered:
Certainly from that perspective - can the person elected solve our problems? - to ask that question is to answer it and the answer is “no”. A person from the Left can’t solve the problems (though he would perceive the problems differently), both because the problems are extremely difficult if not impossible to solve, as well as the problem of controlling the administrative state. The rightwing person has even an bigger set of problems because the administrative state is set against him and even if he were able to promulgate a vision for fixing the problems not a single thing of those things could be done, even if he were more disciplined than Trump. Even if Trump had the discipline and follow-through it wouldn’t have mattered simply because the administrative state was against him.
That said it does matter in the large scheme of things since the presidency is perceived as the ring of power in the American system. What you see historically is that people will struggle over a symbol of power even if everyone agrees it doesn’t have the power to do what they think, because it matters what the symbol is, and it matters that ultimately that symbol might be transmuted into real power. So while it doesn’t matter who gets elected next year in the sense of who’s going to implement an agenda, it certainly matters as where we’re heading down certain paths we wouldn’t otherwise go (this assumes that a Tim Scott or Marco Rubio doesn’t get elected, both of whom aren’t symbols of change and have no symbolic value).
Trump, for all his flaws, has the virtue of clarifying where everybody stands. If Trump were to win the election, which doesn’t seem particularly likely, the Left would be unwilling to accept that defeat even though the defeat would be more symbolic than anything else. Trump would accelerate things, reveal certain things about the political situation that no one else would. He would make a difference in the sense that “things would go differently”, rather than “he could make a difference”.
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Issue 1 got soundly defeated. 57%-43%. Not surprising given that most people want direct democracy rather than a republican democracy (direct democracy, also known as mob rule, allows minority rights to get squashed, meaning in the future religious liberties could be taken away by a slim majority).
Leftist groups were super motivated given abortion is their key issue and now in November now all they have to do is get 50.1% of the vote to amend the Constitution and make abortion legal. I figured the issue would fail but not by that margin. Maybe the Republican hope was that they could fly it under the Dem radar but that’s like trying to get dawn past a rooster. Jacob Dreisen says that the simple thing is that there’s not a united opposition to the Democrats, that there’s essentially no representation for those pushing back against the Regime. It’s just tiny pockets of House members and three or four senators. And Trump of course but he needs Congress to do anything substantive.
Let’s score modern day politics:
2008: Defeat
2012: Defeat
2016: Victory
2018: Defeat (Senate race)
2020: Defeat
2022: Mixed (JD Vance won; Kari Lake loss was big)
2023: Defeat (Issue 1)
So a mixed record (assuming it even matters). Looking at Ohio results alone: loss, loss, win, loss, win, tie, loss, so Ohio is 2-4-1 over the past seven meaningful elections. The US as a whole is 1-5-1.
There are plenty of grounds for pessimism which is the easy and broad course to take, which means we have to try to steer towards the narrow course. The challenge is to be prepared to lose a lot but be cheerful despite it.
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