America returns car keys to grandpa

The election is over. Here are my observations:

1. Donald Trump: Authoritarian grandpa

Donald Trump is on track to win the popular vote and enter the White House more popular than he has ever been. The voting public on the whole has decided that it cares mainly about kitchen-table economics, a tight border, and getting rid of sanctimonious and fake elites. It has indicated it does not care so much about whether the president attempts to overturn elections, is a compulsive bullshitter, or has been accused of sexual assault by several women.

There is another side to Trump: when he doesn’t feel threatened, he can sound congenial and sometimes funny. I listened to Trump’s entire 3 hour appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast two weeks prior to the election and observed the same as when I listened to him on the All-In podcast last summer: if you forget January 6, his lies, and the sexual misconduct, he sounds like a somewhat charismatic rambling grandpa. Given his supporters mostly don’t care about, or believe in, these flaws, they get to imbibe his charisma 100% of the time they see him. People on the left were not offered anything similar.

2. Kamala Harris: Failed Influencer

Kamala Harris was invited to be on Rogan as well: his hope was to have a loose, long-form conversation with her as a regular person. Harris’s staff declined to do the interview in Rogan’s studio (where Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk all spent hours just before the election) and instead asked he fly to Harris and interview her for a set 45 minutes. He declined. Her voters did not get to see how she’s like in a relaxed setting. Her public appearances felt scripted and defensive.

It would probably have been wise for her to break with Biden and explain her many policy U-turns. But what I ultimately think killed her campaign is that this is the Youtube/TikTok era and she failed as an influencer. Her content was not interesting and she did not forge authentic connections with her audience. Trump meanwhile managed to be, at the very least, like Sam Harris put it, authentically a terrible human being.

Harris ran into the same brick wall as Hillary Clinton. Stilted performance no longer gets you into the White House, unless the incumbent is presiding over a crisis. My guess is the Democrats who emerge from Harris’s dust are likely to be authentic-feeling influencer types. It’s not like Trump couldn’t have been beaten by this kind of a candidate this time. Trump had and has a low approval rating, and there’s plenty about him not to like to a broad electorate.

To be clear, I have not seen data supporting what I wrote above about Harris. The ”failed influencer” hypothesis is my hunch as a casual observer/psychologist. What does the data say?

3. What American voters want

Broadly speaking voters seem to have wanted a better economy for them (not the elites) and tight border policies. They also were in opposition to the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Abortion and immigration roughly cancelled out, which left a large Trump advantage in terms of the economy. Biden/Harris were blamed for inflation and Trump rode a wave of 2019 nostalgia into the White House.

4. What will happen now?

For better of for worse, the US will now experience the full force of what Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk, RFK Jr., and a mix of David Sacks/Peter Thiel and Stephen Miller/Corey Lewandowski -types would like to do with the country. It remains to be seen to what extent Elon Musk owns Trump for his $120+M investment into his candidacy. He is likely to have a lot of say in tech, business, and efficiency matters, and we know he cares a lot about illegal immigration as well as the culture war. Musk put the case for Trump like this: 1) Democrats want to give amnesty to hundreds of thousands of swing state illegal immigrants, and 2) the immigrants would then be obliged to vote for the Democrats, winning them every election. This seemed somewhat paranoid already before the election. The Latino vote then took another step closer to being evenly split between the parties, as exit polls put it at 52-46, which further undermines the theory.

Domestically, we know thus far there are likely to be mass deportations, red tape cutting, and RFK-lead health policies. Abroad, Ukraine is a big unknown, as is Israel. As much as Trump would perhaps like to end the Ukraine war immediately, I wonder if he can. It has seemed just grinding out the war would eventually end with Russia annexing Ukraine, and I wonder if they will settle for anything less. Countries that share a border with Russia (like the one I live in, Finland) are understandably nervous. The EU will do what it can to boost defences. But without the US, we would be diminished and the Baltic countries will now carry a lot of risk.

A strong, unified core to European NATO might help. The German government broke up hours after Trump’s election, perhaps in part due to tariff anxiety, and we’ve yet to see what emerges there next. Compared to Ukraine/Russia, with Israel Trump has more say. However Trump is also more likely to escalate with Iran. Influence and escalation may cancel out and the war in Middle East may stay its course.

All in all, these are interesting times. I would have voted for Kamala, as I would have voted for Clinton, and for Biden. However, this time Trump’s victory did not feel like much of a shock, and I felt adaptation to the new reality happened quickly. The US has been very clear about what they want to try out and I don’t see what anyone can do about it.

Pic credits: Politico, Silver Bulletin, South Park

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