Have we Lost American Exceptionalism?
A Post-Mortem of the 2024 Presidential Election
If the 2016 Presidential election and the first Trump Administration were a terrifying nightmare for many Americans, the 2024 Presidential election was akin to being awoken from that same terrifying nightmare by the Golden State Killer shining a flashlight and gun in your eyes.
I can’t sugarcoat the election result. It’s disastrous for this country.1
An openly corrupt and failed President who (1) sided with Russians over our generals, (2) implemented a policy of child kidnapping while in office, (3) was civilly adjudicated as a rapist, (4) convicted of 34 felonies (with another 60 plus indictments), (5) refused to accept the outcome of the last Presidential election, and (6) joined an insurrection in progress to overturn the results of that election, was just voted back into office.
Although it will be a fairly narrow victory (about 1%), he even won the popular vote in addition to the electoral college. Though perhaps some saving grace, he won only a plurality vote, which means a majority of Americans still did not vote for him.
Nevertheless, he will be free once more to use the power of the Presidency to personally enrich himself while implementing policies that harm Americans. And there will be no checks and balances with a Republican controlled Senate and a Republican controlled House who in his first term ignored his misdeeds.
As a deeply patriotic American, this election result is shocking. Though as a political observer, it’s not so surprising.
Chuck Todd of NBC News has suggested that Democrats failed to do a proper post-mortem of the 2022 Midterm Election losses. He’s right. But the problems actually started earlier.
After the 2020 election was projected for Joe Biden, while others joyously celebrated, I felt a sense of sadness and deep concern for the future.
Trump was a failed President. He should have been repudiated in a landslide. Instead, the election victory was extremely narrow. Just 42,918 votes across the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin constituted the margin of Biden’s victory in the electoral college. There were other troubling signs for the Democratic Party.
There were swings to Trump among both Hispanic/Latino voters and Asian American voters.
Trump net gained more than 12 million votes compared to the 2016 Presidential Election.
Democrats barely held the House of Representatives with a historically small majority, suffering losses across the country.
Democrats lost numerous U.S. Senate races viewed as pickup opportunities and only won control of the Senate with twin victories in the January 5, 2021 special elections in Georgia, forging a tie in the Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris gave them a bare majority.
Let’s think about that for a second. There were Hispanic/Latino voters and Asian American voters who decided to vote for a man who was openly racist towards Hispanics/Latinos and Asian Americans. Well over 12 million Americans who did not vote for Trump in 2016 decided to turn out to vote for Trump despite the four years of a failed Presidency.
There needed to be deep reflection and introspection by the Democratic Party on how this occurred. Of course, there wasn’t.
The Biden Administration also should have realized how narrow their victory was despite their broad coalition of supporters. In the narrow election victory, Biden won a majority of Independent voters and roughly 9% of Republican voters.
While Biden had a mandate to re-open the country from the pandemic (something that Trump was incapable of doing and which to his credit, Biden successfully did), he did not have an LBJ or FDR style mandate for a hard left agenda.
He should have attempted to govern from the middle. Or at least tried to give off the appearance of governing from the middle.
This also did not happen. Instead, the administration doubled down on the equity agenda and moved left on a host of issues, alienating right leaning voters who had voted for Biden in 2020 and even some longtime Democratic voters.
Messaging from the White House was also poor.
Biden deserves tremendous credit for finally implementing long overdue policies for American manufacturing that led to a boom in American manufacturing jobs for the first time in a half century. But almost no one heard about this, leading to Biden not getting credit for one of the greatest accomplishments of his entire Presidency.
Even worse, when Biden called for voters to reject MAGA in order to protect democracy, Biden conflated Republican support for insurrection and other anti-democratic actions by Republicans with opposition to the right to abortion. This alienated potential pro-life voters who opposed Trump, making them suspicious of whether Biden and Democrats were really as committed to democracy as claimed.
It’s not surprising that between all this, the botched Afghanistan pullout, the uncontrolled border, and high inflation, Biden became extremely unpopular. It’s even less surprising that with his high unpopularity, an epically bad debate performance killed his campaign and Kamala Harris hobbled into the Presidential election last minute to clean up the mess.
But even knowing all that, there’s still a sense of profound loss for many Americans.
It’s a sense of loss that goes beyond simple partisanship or even various public policy preferences. It’s the feeling of the loss of American Exceptionalism.
What is American Exceptionalism?
There are many definitions but one I think summarizes it well is from Kim Holmes of the Heritage Foundation, who wrote in 2020:
[American Exceptionalism is] grounded in America’s founding principles: natural law, liberty, limited government, individual rights, the checks and balances of government, popular sovereignty, the civilizing role of religion in society, and the crucial role of civil society and civil institutions in grounding and mediating our democracy and our freedom.
We as Americans believe these principles are right and true for all peoples, not just for us.2
American Exceptionalism is usually not thought of something that is popular on the left. Yet most Democrats and liberals fervently believe in American Exceptionalism. Not to mention the scores of centrists and conservatives who voted against Trump.
Trump returning to the White House calls that belief in American Exceptionalism into question. That’s because while he’s unique in American history, he’s not unique in comparison to other democratic countries around the globe.
It’s not unusual for democratic countries to elect authoritarian leaders or criminals, who win on the basis of populism and resentment of large swaths of the electorate. It’s not even unusual for these authoritarian leaders to be voted out of office only to see the broad coalition that defeated them split apart due to infighting and for the same authoritarian leader to return to power in a subsequent election.
Just a few examples that come to mind:
Silvio Berlusconi in Italy
Bibi Netanyahu in Israel
Victor Orban in Hungary
Victor Yanukovich in Ukraine
Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua
The United States was supposed to be different. At least when it came to elections for President.
The closest analogs prior to Trump are Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes (R) and Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry (D). After sending in the National Guard troops who committed the Kent State massacre, which he approved of, Rhodes was voted out of office in 1970. However, he was re-elected Governor in 1974.
Marion Barry was arrested for soliciting crack cocaine in 1990 while serving as Mayor. The trials prevented him from running for re-election as Mayor, though he did run for an at-large City Council seat against incumbent Hilda Mason, a member of the DC Statehood Party. When Washingtonians turned out to vote in 1990, many brought brooms to the polls to indicate their desire for change.
Mason defeated Barry and his political career was seemingly over. However, Mason would turn out to be the only politician to ever defeat Marion Barry. The new mayor, Sharon Pratt Kelly, struggled in office and quickly became unpopular. Despite being convicted of a felony drug possession, Barry was soon re-elected to the City Council in 1992 and in 1994 was re-elected Mayor over split opposition.
Presidential elections, however, are supposed to be different. Or so many thought.
The prevailing thought was that whatever the relative weaknesses of Kamala Harris, Americans would not elect Trump to office. As a society, we reject totalitarianism, we reject governmental criminality, we reject appeals to our worst base instincts.
Thus, in the reckoning in over how Trump won, we confront a greater reckoning as to what kind of society we live in. And we confront a reckoning with our fundamental core beliefs as Americans.
Complicating this reckoning even further are the race and gender issues involved in this Presidential race. Racism and sexism have always cast a dark shadow on the concept of American Exceptionalism. In this Presidential race, that shadow was amplified.
An openly racist and sexist convicted felon, insurrectionist, failed President, and failed businessman, who happens to be a white man, was elected over an accomplished, highly qualified, and highly intelligent candidate, who happens to be a black and Indian American woman.
There are two seemingly conflicting arguments from commentators on the role of race and sex in the 2024 Presidential Election.
Argument #1: Racism and sexism against black women is why Kamala Harris lost the election. As Malcolm X once famously said, “there is no individual more disrespected in America than the black woman.” The 2024 Election proves him correct. It was misogynoir at its worst.
Argument #2: This is not an inherently racist or sexist country. However, large so-called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (“DEI”) bureaucracies in corporate America, universities, and the government alienated scores of voters. Embracing ultra wokeness and virtue signaling, the Democrats’ hyper-obsession with identity politics, including race and sex, is why Kamala Harris lost the election.
While most look at these arguments as mutually exclusive with most on the left triggered by Argument #2 and most on the right triggered by Argument #1, I happen to agree with both and think both arguments are completely correct.
There are very real biases and prejudices against black women. To me, it’s undeniable that in a very close election, those biases ultimately cost Kamala the election.
Look no further than the U.S. Senate races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin that Democrats won despite Kamala losing the state. Or for good measure, North Carolina where Kamala lost despite Democrats winning every down ballot statewide race in the state.3
As noted by
in his article, How Democratic Senators Survived the Trump Tide, the Senate results buck the recent political trend where a Senate candidate wins when the Presidential candidate of their same party flips the state during the same election. As Moore notes, the winning Democratic Senate candidates in two of these states received fewer votes than Kamala did.To use a legal expression, res ipsa loquitir. This translates to “it is as it appears”.
But these prejudices were not inevitably insurmountable. This election was extremely close. If racial biases were insurmountable, Barack Obama would never have been elected President. Sex biases may seem insurmountable but even in her defeat, Hillary Clinton received the votes of many Hispanic/Latino, Asian American, and black male voters who voted for Trump in 2024.
Instead, these biases were exacerbated by the messaging and policies of the Democratic Party and many on the left.
Frankly, I find it all the more infuriating to consider what has transpired. The candidate who should have won lost because of her race and gender and our country will suffer as a result. Many of the people who are calling out what happened are the ones who are largely responsible for ensuring this horrendous outcome.
It’s also deeply painful as an American. We’re supposed to be the land of opportunity, not the land of perpetual bigotry.
If anything, Kamala should have been the exemplar of those who claim to oppose DEI. While I understand conservatives would disagree with her on numerous policy issues, those who consider opposition to DEI as their top issue should have held Kamala up as the role model of all that a black woman can accomplish and achieve without the benefit of DEI.4
But I digress.
This race and sex discussion only reinforces my profound sense of loss. If American Exceptionalism is real, we would have overcome this stupidity and Americans would have elected Kamala Harris as our President.
Even if it had been a narrow victory, enough Americans would have seen past the lunacy, the idiocy, and the bullshit, and would have elected Kamala. Even with some of the distraction created by the counter-idiocy on the left, enough Americans would have ignored that to do the right thing.
There weren’t.
And that reality calls American Exceptionalism into question.
I don’t want to downplay how awful the election result is, the negative impact it has on our country, or what the next four years will bring. However, I am reminded of the adage of the late Israeli Prime Minister and President, Shimon Peres (one of the founders of Israel), on why he considered himself an optimist.
He was quoted as saying:
Tell them that both optimists and pessimists die in the end, but the optimist leads a hopeful and happy existence while the pessimist spends his days cynical and downtrodden. It is too high a price to pay. Besides, optimism is a prerequisite of progress. It provides the inspiration we need, especially in hard times.5
I take Shimon Peres’s life advice. So, I remain an optimist.
Now, people should not delude themselves to think an 80 year old narcissist like Trump is capable of positive change.
But I am optimistic that American Exceptionalism has not died with Trump.
As a society, we are far greater than one person. Our leaders work for us. The definition of American Exceptionalism is that we are a nation founded on an idea, defined by our belief in democracy and individual liberties. We are not defined by our leaders and never were. In the United Kingdom, the sovereign is King Charles III. In the United States, the sovereign is the American people.
American Exceptionalism does not die with a single election or a single bad President.
Although this idea is now being tested by Trump and the MAGA movement, it has not yet died.
It’s interesting to compare Trump to past Presidents. The two who he has the most in common with are Andrew Jackson (known as “Old Hickory”) and Jackson’s legacy successor, James Polk (known as “Young Hickory”). Like Trump, both Old Hickory and Young Hickory won the Presidency on the back of populist support.6
President Jackson was a racist, court defying, genocide committing and supporting slavery proponent, who implemented some terrible economic policies for the United States. These are all qualities that Trump greatly admires. (Though it should be noted that for his deep flaws, President Jackson was an American hero, which Trump never was and never will be).
President Polk was a racist who led the United States into war to expand slavery. President Polk is the only other President besides Trump to not have a White House pet. (Though in fairness to President Polk, he was a highly effective President who accomplished all but one of his stated campaign goals in a single term, which is very unlike Trump who accomplished none of his lofty promises).
When President Polk started the Mexican American War, a young Illinois Congressman from the opposition Whig Party voted against the war as he deemed it unjust and would only expand slavery, which he fervently opposed (Mexico had gotten rid of slavery and white slave owners in Texas rebelled and ultimately sought to join the United States as a result).
Of course, this anti-racist Whig Congressman wasn’t listened to. The United States declared war on Mexico, won the Mexican-American War, and slavery expanded.7 That Congressman declined to run for re-election and temporarily left politics. The Trumpian politics of President Jackson and President Polk won the day.
I can only imagine how hopeless that Congressman must have felt at the time. I can only imagine how bleak the political picture looked for opponents of slavery at the time as well. But American Exceptionalism was not dead.
If you’re wondering about whatever happenned to that Whig Congressman, his name was Abraham Lincoln.
Remember that fact before you give up on American Exceptionalism.
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https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/commentary/why-american-exceptionalism-different-other-countries-nationalisms
By the way, Kamala outperformed Biden in many of the western parts of the state most deeply impacted by the recent hurricane. These are traditionally more conservative areas and the government’s hurricane response and Kamala were savagely attacked by conservatives. Yet those on the ground who were actually impacted by the hurricane tended to be pleased with Kamala’s response. Kamala underperformed Biden in other parts of the state that were not impacted by the hurricane.
The fact that they don’t perplexes me. DEI defenders often claim that any DEI opposition is in itself racist and sexist. This is a bad argument that has failed to persuade people of their point of view and instead has just gotten people to shut up. But the inability of DEI opponents to recognize Kamala makes me wonder if some are actually racist and sexist.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8935863-tell-them-that-both-optimists-and-pessimists-die-in-the
It’s honestly a tad insulting to compare Trump to either President Jackson or President Polk because while both were certainly bad men who did bad things (recognizable at the time), they both accomplished some longterm successes for the United States. Also, from historical records, they were clearly both far smarter, far braver, far more hardworking, and far more intelligent. As a proud Californian, I can’t completely write off President Polk as all evil. I do enjoy living here. I can’t dismiss that President Jackson was a military hero for leading the United States to victory in the Battle of New Orleans, which was the only battle that the United States won in the War of 1812. Even though the war was over by then (fought because both sides were unaware of the fact), the American success ensured that Great Britain would not attempt to take us back again and established the United States as a longterm power.
As a Californian, I am not interested in re-litigating the issue of the Mexican American War. My left wing 7th grade social studies teacher once called me a racist for not wanting to give California back to Mexico. But I am genuinely not interested in doing so. My position has not changed since the 7th grade. Regardless of the illegalities and injustice at the time, what’s done is done.