IIt’s been more than a week since the 2024 election and Kamala Harris has faded from the news pages, now dominated by Donald Trump’s choices to fill critical roles in his administration. For those who hoped for a different outcome, the election brought a painful reckoning with reality. Many of us viewed Trump, a lying, disrespectful, vengeful person who defies the law he will be sworn to uphold, as wholly unfit to be President, yet more than half of our voters chose to elect him.
Pundits far more knowledgeable than I am have spent thousands of words trying to explain what went wrong for Democrats. As I’ve read the explanations and listened to interviews with voters, it appears there’s no single reason Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris and probably no single issue that tanked her campaign. But she seemed a decent, hardworking, well-prepared candidate our children and the world could admire.
Three emotions, incredulity, sadness and fear, vied for dominance as I watched the election returns and it became obvious that Trump gained ground with voters across the spectrum. I knew the election would be close, but I did not believe that Americans would elect a convicted felon, a man who talked about grabbing women’s genitals because he thought he could get away with it and a man who incited a violent riot in an effort to hold on to power. For me, no matter his policies, that behavior disqualified him from leading our nation.
The triumph of Trump saddened me because it felt like a repudiation of the hope that we were finally beginning to achieve a nation where all men and all women are “created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” My fear arises from the fact that Trump has demonstrated that he believes he is above the law and he will become President with little to restrain or moderate his exercise of power.
Average voters like me can’t know what Donald Trump is like out of the public spotlight. Perhaps there’s a side of him that is more decent than the public persona he has created, but that persona scorns traits -- honesty, integrity, humility, compassion – most of us were brought up to admire and aspire to attain.
Even so, many people I hold dear voted for Trump – friends, neighbors and family members. These Trump voters are people I know to be kind, decent human beings who would consider much of Trump’s behavior reprehensible in anyone else. And they probably consider it reprehensible in him, but they voted for him in spite of it.
Clearly, something powerful compelled that loyalty. I admit I don’t understand it. Perhaps it is, as some commentators have written, just about peace and prosperity. Voters blamed President Joe Biden and Harris as his vice president, for policies affecting the economy, immigration and wars abroad with which they are unhappy. Perhaps it is the changing media landscape that allows us to live in our own information silos. Perhaps, as a Wall Street Journal analysis suggests, many Democratic voters just didn’t turn out.
Maybe not understanding is my own fault. I’ve avoided talking to Trump supporters about why they are committed to him for fear of risking relationships important to me. As a journalist, one of my core beliefs is that I should be able to ask questions and listen to the answers with some measure of objective detachment. But I haven’t done that and, it appears, neither has the Democratic establishment.
It looks as though Republicans will take control of every branch of the federal government after this election. If Democrats hope to emerge from the ashes of this defeat a stronger party, more objective listening might be an approach that will lead to policies that resonate with a majority of voters.
On a happier note, in North Carolina, the news was better for Democrats and voter turnout was 73.1 percent, the highest in the state this century, despite the road closings and other devastation wrought in Western North Carolina by Hurricane Helene. Governor-elect Josh Stein easily defeated GOP candidate Mark Robinson and several council of state seats went to Democrats including Superintendent of Public Education-elect Mo Green.
While Republicans retained control of the N.C. House and Senate, Democrats narrowly broke the GOP supermajority in the House, meaning Republicans will have to get at least one Democratic vote to override a gubernatorial veto. In an opinion piece, WRAL in Raleigh interpreted the results as meaning North Carolina voted for reasonable policies and priorities over radical agendas. Though I am disappointed by the outcome of the national elections, I believe most Americans do want reasonable policies and priorities. We are a nation founded on the principle of majority rule and the majority has spoken. Now we can only pray that the outcome will serve the greater good, perhaps in ways many of us cannot now foresee.
We are lurching through a time of rapid change in the ways we communicate with one another and the changing media landscape helped bring us to this place. I once believed that in a free and open marketplace of ideas, the truth would win out. I’m not so sure anymore, but maybe over the arc of time it will be so. In the meantime, overcoming the fear of having uncomfortable conversations with friends and family may be a place to start. As Abraham Lincoln once said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Joy Franklin is a journalist and writer who served as editorial page editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times for 10 years. Prior to that she served as executive editor of the Times-News in Hendersonville, N.C. Franklin writes for Carolina Commentary.
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