As Democrat areas finally finish their long, long counts (a phenomenon which almost invariably favors Democrats, something that seems statistically unlikely), Trump has maintained his victories in the popular vote and the Electoral College. However, while his Electoral College win is huge (312 to 226), Trump’s margin of victory in the popular vote has shrunk.

Trump no longer has more than 50% of all votes counted. However, he still won more votes than Kamala (76,823,951 to 74,312,576). Had a Democrat done the same—a huge win in the Electoral College plus a sizable popular vote win—the media and other Democrats would have unanimously claimed that Trump has a mandate to do what it takes. In other words, when Democrats win, no matter how much of a squeaker it is, it’s winner takes all. When Republicans win...not so much.

Certainly, that’s the approach Democrats are taking:

• New York Times: “The ‘Landslide’ That Wasn’t: Trump and Allies Pump Up His Narrow Victory: The latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century. But Mr. Trump claims a ‘powerful mandate.’”
• New York Intelligencer: “Trump Has Lost His Popular-Vote Majority”
• Vanity Fair: “Donald Trump Doesn't Have a Mandate to Radically Remake America: He won decisively in the Electoral College, leaving Democrats with much to reflect upon. But the near-final popular vote tally is much narrower than originally thought, with less than half of voters backing the Trump agenda.”
• Salon: “Donald Trump just blew up any concept of a MAGA mandate: Trumpian dysfunction has already stepped on MAGA's victory”

That sounds dire, but the media are much too quick to engage in their little “You didn’t win by that much” victory dance. As Obama said, “I won” and “Elections have consequences.” He was right, too. We have a winner-takes-all system, and Trump won the executive office and all the powers that go with it. Nothing in the Constitution limits executive power according to the margin of victory.

However, there’s more going on behind Trump’s win than Democrats want to admit. The New York Times charted the redshifts across America, and there’s no doubt about it—just as Democrat attacks on Trump made him more conservative, Democrat attacks on norms made most of America more conservative. The redshift across America is overwhelming. Except in a few heavily Democrat areas and a few southern regions (e.g., counties in Georgia and Alabama), the trend is unmistakable: America is increasingly a sea of red.

So why did Kamala get so many votes? She got a lot of votes because, in states that are already blue, the citizens of big cities (and probably the residents of big graveyards) turned out for her. They didn’t shift the Electoral College vote, but they gave her a somewhat closer popular vote count.

One could say that this bodes well for the future, but I’m loath to count my chickens before they hatch. To mangle Benjamin Franklin, what we have here is a conservative country, if we can keep it.

What we’re seeing here is a backlash election. The Democrats went too far with everything—the border, the economy, LGBTQ+ madness, racial obsessions, lawfare, antisemitism, etc.—and Americans pushed back.

That doesn’t mean they’ve bought into conservative values. It means they’re disgusted with Democrat values. If wiser heads on the Democrat side of the aisle prevail and they moderate somewhat, they can woo voters back.

Additionally, if Trump doesn’t make good on his promises (e.g., to unleash our energy sector, control immigration, end the Ukraine war, bring peace to the Middle East, and end the DEI craziness), he will lose voters. And while I know he means to make good, he’s got a lot going against him.

Joe Biden has opened the floodgates to more illegal aliens, unleashed the potential for nuclear war in Ukraine, and is trying to undermine the ability of Israel (our ally) to wage war against Hamas and Hezbollah (Iranian proxies on the U.S. terrorist list).    

The Democrats are also doing everything they can to attack Trump’s cabinet and agency picks. They’ve gone back to the well with the usual sexual stuff, which did knock out Gaetz (although I think there’s more going on there) and which I hope won’t destroy Hegseth.

Regarding the latter, while Pete should drink less and keep his pants on, the case against him is extremely weak. Moreover, if Republicans allow these he said/she said sexual smears to go forward, they’ve reopened the Kavanaugh floodgates. I know that I’m sick of that, and I hope other Americans are, too.

Of course, Trump faces the greatest enemy of them all: RINOS. I suspect that completely honest voting and vote counts would have given Trump much stronger victories in Congress than he has. However, it is what it is, and if the RINOS start stampeding, they can destroy his agenda in the first two years of his second term as surely as they did in the first two years of his first term. After all, he had a congressional majority then, too, and the RINOS blocked almost all his initiatives.

Longer term, Daniel McCarthy says that the Democrats have lost the future. That’s because the 2030 Census will see blue states having shrunk and red states having grown, which will change House and Electoral College representation in Republicans’ favor. I’m less optimistic than he is for several reasons.

First, 2030 is six years away. That’s multiple political lifetimes.

Second, unless Trump gets control of illegal immigration, the blue states will continue to maintain their demographic numbers. After all, California should have lost numbers in 2020. Instead, it gained them because of all the illegal aliens folded into the census. In addition, Biden has seeded the red states with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens.

Third, while people are leaving blue states for red states, just look at Colorado to understand what that can mean. Until Californians moved in because they’d made their state too expensive, Colorado was a red state. That history suggests that most of the people leaving the blue states take their blue state values with them.

All of this is to say that, while America may be poised for a conservative revival right now, there are so many slips ‘twixt cup and lip that, if we get even the slightest bit cocky, we can lose it all.

Image by AI.