I thought President Trump was going to score a decisive win. I thought we would be on our way to a second term. Right now, we have allegations of voter fraud, illegal backdating of ballots, and legal challenges filed by the Trump campaign. I know some people aren’t happy with this observation, but we are in Hail Mary territory. This isn’t 3rd and manageable. Joe Biden is on the cusp of being declared the next president of the United States. If all the legal challenges fail and the legal votes still have Trump coming up short, it will be a tragic end to a presidency that could have been one of the greats. I do believe that with Trump, the best was yet to come. Regardless, no matter the outcome, two things are true. Trumpism is here to stay, and I’m a proud supporter of that wing of the GOP. No, that’s not quite right; Trumpism is the GOP right now.
Look, it was a journey. I was a Tea Party-leaning blogger just trying to do my part in bashing the Obama White House. In 2016, the Obama era was coming to an end. No more Bushes. I thought Scott Walker could be the guy. He wasn’t. Then, Marco Rubio—but he wasn’t either. I wasn’t a Trump fan, but he turned me into a die-hard follower. First, I had no choice. He was the nominee. He won the brutal 2016 primaries fair and square. When he got the delegates, the mission changed. It was onto beating Hillary Clinton—and Trump was our best bet. He was the only person. The vast, vast majority of the party understood that. Some people didn’t. We call those folks The Lincoln Project. Kurt Schlichter has a better term: "fredocons."
I don’t care about Trump’s Twitter. Frankly, I don’t get the fuss; the president of the United States communicates with us daily. Oh, the horror! I don’t care that he allegedly frolicked with porn stars. What billionaire hasn’t? And as a businessman in New York City involved with construction, yes—you have to give to both Democrats and Republicans. You need those contracts, right? Also, you’re rich—you can support anyone and everyone and still make out like a bandit. Who cares? After two loser candidates, it was time for a change. Trump hit on immigration from the get-go and shot off from there.
He won the 2016 race in a stunning political upset. He cut taxes, job-killing red tape, created over three million new jobs, altered the courts, withdrew from the nonsensical Paris Climate Agreement, and brought peace to the Middle East via the Abraham Accords. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He gave us a solid 5-4 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, having nominated three justices, with the most recent being Amy Coney Barrett. Oh, and we didn’t get into any new wars under Trump. Consumer confidence reached record highs. Small business confidence reached levels not seen in decades. The North American Free Trade Agreement was renegotiated and became the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. Better trade deals. Trump got it done. This is a record worthy of a second term, I thought. As I said, any proud Trump Republican sees the text and knows this is a winning agenda. It’s pretty much what conservatives had been advocating for the past 30 years or so.
Even with the 2020 race being as it is, eleven million more people voted for Trump in 2020. Hispanic, Asian, and Black voters all shifted more toward Trump. No, he didn’t win these demographics, but there were shifts of at least three to five percentage points. Trump broke into double digits with Black voters, and his performance with Hispanic voters allowed him to easily win Florida.
Trump doubled his support among the LGBT; yes, almost 30 percent of voters in this demographic voted for the president. Where did things go a bit south? Working-class whites. Trump didn’t lose them outright, but he did worse with them in the Midwest, enough to make 2020…interesting. Should Biden win after all the votes and legal challenges are done, this will be why Trump lost. It wasn’t because of women, people of color, or other groups the "woke" Left loves to harp on pervasively. It was because a bunch of white dudes voted Democratic, which has to drive this group insane. Biden, an old white guy—a group liberal America hates with a passion—is president only because other white guys broke away from Trump. Marginal shifts in this demographic could spell electoral death, but all it takes is a Biden agenda failing to "build back better" to rope them back into the fold.
Overall, the GOP coalition is diverse geographically and racially. The Trump agenda drew more supporters. The Trump agenda got more people of color and those of the alternative lifestyle to vote Republican. If Trump were toxic to the GOP brand, the Senate would have flipped decisively, with Joni Ernst and Thom Tillis losing their races. They didn’t. We would have lost a lot of seats in the House. We didn’t. While the experts said Democrats would gain seats, they lost them, especially in the California suburbs of all places. Conservative women lead the charge here. Yes, you read that right—but this will be another story suffocated by the liberal media, as women of this political stripe almost always face constant harassment and erasure from our cultural institutions that are suffocatingly progressive. At the state level, not a single state legislature chamber that was a high priority target for Democrats flipped. This multi-year project saw Democrats torch millions of dollars. It also showed that Trump is not a stain on the Republican brand, whether that be a race for the state legislature race, the U.S. House of Representatives, or the U.S. Senate. Trump allowed these candidates to clinch some solid wins down ticket.
The old Right is dead. The New Right, which is more of a populist-nationalist mold, is here to stay. We need fighters. Trump is one. And he shouldn’t concede or give in until all the legal votes are counted and the legal challenges have had their day in court. Yet, with the situation right now favoring Biden, and should the former VP officially clinch this race, then Trump should run again in 2024. And for any Republican who thinks he or she should challenge Trump if he decides to pull a Grover Cleveland, they should save their money. Trump would easily win that primary contest should he run again if all else fails this year. And I would happily vote for him again. Also, not for nothing, but I would also vote for his son, Donald Trump, Jr., should he have presidential aspirations in the future. The Trump era is not over after 2020. I hope the Never Trump wing understands that; they probably do. And if they can’t handle an agenda that’s grounded in conservative judges, job creation, lower taxes, no more wars, and patriotism that’s proven to reach across racial and ethnic lines—the Democratic Party is always looking to take in new slaves.
