The Dawn of the Trump Era

Yascha Mounk at his eponymous Substack:

Back in 2016, the whiff of aberration hung over Trump’s success. His opponents could claim that his victory was some strange historical fluke. They could put it down to foreign interference or to Russian hackers. Political scientists confidently pronounced that he represented the final, Pyrrhic victory of a declining electorate—the last, desperate stand of the old, white man.

But aberrations tend not to happen twice, and 2024 puts the last nail in the coffin of that distorted interpretation. Though some cable news hosts may be tempted to replay their old hits in months to come, only a few diehards will believe Trump to be the Manchurian Candidate this time around. Perhaps most interestingly, it is now clear that Trump put into action the advice which Reince Priebus gave Republicans after their second consecutive defeat to Barack Obama, to court minority votes the party had traditionally conceded to Democrats. His victory is not due to old white men but rather due to his success in building a deeply multiethnic coalition—as his crushing victory in Florida, a state that long ago became “majority minority,” attests.

How could this possibly have happened?

More here.

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