Liberal Tears

By Nick Catoggio

Monday, October 21, 2024

 

The most astute prediction I’ve seen about the election was made last week on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, of all places.

 

It didn’t come from Tucker and it wasn’t a forecast of who’ll win or by how many electoral votes. It came from political journalist Mark Halperin, imagining how a Donald Trump victory will be received by the half (possibly more than half) of the electorate that’ll vote against him.

 

“I say this not flippantly. I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country. I think tens of millions of people will question their connection to the nation, their connection to other human beings, their connection to their vision of what their future for them and their children could be like,” Halperin said.

 

…

 

“I think there’ll be alcoholism, there’ll be broken marriages … They think he’s the worst person possible to be president, and having won by the hand of [former FBI Director] Jim Comey and fluke in 2016 and then performed in office for four years and denied who won the election last time and January 6,” Halperin said. “The fact that, under a fair election, America chose, by the rules, pre-agreed to, Donald Trump again—I think it will cause the biggest mental health crisis in the history of America. And I don’t think it will be kind of a passing thing that by the inauguration will be fine. I think it will be sustained and unprecedented and hideous, and I don’t think the country’s ready for it.”

 

…

 

“Like something that’s so traumatic that it is impossible for even the most mentally healthy person to truly process and incorporate into their daily life. I hope I’m wrong, but I think that’s what’s going to happen for tens of millions of people, because they think that their fellow citizens supporting Trump is a sign of fundamental evil at the heart of their fellow citizens and of the nation,” he continued. “That’s how they view it.”

 

“Are you being serious?” an incredulous Carlson asked him at one point.

 

I laughed. 

 

The mainstream media has collectively interviewed thousands of Trump voters over the last nine years, sometimes enduring the verbal abuse of crowds at MAGA rallies to do so, in hopes of understanding what makes them tick. That’s easy to mock—it’s an update of the “conservatives in the mist” genre of journalism that Jonah Goldberg derided more than 20 years ago—but it’s an effort to meet the other side where they are, at least.

 

There’s no such effort in right-wing media going the other way. Never will you see an earnest attempt to engage with voters’ objections to Trump in a publication to the right of, say, National Review. Even figures with conservative bona fides like Liz Cheney are grunted away as closet liberals who aspire to media stardom rather than citizens whose plainly justified concerns about a second Trump term are worth taking seriously.

 

So when Tucker appeared taken aback by Halperin’s prediction, I think he was being sincere. Right-wingers have insulated themselves so totally from opposing viewpoints that they can’t foresee why losing this election will affect Kamala Harris’ voters more profoundly than losing in 2016 affected Hillary Clinton’s voters. Liberal tears always flow after “socialism” is defeated at the polls, right? Why would this time be different?

 

They should start thinking about it. For millions of Americans, Trump being reelected will feel like the social contract itself is breaking.

 

The point of no return.

 

I dislike Halperin’s term “mental health crisis,” not because it’s wrong but because it’s cringe. It conjures the image of weepy Brooklynites speed-dialing their therapists on Election Night as the returns roll in, begging them for an emergency Xanax refill—and to make it a double.

 

A better term for what he described to Carlson, I think, is “identity crisis.”

 

There was no national identity crisis after Clinton lost because her defeat was easily explained by normal politics. Most Americans disliked her, including progressives in her own base, and she carried a ton of baggage from her 25 years in Washington. And Trump was a celebrity outsider promising to shake up a system that practically everyone disdains. He had no track record in public service: If you wanted to believe that he’d govern responsibly as president (giggle), there was nothing Democrats could point to that would disabuse you of that belief.

 

Trump was the ultimate change agent and Clinton was the ultimate establishmentarian. You didn’t need to give up on America in order to understand why he won, and only barely at that.

 

But if he wins again, you do. And realizing that is what’s going to trigger the massive identity crisis that Halperin is anticipating.

 

America has had spells of mass public disillusionment before, but two realities have always conspired to soften the psychological blow. One is that the disillusionment happens gradually, not suddenly. Think of the wars in Vietnam and, to a lesser extent, Iraq: Most who grew to oppose them and eventually regard them as corrupt came to that conclusion over the course of years, adapting incrementally as events guided them.

 

The other is the comfort of knowing that the government whose policies caused your disillusionment can be replaced. If you hated the war in Vietnam, you could vote Republican in 1968; if you hated Nixon and Watergate, you could vote Democratic in 1976; if you hated the war in Iraq, you could vote Democratic in 2008. Democracy is a mechanism of accountability. When your government lets you down, you hold it accountable by replacing it.

 

Neither of those consolations will obtain if Trump wins next month.

 

The disillusionment will happen suddenly, not gradually. Millions of Americans who believed Trump was competitive earlier this year only because of Joe Biden’s infirmity will discover that replacing the president with a much younger Democrat as nominee didn’t solve the problem. Trump didn’t win because he was marginally less unfit for office than a senescent 81-year-old; he won because the country wanted him back.

 

And the disillusionment this time will be due to the American people themselves, not to the policies of a corrupt administration that can be replaced in four years’ time. That’s what Halperin means when he imagines Harris voters questioning “their connection to the nation, their connection to other human beings, their connection to their vision of what their future for them and their children could be like.” The electorate will have been offered a choice between an underwhelming but thoroughly mainstream Democrat and “the most openly fascist campaign ever undertaken by a major-party nominee for president”—and chosen the latter.

 

At the risk of shocking Tucker again, let me suggest that there’s no coming back from that. A Trump victory will be akin to the moment in an unhappy marriage where the spouses are arguing again and one hauls off and hits the other. It might not mean that the marriage is over—but it’ll never be the same. Both partners will have learned something hard about what one is capable of and that will inform their future interactions forever.

 

This isn’t 2016. Trump is no longer an unknown quantity about whom the average voter might be reasonably optimistic. Harris isn’t a dynastic establishment dinosaur whom everyone and their mother dislikes. One can point to Democratic policy failures like inflation and immigration to rationalize why the election will be closer than it rightly should be, but there’s no way to rationalize an outright Trump victory except as a reflection of the American character.

 

And if you’re an American and you suddenly don’t recognize yourself in that reflection—you’re going to experience the most profound identity crisis of your life.

 

Risky business.

 

Not all Trump voters are supporting him because of his worst impulses (although plenty are) but every Trump voter is supporting him despite his worst impulses, at least. Let’s take a moment to consider what they’re prepared to validate, enthusiastically or not, because they’ve decided that trying to bring down prices somehow by slapping gigantic Trumpy tariffs on everything is more important.

 

Their votes will affirm that conniving to disenfranchise Americans by overturning a national election, including inciting a mob against Congress, doesn’t make someone unfit for national office—even if that someone is already plotting to do it again. Given that precedent, the only reason future losing candidates will have not to scheme to undo their defeats is an atavistic sense of civic duty in a country that increasingly regards such things as “weakness.”

 

Their votes will affirm that a felony rap sheet isn’t disqualifying for a president and, with respect to the federal indictments pending against Trump, will effectively place him above the law. For the first time in American history, a politician will have been granted formal power by the electorate to quash his own criminal jeopardy. After receiving broad prospective immunity by the U.S. Supreme Court as a constitutional matter, the new president would be receiving de facto retrospective immunity for previous crimes from his voters.

 

Their votes will affirm that, having lived through the circus of the first Trump term, they’d prefer to plunge the country back into that daily anxiety rather than give mundane Democrat Kamala Harris a chance. Corruption, freak-show personnel choices, government-by-whim, and policy-by-tweet are a given. Whether a second term will involve more lavish and impeachable crises, like new coup attempts or flouting court orders, remains to be seen, but Trump’s voters are plainly willing to run the risk. Knowing now what a Trump presidency looks like, they’ve decided they want a sequel.

 

Their votes will affirm that they’re prepared to put America through another succession crisis in 2028. Trump may or may not step down willingly at the end of a second term, as the 22nd Amendment requires him to do, but even if he does so it’s difficult to believe that his administration will meekly acquiesce in the transfer of power following a Democratic victory. If GOP nominee J.D. Vance loses to Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro, imperiling Trump’s governing legacy, how smoothly do you imagine the certification of Shapiro’s win will go?

 

Their votes will affirm that the worst human being to hold the presidency since at least Woodrow Wilson represents America well enough to deserve a second turn in the job. Despite Trump being eight years older and clearly in decline, despite the fact that he’s running on naked malevolence toward his domestic enemies, despite him having repudiated every policy and civic virtue that conservatives once claimed to stand for, his supporters are desperate to reward him with power. If you elect a cretin once, you’ve made a mistake; if you elect him twice, you’re the cretin.

 

To walk down the street in modern America is to know that, on average, every other person you pass is prepared to accept all of the risks I’ve just described, if not eager to do so, and that they’d accuse you of “Trump derangement” for feeling upset about it. And that will remain true whether or not Trump wins next month. But it’s easy to ignore it and pretend “America is still America” as long as there’s reason to believe that the share of the population that doesn’t condone Trumpian postliberalism outnumbers the share that does.

 

What happens next month if we’re forced to stop pretending?

 

You can accuse Halperin of having been overwrought when he said that Harris voters will treat a Trump victory as “a sign of fundamental evil at the heart of their fellow citizens and of the nation,” but he’s correct that the result will be read as a moral indictment of the country to a vastly greater extent than the result in 2016 was. A virtuous people would not reelect Donald Trump, having learned from hard experience who and what he is. If Americans choose to reelect him anyway, what’s the obvious conclusion to be drawn?

 

Tens of millions of people are going to wake up next month to find that they don’t live in the country they thought they did. Liberals, classical and otherwise, will discover overnight that they’re now outnumbered by a coalition of earnest fascists, partisan Republicans who’ll rationalize literally anything, and millions upon millions of less tribal voters who don’t care how corrupt Trump is or which laws he breaks or whether he overturns elections or not so long as they get the results on their pet issues that they’re hoping for.

 

That’s an identity crisis. A big one. And a lot of people are going to be having it at the same time.

 

Things to come.

 

I’m not smart enough to predict what it’ll look like. There will be protests, I assume, but less because the protesters hope to achieve anything useful than because they need to vent their grief at what the country’s become and can’t think of what else to do. Who would they even be protesting? Trump, who did nothing worse in this case than win an election? Trump voters, who relish liberal tears and will exult in the agony they’ve created for those of us who believe a great country shouldn’t be led by a fascist?

 

There are two safe bets for America in the long term after a Trump win. One is that contempt for liberal democracy will increase in both parties. Having paid no price for the 2020 coup attempt and then had their commitment to authoritarianism rewarded electorally in 2024, Republicans will veer further toward postliberalism and the belief that democracy is legitimate only insofar as it results in them winning. Democrats, on the other hand, will conclude that a system capable of empowering Donald Trump twice (possibly with a minority of the popular vote in both cases) isn’t worth saving, let alone respecting. Left-wing illiberalism will gain traction. Extreme pride in being American, already weak among liberals, will collapse.

 

The other safe bet is that Americans of different political parties will socialize less than they already do. “The big sort” will accelerate on the micro and macro levels; many Harris voters will withdraw (further) from some or all of the Trump supporters in their lives. Partly that’ll be an act of shunning to express their moral objection, partly it’ll be a coping mechanism designed to ease the national identity crisis they’re experiencing by surrounding themselves with a like-minded community of liberals. Whatever the motive, there’s no question that the social “immune response” to Trump’s reelection will be much greater than it would have been to a Nikki Haley or even Ron DeSantis victory. A relationship between the two sides that long ago declined from “opponents” to “adversaries” will now trend more aggressively toward “enemies.”

 

It’s going to be grim, as the perspicacious Mark Halperin foresaw.

 

The best I can do to give you reason to hope is to imagine that one side might be so thoroughly vindicated in their expectations of a second Trump term that the other will belatedly come around to their position. Maybe Trump will seal the border, avoid triggering a fiscal calamity with his insane economic policies, and somehow not cause a half-dozen constitutional crises in the process. Republicans were right! Or maybe Trump will be exactly the guy he’s been for every hour of every day since Election Day 2020. (Since 1946, really.) Democrats were right!

 

But don’t get your hopes up. The first scenario approaches impossibility in how unlikely it is. The second imagines a capacity for remorse among Trump voters for which there’s precisely zero precedent. Since 2015, they’ve experienced a total of maybe 72 hours of introspection about him that began on the afternoon of January 6, 2021; any sense of shame at what they’ve enabled was conditioned out of them long ago by right-wing media. No matter how crazy Trump’s second term gets, no matter how loathsomely he behaves, there will never come a moment when they admit that Kamala Harris was the lesser of two evils. Literally never.

 

Your Trump-supporting neighbor is giving him carte blanche to do his worst. That’s the country we live in now, whatever happens next month. Somehow, we’ll have to make the best of it.