Trump Won. Now What?

Maintain your alert status.

He’s back.

Oh, what a night it was.

I realize I sounded a somber, pessimistic note going into Election Day, and my overall prognosis of the strategic situation hasn’t changed. Still, I didn’t see last Tuesday’s outcome happening. Honestly, I would’ve preferred a decisive victory in either direction, because if it’d been as close as we all anticipated, it could’ve proven deeply problematic, to say the least. It’s difficult to deny Donald Trump won, since it not only wasn’t close, but he also won the popular vote, the first time for a Republican candidate in 20 years. Had we had another instance of Trump winning the Electoral College but not the popular vote, there would be an even greater uproar about the way democracy works in America.

All said, I’m not going to hide the fact that I’m relieved Trump won the election. I made clear my feelings about Vice President Kamala Harris, to say nothing of the entire leftist Regime that controls this country, so this is as total a victory as any we’re going to get while times are still normal. The story isn’t over - not by a long shot - and I’ll explain why later. For now, let’s look at some of the early lessons learned from this rather dramatic outcome.¹

Age Decides Elections

Despite the outcome, all age groups voted in favor of Harris or split the vote. Except one - Generation X:

There’s going to be a lot of speculation in the coming days about why this happened. Despite being a smaller generation than their Baby Boomer predecessors and Millennial successors, ‘Xers’ were the key age group, even in all the battleground states. When Barack Obama won the 2008 election, buoyed by the Millennial vote, many at the time concluded a decisive leftward shift in politics was going to occur, which it did, in many ways. It appears we may be running up against the limits of that, however, as even the oldest Millennials are now well over age 40 and supported Trump over Harris in a few of the battleground states. It’s still too early to make any judgments on the politics of Gen. Z

What we can conclude, however, is that age structure is very important for political stability. It’s what prevents a country from going too far to one side or the other. I’ve been commenting a lot lately on how aging populations are a big reason why “Nothing Ever Happens” any longer in the United States and the West. If America had, say, the age structure of the 1960s, when the median age was in the late 20s, the politics of the last ten years would look quite different than they do now.

With a more balanced age structure, young voters eventually become older voters without totally dominating politics, elections becoming more a matter of turnout. One of the reasons Europe and Japan have stagnated is because their populations have aged. It certainly makes for more peaceful societies, but not only are older voters less flexible, when they make the wrong choice, like to invite in masses of Third World migrants, they’re left completely defenseless.

Likewise, change may be easier to come by with younger populations, but they’re also prone to instability and unrest. Despite riots being common in America, destabilizing levels of civil unrest like we saw in the 1960s are far less likely today due to a balanced age structure. 2020 proved that unrest is always lurking around the corner in even the most powerful country on the planet, but we should look at that as an exception rather than the rule.

Without making this an essay on demographics, take a look at the population pyramid of our southern neighbor, Mexico, a country with higher levels of instability:

Now, take a look at the age structure of the U.S.:

Demographics doesn’t explain everything. But it explains a lot.

For now, at least, American remains in a demographic sweet spot. Concerns about birth rates aside, I think we should all take some solace in the fact we’re not an overly old or overly young population. It’s really to our benefit.

How Far Apart Are Young Men And Women, Really?

The ideological gap between young men and young women was a major talking point throughout this election season. By all accounts, young men and young women have diverged so wildly as to be living in two different worlds. It’s something I’ve commented on numerous times here. Did this election prove this to be the case?

Well, yes, unfortunately. However, the chasm may not be as wide as believed. Take a look at how the vote broke down by gender plus age:

A few things stand out: the 18-to-29 age group comprises only 14 percent of the electorate. Men 30-to-44 - my age group - comprises 12 percent alone. Some of this may be turnout-related, but the point is that they aren’t voting in large enough numbers to significantly impact the outcome. What also stands out is that though the male-female gap is widest among 18-to-29, it’s not that much wider than other age groups. For example, 47 percent of men 18-to-29 voted for Trump, while 37 percent of women 18-to-29 did. That’s a 10 percent difference. It’s significant, but not yawning. If we were talking a 20-percentage point difference, I’d be more concerned, but that isn’t the case. If anything, the divide among women seems to be a bigger issue.

Furthermore, though young men voted firmly for Trump, a greater percentage of young women voted for him this time over last, also:

Source

Put another way, if the gap is widening between men and women, it’s driven by men shifting rightward, not women shifting leftward. It’s akin to how young women became radicalized leftward starting a decade ago, even though men were remaining more or less consistent. So while there exists a pronounced disparity, it doesn’t appear to be worsening at this point. This should only be construed as a good thing, since all societies depend on gender cooperation, not gender competition.

Maybe I’m just caught up in the euphoria in the moment and choosing to indulge in positive thinking. There are still challenges, no doubt, but as long as gender relations don’t continue to deteriorate, that’s good enough for now. At least America doesn’t appear to be going the way of South Korea. And yes, I’m aware leftist women want to start their own “4B” movement, but this was something that emerged in South Korea after decades of declining birth rates. It’s the outcome, not the cause, of deeper-seated social problems. I’ve explained in the past why South Korea is a poor example of what to expect in the U.S., but it suffices to say the 4B movement is an extreme, exaggerated reaction to problems that are unique to South Korea.

In the U.S., I expect it to be a passing fad.

Are Childless Cat Ladies Really A Problem?

Continuing on the topic of gender, take a look at how the vote broke down between parents and non-parents. Specifically, look at how it broke down among women without children:

They very decisively went for Harris and, at 38 percent, comprise an alarmingly large share of the electorate. However, 44 percent went for Trump. It’s an 11-percentage point gap, but far less than I would’ve imagined.

Vice President-elect JD Vance’s remarks about “childless cat ladies” caused a stir over the summer, considered to potentially drive women voters away. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t, but while childless women clearly tilt leftward, it’s not a complete monopoly, either. Moreover, there’s not a big difference between childless women and mothers.

It begs the question: if they’re a problem, is it because they lean left? Or is it because they’re such a large portion of voters? If it’s the latter, then is this a problem that can be fixed?

The Left No Longer Owns The Non-White Vote

Perhaps the rudest wake-up call for the Left was the gains Trump made among non-Whites, Hispanics/Latinos specifically:

Broken down by gender, the rightward shift among non-Whites is even more pronounced, driven by men:

The Hispanic/Latino vote is becoming increasingly split, similar to the White vote in some respects. For the most part, the racial breakdown remains similar to that of historical elections, but after years of drifting leftward, the trend among non-Whites appears to at least be slowing down. Even Asians, who since at least 2008 have been an overwhelmingly left-wing group, have moved right this election and the last. You have to go back to 2004, a full 20 years, for a Republican candidate to have performed this well among non-Whites.

All this, despite Trump’s supposedly dehumanizing, racist rhetoric towards non-Whites. The fashioning of Trump as a White nationalist/supremacist has always been entirely a media construct, but it’s also true that someone who speaks like he does, in the past, would’ve had a tough time courting support from non-Whites. At least among men, however, Trump’s bluntness is something that’s actually resonating. Along with that, perhaps many of us are just tired of stepping on eggshells, realizing that what you say matters more than how you say it.

Will the rightward shift among non-Whites hold? All we know for now is that racial politics appears to be running into a wall at this point. I think this can only be a good thing for Americans and, whether you voted for Harris or Trump, should be thankful that race, at least this election, wasn’t the dividing line between the two Americas.

Black Americans Continue To Self-Balkanize

The one group for whom their politics remains racialized is Blacks. It’s not surprising, but concerning that this one group remains divergent from the rest of the country, despite cultural dominance and an entire state built around addressing their grievances. Yes, Blacks have never voted for Republican candidates in large numbers, so not much has changed, but they also show the least amount of flexibility in their vote compared to other races.

I don’t engage in outrage-porn, nor do I want to amplify toxic voices, so I’ll let you peruse social media to see what I’m talking about. The loudest Black voices in the room have been raging about the election outcome, going after White women and Hispanic/Latino voters for failing to be faithful to the Democratic Party. Some of their rhetoric has been violent; par for the course, but it’s a sign of the extent to which they see themselves apart from the rest of society that they feel they need to threaten everyone else for not doing as they demanded.

If race relations between most Americans are improving, or at least no longer becoming a political fault line, that doesn’t look like it’s going to be the case for Blacks. They have always been and will always continue to occupy their own sphere of society, a sphere that’s become autonomous and untouchable over time. Meanwhile, they insist having access to the spheres of others. They’ll likely remain loyal to the Democratic Party and the Regime, come hell or high water, along with maintaining the volatile coalition they share with the highly-educated, upon whose generosity their livelihoods depend.

It’s going to take time to see how this all shapes out, but for now, I’m unfortunately of the view that Black Americans will continue to end up at odds with the rest of America.

Politics Of Disdain Don’t Work

Not for long, anyway. The Left’s entire platform is defined by disdain - disdain for men, Whites, rural Americans, anyone a half-inch to the right of them. It was disheartening to see how much such a message could resonate with the public and was a big reason I became so black-pilled over the years. If the people in charge are winning while talking about how much they despise those they lead, then how could any genuine American feel optimistic about the direction of the country?

A common refrain among Democrats following the election was that uneducated Americans voted for Republicans. Hence, only the stupid vote for Republicans. Their characterization of anyone with less than a bachelor’s degree varies depending on the level of political support they receive from them, especially if they’re White males.

Source

Here’s the thing: most Americans, non-Whites included, would be considered “uneducated” by Democratic Party standards, Blacks especially. I think the rightward shift you see among non-Whites, Hispanics/Latinos specifically, might be attributable to the Democrats choosing to appeal more and more to the college-educated class and female voters. The problem, of course, is that the former is a minority of the population and the latter half the population. The mileage you’re going to get out of such an approach will run out very quickly.

I’m still pessimistic, but I also feel more hopeful. The outcome of the election tells me that politics of disdain have now exceeded the point of diminishing returns. You just can’t run on “I hate White people, I hate uneducated hicks, I hate men, Americans are stupid!” forever without people getting tired of it. If you harbor that much disdain for the people you represent, what are you still doing here?

Which goes hand-in-hand with the next lesson…

You Can’t Hate The Country You Expect To Lead

Author Thomas Frank had this to say in a recent New York Times op-ed:

Everyone has a moment when they first realized that Donald Trump might well return, and here is mine. It was back in March, during a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, when I happened to read the explanatory text beside an old painting. This note described the westward advance of the United States in the 19th century as “settler colonialism.” I read it and I knew instantly where this nation was going.

My problem with this bit of academic jargon was not that it was wrong, per se, or that President Biden was somehow responsible for putting it there, but rather that it offered a glimpse of our poisoned class relations. Some curator at one of our most exalted institutions of public instruction had decided to use a currently fashionable, morally loaded academic keyword to address a visitor to the museum — say, a family from the Midwest, doing the round of national shrines — and teach them a lesson about American wickedness.

It’s one thing to learn history. It’s another thing to run for elections by lambasting our history. If you want to lead a country, you cannot talk about all the things it’s done wrong. You just can’t. Your job may be to improve upon what your predecessors did, but you cannot say that the founding of this country itself was in error, which is exactly what Kamala Harris did.

From Columbus Day last month:

Source

Maybe an argument could be made that celebrating the initial discovery of America is a bit much, given that the British settlers who created this country wouldn’t arrive for at least another 100 years following Columbus. But that’s for scholars to quibble over, not for someone who wants to be president. No self-respecting American wants to hear someone running for office say that the discovery and settlement of the land that’d become our home today was a crime against humanity. If that’s the way they feel, again, what are any of us doing here?

America is a big enough country to accommodate all sorts of viewpoints, no matter how repugnant or wrongheaded they may be. Not all viewpoints need to be represented by our national leadership, nor should they.

A Cultural Shift Might Be Happening

This isn’t a culture blog - if that’s your thing,

Rod Dreher

’s class is just down the hall - but politics is downstream of culture. While I don’t believe this period of left-wing dominion is over - far from it, in fact - I also believe we’re seeing signs that it, too, is running up against hard-set limits.

Scholar Paul Anleitner had a short but sweet thread on some of the telltale signs over the last four years showing leftist cultural domination may have peaked or is peaking:

Source

Couple these trends with what Neil Howe says about the Fourth Turning: culture becomes more “conventional” in its wake. In 20 years, our society may not be back in the 1950s, but it’ll also be a far cry from the leftist libertine paradise it is today. Part of the reason for that return to conventionality is because the common good eventually comes to take precedence over the individual good. Howe says we’re already seeing signs among young Americans of a desire for stronger community, so the implication is what happens when our culture, then our politics, shifts rightward.

America remains and will always be an individualist culture, but I also think there’s going to be a collective “growing up” in the coming years, where we end up understanding that what happens in our private lives don’t need to become a matter of public policy.

Local Politics Still Matter Most

One of the biggest political victories of the night came not at the national level, but at the state level, in California:

Source

How popular was this measure? Every single county, even in the deep-blue Bay Area and Los Angeles metro, voted for it:

Source

California still went overwhelmingly for Harris. The sense that disorder has become normalized and that our society doesn’t take crime seriously enough seems to be undeniable at this point, however, regardless of which side of the aisle you’re on.

In still another victory, pro-crime Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, who was supported by George Soros, was ousted from office. It’s safe to say that the moral panic caused by George Floyd in May 2020 has now finally run it’s course, and not a second too soon.

These are all also reminders that what happens in your area is more important than what happens in Washington. There’s actually not a whole lot the president nor Congress can do about what’s happening where you live. Pay attention to local politics and vote frequently. It’s where it matters most.

Stealing Elections Still Is A Tall Order

The day after the election, the following chart made the rounds, suggesting fraud had occurred yet again, given the disparity in votes won by Kamala Harris, specifically:

One of the reasons I waited a week before publishing this essay is so I could get a clearer picture regarding voter turnout and vote totals. As of this writing, 99% of votes have been counted. Trump has exceeded his 2020 vote totals by a million, while Harris is short approximately 10 million of Biden’s votes in 2020.

So what happened? Did 10 million Democrats die during the last four years? Did 10 million voters, all of whom cast ballots for Biden last time, sit out this election? How did Trump match his 2020 vote total, but Harris is short so many votes compared to Biden’s 2020 total?

According to one calculation, there are still roughly six million votes left to be counted, which would eat up a chunk of that 10 million disparity:

Source

The difference between the 2020 combined vote total and the 2024 projected combined vote total comes out to approximately three million. While I find it difficult to believe turnout was less this time than last, three million missing votes is a lot more believable than 10 million.

We’ll need to wait until all the votes are counted and to see what turnout actually was before drawing any definitive conclusions on what happened. For now, I remain skeptical that mass fraud occurred this election or the last, which has always been my position. I realize that upsets some people, but I’m not here to indulge your conspiracy theories. Not sorry.

First, no incumbent president can have a year like Trump did in 2020 and expect to win re-election. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t being serious. Second, Trump’s popularity, up until now, has been overstated due to the fact he courts a following like few other presidents have in our history. He’s a celebrity and celebrities tend to have over-inflated profiles. It’s no surprise that Trump appears more popular than he actually is.

That said, there are plenty of reasons to continue to be skeptical of the election results. Take a look at what happened in the Wisconsin Senate race:

Source

This is exactly what happened last election, where Democratic Party vote totals surged to overtake a Republican lead. It’s not hard evidence of fraud and there are many possible explanations for what’s happening, but it’s stuff like this that makes American elections suspect, whether fraud is real or not. Democracy cannot work unless the people have trust the process; please believe me, bro isn’t going to cut it.

Even the Left has been making claims of fraud, along with mail-in voters claiming they received no notification their vote had been counted. It’s shameless of them, honestly. How do they go from calling the 2020 elections the “most secure ever” and characterizing the questioning of election results as an assault on democracy itself, to now suggesting that Trump, an outsider, stole the election? Granted, polls show Democratic voters have more faith in the results of the election, ironically enough, than Republican voters. But for anyone on the Left to insinuate fraud was the reason why Trump won this time around is rich.

I digress. It’s a lot to ask, but my hope is that these last two elections force Americans to be more willing to question our elections; if not the outcome, then certainly the process. Mail-in balloting is convenient, but you lose positive control over your vote. This is why so many people prefer voting in person. For my part, I dropped off my ballot at a polling location on Election Day. It’s the best of both worlds; I voted on my own time and still retained positive control over the ballot.

I also think Election Day ought to literally be “election day.” The idea that people can vote weeks in advance always seemed nonsensical to me. Maybe a week of early voting is tolerable, but elections should mostly take place on a single day and be resolved in a single day. Only in America are elections this drawn out process that takes weeks and months to conclude. Our size isn’t an excuse; even Brazil manages to get through elections in a single day.

We also should take a critical look at mass democracy itself, but nobody’s going to go for that. Not any time soon, anyway. We’ll just have to wait for the system to fail. Only then will the Overton window have shifted enough for Americans to be able to question their democracy to any meaningful degree.

This Is No Time To Relax

It’s easy to think that Trump’s victory makes things right with the world again. Nothing could be further from the truth. The initial shock of his resounding victory is wearing off and the Left is becoming unhinged, to employ an overused term. There are stories all across social media of Harris voters cutting off relations with family and friends over the election results. Historian Nicole Williams, friend of this blog, explained this sounds like the run-up to the French Revolution, the gold standard for violent revolutions. Families and social relations become marred during periods of political turmoil, but what we’re seeing today is entirely ideologically driven. Ideologically-driven wars and revolutions are among the nastiest, because ideology demands of adherents total surrender, including one’s relationships.

Not to mention Trump won’t even take office for another three months. That’s plenty of time for things to go wrong. I wouldn’t interpret the institutional Left taking the ‘L’ the way they have as any sign of magnanimity on their part. As they did the first time, their intent is still to make things as ungovernable for Trump as possible. There’s no way the Regime goes from calling Trump the next “Hitler” and an “existential threat to democracy” to playing normal politics with him. It’d be damaging to their own credibility, if nothing else, if they did.

Our friend

Anarchonomicon

warns:

The left and deep state is in shock right now but America’s still really vulnerable to civil conflict and crisis in the lame duck session before Jan 20th

There are about 4 scenarios where this could still result in conflict:

-Assassination of Trump
-A plot to not confirm his since he’s “An Insurrectionist”
-Mass Migrant rioting “No Person is Illegal”
-War with Iran/Russia

They’re really vulnerable and desperate right now, and as soon as they get out of their catatonic they'll realize they only have until Jan 20th to do something to stop or cripple a Trump presidency.

But those are the near war scenarios

...

If we make it through that and there also aren’t Migrant riots this Summer... Next most likely wars are with Iran in the middle-east sometime over the next 2 years, then with China over Taiwan in the next 4 years... And if we somehow dodge all of that 2028 might have a civil conflict... But we’re way more likely to make it to a big imperial budget crisis around 2030.

I don’t agree with everything he says, but I share his view that our troubles are inescapable at this point and Trump’s election won’t alter the trajectory of the country. The best he can do is make the experience a bit more tolerable. If the Left lashes out as strong as I think they will, however, it could be even worse than anticipated.

I still maintain the view that we’re not going to see civil war or revolution erupt in the next three to four months. I still think Rudyard “Whatifalthist” Lynch is wrong when he says 1,000 people will die due to political violence between now and April. I do believe 2025 will be a year when things dramatically change for the worse. America will suffer a foreign policy debacle, likely involving Iran or Russia, serious resistance to Trump’s mass deportation plan will emerge, and the Democratic Party will resort to all sorts of antics to make it impossible for Trump to govern.

At worst, I can even see Trump not even making it four years, let alone his first year. Something similar can be said of JD Vance, the Vice President-elect. I do have a scenario in mind for how things could shape out, but given the fluidity of events and the fact I tend to stay away from predictions on this blog, I’m only going to say 2025 is going to be a chaotic year. There’s just too much pressure that’s been built up into the system and that pressure needs to be released somehow, somewhere. I think the Left has shown how they do it.

What can we do about it? Stay vigilant. Maintain your alert status. We aren’t out of the woods yet. As Todd Sepulveda pointed out in his latest podcast episode, interest in prepping declined noticeably after Trump’s election in 2016 and traffic on his website dropped again last week following Trump’s victory. Don’t be one of those people. The worst is yet to come, so continue to use the time you have right now to continue prepping. If nothing else, remember: emergencies can happen in your personal life at any moment. Don’t center your preps around elections, center them around the tough times life throws your way.

Did You Expect The Outcome?

What did you think of the election results? Did you expect it to be closer? What do you think will happen in the next three months? What do you think will happen in 2025 and during the next Trump administration? Will he even make it through the term?

Talk it out in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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1. Unless stated otherwise, all data gleaned from NBC News Exit Polls.