South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)

Trump’s right: Election about him

- Jonah Goldberg

At rally in Wisconsin the day before the election, President Donald Trump was talking about the choice between him and Joe Biden. He started to say, “This isn’t about ... ” and then stopped himself and said, “Yeah, it is about me.”

Hewas right. The election was about him.

Republican­s did very, verywell in this election despite the fact that the party-defining person at the top of the ticket was extremely unpopular. Republican­s gained seats in the House when every pundit (including yours truly) and almost every pollster said they would lose seats. In Texas, which many thought might actually go blue for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the planet (measured in political time at least), the Democrats failed to flip a single House seat.

As for the U.S. Senate, as of this writing, with the exception of Colorado’s Cory Gardner, every Republican senator who wasn’t appointed to a seat appeared to have survived. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mc Connell was easily reelected despite massive spending by Democrats to unseat him. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, whonever led in a poll going into the home stretch, was reelected.

At the state level, the GOP gained control of two state legislatur­es (the Alaska House and the New Hampshire Senate), and as of this writing, it didn’t appear that they lost control anywhere (though that could change when all the votes are counted).

Meanwhile, Trump underperfo­rmed his party. He lost states hewon in 2016, and he lost the popular vote by a wider margin than he did in 2016.

This is baffling tomany of the president’s most committed supporters. For them, Donald Trump is bigger and better than the GOP. How could Republican­s survive when he didn’t? Some even think this is proof the election was “stolen” fromhim. (This dangerous and deceitful conspiracy theory would have to explain, among other things, why Democrats would manufactur­e ballots for Bid en but didn’t check the boxes for the down-ticket Democrats). How could Republican­s do so well when Trump didn’t?

Because the election was about him. One reason many of Trump’s biggest fans love him is that he “owns the libs.” As Donald Trump Jr. said on election night, “We cannot only keep making America great again, butwe canmake liberals cry again!”

Among the myriad problems with this juvenile attitude: It invites a backlash. Democrats turned out in massive numbers not to vote for Joe Biden but to vote against Donald Trump. Trump, not Biden and not Kamala Harris, energized the Democratic base.

Just as important, Trump gave Republican­s and independen­t s who prefer Republican policies( or who dislike extreme Democratic policies that have tainted the Democratic brand) an excuse not to vote for him. The fact that Republican­s weren’ t sent packing along with Trump demonstrat­es this.

One of the defining features of pro-Trump apologetic­s is to hold everybody but Trump to standards of decorum, honesty and good character. If you complain about Trump’s unreasonab­leness you’re the one being unreasonab­le. “Get over it. That’s just whohe is.”

One problem with this argument is that it assumes Trump is owed loyalty from those who don’t like his behavior or many of his policies, while Trump owes nothing to them. Aswith a king, fealty should only run oneway, and he shouldn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do to earn the support of those who find his schtick tiresome or odious. Trump said many times that he could act presidenti­al if hewanted to, but thatwould be “so boring.” Heaven forbid a president be forced to do something boring for the good of the country or his party.

This attitude, both on Trump’s part and among his boosters, served him better than many of us expected. He attracted new voters to the GOP and kept most of the party with him. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to counteract the backlash from Democrats and independen­ts, and it wasn’t enough to hold onto the Republican­s who were happy to vote for other Republican­s but not for four more years of a president who believed that the presidency was only about him.

The lesson of this election: Americans just weren’t that into him.

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 ?? EVANVUCCI/AP ?? PresidentD­onaldTrump­wraps up a statement about the electionTh­ursday in the briefing roomof theWhiteHo­use.
EVANVUCCI/AP PresidentD­onaldTrump­wraps up a statement about the electionTh­ursday in the briefing roomof theWhiteHo­use.

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