Is It Possible to Be Magnanimous in Victory?
It might be a fantasy but it's the only way.
The problem is that when things bad — and they’re getting really bad — we develop coping mechanisms that might not be entirely healthy. The visceral nature of politics can get the better of us. I know this, because I feel it daily and I try my best to resist it, with mixed results.
An increasingly popular perspective on the left (although it was gaining in popularity even before Trump’s re-election) is that “we” must return the favor once Democrats win again and fight fire with fire. If that means punishing Trump and his allies — if and when we have the power to do so — so be it. I find this thought increasingly tempting. God knows they deserve it. As I wrote on Twitter yesterday,
These are people who appear to have no fear of God. There's something almost idolatrous about the Trump administration's elevation of executive power above the law. They alone decide. How they plan to face their maker is a mystery to me.
Punishment, in more ways than one, seems appropriate. But while God may not forgive them, we must. We are not Gods. That doesn’t mean we forget what was done, but it means we impose — however difficult — limits on our desired retribution.
But putting aside the morality of it, not being magnanimous in victory doesn’t actually work. And we can see how simply by looking at Trump 2.0. I have a big new essay out in the Washington Post which touches on this. I’d urge you all to give it a look if you can. Free link here. I point out the following:
Had Trump shown even a modicum of magnanimity in victory — had he focused on targeted policy wins that could demonstrate competence — he might have cemented a Republican majority for the foreseeable future. The ingredients were there: a working-class coalition spanning racial divides, a skepticism of elite institutions and a hunger for economic nationalism. But it was, and is, not to be. In some ways, then, Trump’s hyperpartisan attacks on the status quo, while terrible for the country in the short term, are a boon for Democrats and progressives in the long term.
The realignment that Republicans have long fantasized about was theirs for the taking. But they have squandered their opportunity. There is a lesson here. If we lived in an autocracy (or partial democracy) then the resort to brute force might make sense, even if it was morally abhorrent. But it doesn’t, and can’t, make sense in a democracy.
Democrats already tried what I call the politics of “domination,” although when Democrats do domination, it’s much more subtle (and legal). What radicalized Republicans? Well, at some level, they self-radicalized, but that’s not the full story. They had legitimate grievances that accrued over time, creating a vicious cycle of resentment followed by yet more resentment. Russiagate was, in retrospect, a fatal mistake. To try to destroy Trumpism through legal fiat rather than at the ballot box was anti-democratic in spirit. Democracy is about “the right to make the wrong choice,” as I argue in my book The Problem of Democracy. (This is also at the core of agonist philosophy).
It was Russiagate, hyper-wokeness, and the center-left’s cultural dominance that provoked such a backlash not just among Republicans but also among Democrats, which helps explain why an unprecedented number of minorities — Hispanics, Asians, Black men, Arabs, and Muslims — turned towards Trump in 2024. I won’t get into whether this was “smart.” It clearly wasn’t, and I argued against voting for Trump to the best of my ability in the weeks leading up to the election, although, yes, I did so reluctantly because of the Biden’s administration’s disastrous (and almost morally disqualifying) policy on Gaza. For my extended case for voting for Kamala Harris despite everything, see below.
Regardless of whether my fellow Arabs and Muslims — and, really, anyone else who voted for Trump — made a mistake, the fact of the matter is that they felt compelled to vote for someone other Kamala Harris. We need to continue asking what their reasons and grievances were rather than dismissing them out of hand.
Whichever party can find a way to be magnanimous in victory is the party that will be able to cement their electoral dominance for a long time to come. But neither party has figured out how. Neither party has wanted to be magnanimous in victory. For this failure, Democrats paid the price in 2024. And for their failure, unless they can find a way to be non-crazy, Republicans will pay a price in 2026 and 2028.
The face-off for several years now has been between a party that is out of touch and a party that is out of its mind. For legitimate reasons, a large number of Americans decided in the last elections that they’d take a chance on “out of its mind” because they felt so let down by a party, the Democratic Party, that was clearly capable of so much more.
Scam artists are not interested in "realignment" or alignment - they don't think seriously to longterm political rule, despite what they might say. This is why both establishment Democrats and Republicans cannot maintain power.
"Smash and grab" is basically the definition of establishment politics in America.
The progressive populists are different, which is why they have for so long been kept out of power. Only such principled and popular political efforts have a chance to maintain power (for the people) if it can be gained. FDR gave a glimpse of this possibility.