The Peeps Have Spoken

Having cast a vote in the 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, I moved to Korea and failed to do my civic duty in 2008, 2012 and 2016. I offer no excuse since long-distance voting is a relatively easy matter. Whereas in all but one of the nine cited elections I favored candidates representing the Democratic party, I went Republican in the last two. 

Although I voted for him twice, Donald John Trump is, in some ways, not the most appealing person. His background as a New York real estate mogul resulted in numerous lawsuits and charges of shady activities. Him being the producer and host of a “reality” TV show called The Apprentice between 2004 and 2015 did not impress me. Nor did his having banged a porn star known as Stormy Daniels and then ordered his lawyer to pay her $130,000 in hush money a month before the 2016 election. Hey, I realize that some people find Trump loathsome. I lost friendships with three American guys—a Bob, a Roland and a Jon—who were horrified to learn that I had voted for him in 2020. Jon even called me a “moral degenerate” for having done so. I said in reply that for all I cared, he could go jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Yes, I voted for Trump in 2020 and again in the just-concluded election in which he trounced Kamala Harris by getting 50.9% of the votes cast to her 47.6% (and in the all-important Electoral College, 295 to 226). To me, there was no doubt that he was the better candidate. I regard him as far more capable of confronting Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and Iran’s mullahs than Harris. He understands the urgency of sealing the southern border and deporting as many as possible of the 20 million illegal aliens who have traipsed into the country over the last four years. The U.S. economy when he served as POTUS was in good shape, and we were pretty much energy-independent. He is an authentic leader who means what he says and says what he means. I will add that Trump does not toe the politically correct line when it comes to the hot-button issue of gender. For example, he is not about to validate Will Thomas—a male swimmer at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, who “transitioned” to female and started winning races and setting records against genuine women. Many Americans love him for refusing to abide such nonsense.

At 78, he ran quite a vigorous campaign during which he survived an assassination attempt, worked at a Philadelphia-area McDonald’s, visited a barbershop in the Bronx and posed in a big white MAGA-emblazoned garbage truck after Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage.” Those were, admittedly, photo ops with little real significance. But when a huge, enthusiastic, multiracial crowd turned out in mid-town New York—perhaps the bluest of blue cities—to see him at Madison Square Garden in late October, that was something else.

Much has been written about the 2020 presidential election and its fairness or lack thereof. Trump and numerous other Republicans made repeated claims about large-scale voter fraud, which played into some of them running amok at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. If all of Biden’s votes were legitimate, how did he get more than 81 million of them? When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, he got 69 million and 65 million, respectively. I think Trump (who had 74 million against Biden and 72 million against Harris) had good reason to howl about that defeat, I sure do. At any rate, Trump has won again. He and Grover Cleveland are the only presidents to be elected to non-consecutive terms.

There is a 17-hour difference between Korea Standard Time and Pacific Standard Time. I say this because Las Vegas follows PST. A long-time resident of that city famed for glitter and casinos is Lee Taylor, whom I knew at Hill Junior High School and Bryan Adams High School half a century ago. Lee and I had been in frequent contact in the months leading up to November 5. An unabashed supporter of Trump and a critic of “Sleepy Joe” and the Harris woman, he is involved in grass-roots politics in Nevada. All day yesterday—November 5 there, November 6 here—we were texting and keeping score about the voting returns. While we refrained from too much celebration, we knew things were going well for DJT and his vice-presidential pick, James D. Vance. Just 40 years old, Vance has quite a résumé: born into poverty in southern Ohio, he served four years in the Marine Corps before earning degrees from Ohio State and Yale Law; he is a superb example of a man pulling himself up by his bootstraps. Vance has been in the Senate since early 2023. I rather like the idea of him getting four years of seasoning and then winning the big job in 2028 and again in 2032.

Harris said ad nauseum during her 107-day campaign (you remember that she inherited her party’s nomination after Biden was essentially forced to stand down—a move that some Republicans considered extralegal) that any Trump victory would constitute “a threat to democracy.” Earlier today, I watched her 13-minute concession speech in Washington. Many people in the audience could be seen weeping and gnashing their teeth, so dismayed were they at the result. An empty pantsuit if ever there was one, Harris sought to put a positive spin on her loss. But she had received a pretty good thumping, enough for Trump and Vance to be calling it a mandate and a political movement.

While time will tell on that, I think Trump redux will be different. He learned some hard lessons his first time around and from spending four years out of office. I look for a more mature Trump, one who can make wise use of Republican majorities in the Senate and the House, along with a conservative-majority Supreme Court.

Permit me to dust off an old Nixonian term, “silent majority,” and say that it explains why Trump is 47 as well as 45. He won this election fair and square, and the Democrats can lick their wounds and accommodate themselves to the new reality.