| Guest columnist
Could Donald Trump run for president again in 2028?
Republican candidate Donald Trump has won the 2024 US presidential election. In his victory speech, he said this will be a “golden age” for the country.
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Martin Gottlieb is retiring after 27 years as an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News. He is the author of two books, including: “Lincoln’s Northern Enemy: The War Opposition and Exile of Clement Vallandigham of Ohio.”
What the Democrats and the Never Trump Republicans are feeling is not the normal feeling after losing an election. And it is not the total surprise – combined with disgust for the country – they felt in 2016.
It might be even worse.
After all, we’re talking about people who are still perpetually shocked that Trump is competitive at all, who find themselves angry when he becomes “normalized.”
And this election feels too much like an outcome – or at least a turning point – rather than an episode in the ongoing story of American democracy.
After all, the debate over Trump has been going on for ten years and it appears we have lost it. This feels like evidence of things we don’t want to believe about our loved one country and its attitude towards us and our values.
We should probably get over that.
Demagogues are not new
In every democracy, demagoguery – the use of incessant lies to incite fear and hatred of unfavorable groups, the embrace of scapegoating, hatred, exaggeration and hyper-emotionalism for political effect – is always lurking.
The Founders knew it. That’s why they built so many checks and balances into the power of anyone, why they rejected the direct election of presidents and senators, why they barely used the word “democracy.”
We have lost sight of their insight, perhaps because the system they set up – modified to be more democratic anyway – has worked so well. In any case, we haven’t had a demagogue as president since Andrew Jackson, a debatable case.
Well, of course we did that after 2016. And it’s true: democracy has not collapsed.
But Trump did try to destroy it. That’s what January 6 was: his attempt to cling to power despite losing an election, an effort he now regrets ever abandoning, even after his coup attempt failed. Anyway, now he sounds decidedly more demagogic.
Will America Survive Donald Trump?
- Are we really going to throw millions of good people out of the country, ostensibly because we don’t like how they got here, but in reality – because they do no harm – because Trump needs an enemy to rile people up against?
- Are we really going to give Ukraine to Putin?
- Are we really going to turn the Justice Department into one law firm for politicians to pit against old adversaries he sees as bad people?
- Will we impose ruinous tariffs on trading partners, with all the obvious disadvantages that entails?
- Using the US military against the American people?
- Does Putin let a European country that Trump thinks doesn’t spend enough on defense?
- Are we really going crazy? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. control over medical and health policy?
- Will we shut down the government if Congress has difficulty setting a budget, something Trump advised Republicans in Congress to do?
- Are we really going to pass every possible tax cut that came to candidate Trump’s mind?
No, probably.
Still, it’s annoying that half of the American electorate heard all this and wasn’t bothered by it. You sometimes hear that Trump’s bark is worse than his bite, despite January 6. Maybe.
But some people think talking about all those things disqualifies him.
Put policy issues aside.
Trump disqualified from respect
Tens of millions of Americans feel like their most basic values are being rejected, values that they always thought Republicans shared: democracy, truth, decency, expertise, science, respectful treatment of women, respect for the law, hatred of violence in the politics, faith in society. best institutions (including elections), identification with other democracies over dictators, and, among other things, belief in Madisonian democracy (checks and balances, the Constitution, minority rights, and the like).
These millions have heard Trump say and repeat hundreds of things over the years that — even if he were standing alone — would disqualify him from respect in their eyes, let alone from the presidency.
Other people believe that calling Trump a demagogue is insulting his supporters.
But a demagogue by definition has strong public support. Otherwise he is just a so-called demagogue. And the people who defined demagogue didn’t say this can’t happen here. Perhaps the best concession Trump bashers can make to Republicans is to allow a demagogue to emerge on the left as well.
(I don’t believe Trump was elected because he’s a demagogue. I suspect any Republican would have been elected this year. But that still leaves the question open: why was he nominated?)
Trump has America
Trump understands something about American public opinion that most of the political class does not. He ran a campaign that was, by all traditional standards, terrible. He did that in 2016 too, but even more so this year.
He regularly talked in ways that would once have been written off as fringe, far outside the mainstream. He has come to the conclusion that the limits of public tolerance for such talk are much greater than most of us have always thought. And he won.
The argument for non-depression among Democrats and Never Trump Republicans is that demagoguery eventually shows up everywhere. We’ve certainly known it before in this country, below the presidential level. Think of the old-fashioned racists and Joe McCarthy.
We just weren’t ready for it at the presidential level, especially after the country has been exposed to Trump for all these years.
But hey, these things happen. Not often for us as a nation. But maybe that is the remarkable.
Martin Gottlieb is retiring after 27 years as an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News. He is the author of two books, including: “Lincoln’s Northern Enemy: The War Opposition and Exile of Clement Vallandigham of Ohio.”