Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Even anti-Donald Trump graffiti on the streets of West Hollywood is now rare and half-baked. Eight years ago, California was a “backlash” state. It's a different mood that a visitor will encounter in 2025: resignation, boredom with the subject, the attitude of thoughtful Democrats as it approaches, and at times something close to curiosity about America's economic potential under a deregulated president.
There's a big liberal shrug coming up. It's been happening all over the world since Trump claimed victory in November, and it's natural. You can't be angry all the time. In the autocracies of 20th century Europe, people with a different conscience often made what was known as “internal migration”. That is, instead of fleeing or fighting, they retreated into private life as the political sphere darkened around them. Detaching like this is smart, not weak.
Just don't overdo it, that's all. My sense is that liberals have allowed a healthy acceptance of electoral reality to grow into the hope that Trump's second term won't be so bad. Please.
Three things moderated Trump's impact last time. None of them apply now. First, he wanted re-election. This made him provoke the middle voter to a certain point, but no further. (The speed with which he renounced the weakly theocratic Project 2025 last summer showed just how much this putative hothead is trying to avoid unnecessary unpopularity.) Unless something happens with the 22nd Amendment, Trump is now freed from the innate discipline of electoral politics. Even the run-in tests mean little, as the race to succeed him will begin right after. Second-term presidents have two years.
What else? His first administration was populated with enough old-fashioned Republicans — Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson — to curb his excesses. He is now pampered for officials and cabinet secretaries who are in Maga form. Tulsi Gabbard could soon be the head of US intelligence. There is nothing stoic or polite about it.
Above all, the world in 2017 was stable enough to absorb a certain amount of chaos. Inflation was low and Europe was at peace. The last major pandemic in the west was a hundred years in the past. This time, Trump will throw his tariffs and foreign escapades into much more fragile webs.
In this vein, we could go on and give practical and ad hoc reasons for concern. We could mention the federal judiciary, which is now more Trump-tinged than it was when he first took office. Will it limit him? We might also mention that he will be 82 when he steps down. Last time he had to think about the legal exposure, the earning potential and the social reputation he would have in his post-presidential life. Will it be such a factor now?
Ultimately, though, my argument — and a lot of political commentary — comes from instinct. There's an arrogance in Maga-world right now that just wasn't there in 2017, in part because Trump didn't win the popular vote. Talk about much higher economic growth, conquering territory, flying the American flag on Mars: if that doesn't smack of pride in you before the fall, the impending overrun, then we just have different antennas. (And I hope mine is wrong.) In all democracies, a party is never more dangerous than when it is riding high on a fresh electoral success. The difference with the US is in the size of the stakes for the outside world. Think of George W. Bush after his historically good mid-years in 2002, or Lyndon Johnson's escalation in Vietnam after 1964, when his vote stack was visible from space.
Yes, a war of choice is unlikely under Trump. (Though events can prompt a leader to take atypical actions. Remember, Bush was seen as a do-nothing isolationist before 9/11.) More likely, a tariff rampage will trigger a world backlash, or the economy will be run too hot, or the constitution will creak to bursting, as Trump seeks to reward friends and foes. At the very least, there will be internal blame when it becomes clear that the public debt, urban blight, and other American problems are not amenable to a techno-libertarian fix.
Whatever the exact shape of the coming chaos, the relative lack of worry about it stands out from eight years ago. The liberal line in 2025 looks something like this: we overdid the Trump panic last time, so let's not repeat that mistake. Not even half of this proposal survives the slightest intellectual audit. The panic was confirmed, unless the two impeachments – one for trying to overturn the election result – somehow didn't count. Also, even if the first term wasn't so bad, why assume the second will be the same? Trump and his movement are now much more serious entities. His inaugural address this week was impressive in vision and expression.
None of this means that people who don't like Trump should take his advice to “fight, fight, fight.” Protests and activism have been dead ends for Democrats. But if complacency was bad, so is self-confidence. The lesson of the 2024 election for the Liberals was, or should have been, a narrow one: stop picking useless candidates. This somehow escalated into a broader crisis of confidence in whether their basic assessment of Trump as a threat was ever correct. Being defended in the coming years will be no fun at all.
