A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton gave a rather pointed response to a question about what Kamala Harris needed to do to avoid a repeat of the 2016 race. HuffPost noted:
“First of all, I don’t think Jim Comey is waiting in the wings to kneecap her, so that’s good, and I’m very grateful for that,” the former secretary of state joked in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan . Collins on Thursday.
The on-air comments, which caused a bit of a stir in political circles, touched on a point I’ve been thinking about for the past eight years.
After Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, I consoled myself with an argument that certainly seemed true. I argued that the Republican’s success was a fluke. A devastating and consequential fluke, that’s for sure, but a fluke nonetheless.
He was on the verge of losing in 2016 — by a number of measures, conveniently — until a confluence of strange events, including Clinton’s pneumonia and then-FBI Director James Comey’s decision to open a criminal investigation into the Democratic nominee in late October reopen. Even then, Trump managed to win with about 46% of the vote – a smaller percentage of the electorate than several recent losing candidates, including Mitt Romney in 2012 and John Kerry in 2004.
Yes, Trump won in 2016, but he won with national support on par with Michael Dukakis in 1988. Seeing him as some kind of electoral juggernaut seemed ridiculous.
In the years that followed, the political world was confronted with episodic evidence that the Republican’s success was for all intents and purposes accidental.
In 2017, Democrats had a great year, winning the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
In 2018, Democrats regained the majority in the US House of Representatives.
In 2019, Democrats won the gubernatorial elections in Kentucky and Louisiana, which are not exactly reliably blue states.
In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump.
In 2021, Democrats had mixed results, but they defied a historic trend and won again in New Jersey.
In 2022, Democrats once again defied a historic trend and expanded their majority in the U.S. Senate.
In 2023, Democrats once again held on to the governorship of Kentucky.
Year after year, race after race, Trump-backed candidates kept losing. All of this made it easier for Americans to say to the world, “See? We correct the error. The misfortune of history is gradually being undone. We will put things in order.”
But now that the dust has settled on the 2024 race, the bigger picture now looks very different. Trump’s 2016 victory no longer looks like a fluke, but now resembles the point where our politics was infected, before that infection spread.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
