The atmosphere has officially changed.
The economy that Donald Trump said was broken? All it took was for him to win, and consumer confidence among Republicans soared.
Elections? Suddenly, Republicans are coming to terms with the reality that they are safe. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he saw no evidence of fraud during the 2024 campaign.
And the media landscape? Fox News viewership has soared since Trump’s victory, despite his harsh criticism of the network in the run-up to November 5.
At the same time, Democrats’ sentiment toward the economy — essentially how they view its overall health — fell 13 percent after Trump’s victory. And viewership for liberal MSNBC has seen a decline.
It’s a role reversal that, while heady for Republicans now, will soon come with all the liabilities that come with incumbency. Republicans are betting they will see further economic improvement, lower prices and the immigration policies Trump promised during his campaign. The Democrats, meanwhile, no longer have the status quo to defend – and, like the Republicans in recent years, will try to paint a dark portrait of the opposition party.
“For four years, Republicans felt like they were living in an ‘I told you so,’ and everything they said around Biden was a reality, whether it was his mental decline or the Biden-Harris policies of the past four year. They felt like they were right across the board, and that the country realized that,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist appointed to Trump’s first administration. “Now the Democrats are taking a very similar stance, especially with a lot of the [Cabinet] picks coming out – saying, ‘We told you what it would be like.’”
Typically, the winning side sees a wave of optimism among its ranks. But pollsters also saw the mood swing coming this year for another reason: Exit polls showed voters wanted big changes this election — and it was Trump who was ultimately seen as the change agent, as Vice President Kamala Harris struggled to distinct from the The Biden administration and the policies voters blamed for their current wallet challenges.
It is in the economy that these differences will be most visible, and the gap between party sentiments is expected to widen further in the coming months. It’s a trend that began in the final months before Election Day, when Republican voters already had a rosier outlook as they expected a Trump victory, said Micah Roberts, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies who oversaw economic issues in the bipartisan NBC and CNBC polls. .
“We’re going to see the Republicans skyrocket to probably the most positive they’ve ever been about the future in the current state of the economy, and the Democrats will kind of fall back to a, much less rosy place,” Roberts said. “Especially if you win this trifecta, attitudes toward the economy really become very much viewed through a partisan prism.”
The risk for Republicans is that the honeymoon won’t last forever. With Trump in the White House and the Republican Party in control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Americans will be looking for somewhere to take the blame if they don’t see the improvements they desire.
“The best thing the Democrats have going for them is taking on the Republicans. And the best thing the Republicans have going for them is to take them on against the Democrats,” Roberts said. “Once you’re in charge, you can’t control everything, and even the things you can control, those in power tend to go too far.”
That divide even exists within the Republican Party. Anti-Trump Republicans, who either voted for Harris or postponed the election altogether, are grappling with whether the party’s more traditionalist, Ronald Reagan strain is still worth fighting for, and many of them have lost the appetite for resistance. style efforts they launched during Trump’s first presidency.
“I think people who oppose Trumpism have looked at this very existentially — not from a policy perspective, but from a character perspective, hoping that we are a better people than this,” said Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Anti-Trump Lincoln Project and a longtime GOP strategist. “At some point you can force people to talk to their better angels, but if they don’t want to, you’re never going to win that battle. We are not a better people. This is who we are.”
On the Democratic side, members have been so despondent about a second Trump victory — and especially Trump’s resounding popular vote victory — that the public reaction is a fraction of what it was after his first win in 2016: no mass protests in the big liberal cities or on college campuses and no major corporate charges against Trump. And they are even less hopeful than eight years ago about the country’s future.
“Because now it is very clear who he is. Like, “We don’t care that he’s a criminal, and we don’t care that he’s a rapist. We don’t care if he’s corrupt.” While the jury was a bit out of place before, we now know. And people are saying – literally by voting – they’re saying, ‘Yeah, those things don’t matter to me,’” says Vanessa Wruble, co-founder of the Women’s March 2017. “This time there’s a kind of bewilderment. But if we feel bewildered, it says we are missing something vital.”
Some Democrats remain hopeful that their party will rebuild — and argue that the lack of public response in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election is not a bad thing as people digest the results of the election. Indivisible, which emerged in the wake of the 2016 election, this week released a 30-page guide aimed at turning despondency into action at a call attended by 40,000 people, and has already signed up 8,000 people to attend community meetings facilitating throughout the country.
“They’re pulling away from things that remind them of 2017 to some extent, but they’re really looking forward to the future,” said Leah Greenberg, one of the group’s co-founders. “People are very sad. They are very sad about what happened, but they also understood that this was an opportunity in a way that nothing prepared people in 2016. And they understand that we didn’t have a perfect democracy on Monday, and we didn’t have a perfect democracy. a perfect democracy on Wednesday. They understand that this is a longer-term battle.”
Indivisible, MoveOn, the Working Families Party and other progressive groups also organized a post-election organizing call that was attended by more than 100,000 people. Swing Left, another organization founded after Trump’s 2016 election, is hosting a grassroots call next week to chart the way forward. And Women’s March, under new leadership, is planning marches in Washington and across the country for Jan. 18, two days before the inauguration, with about 75,000 people already signed up.
“After a global pandemic, multiple election cycles and the disastrous consequences Dobbs concludes, we are in a completely new era of American politics. Trying to equate the reaction to Trump’s 2016 victory with today is an apples-to-oranges comparison,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March. “Women’s March is one of many major organizations calling a People’s March in January to demonstrate our power and continue to build a broad popular front of resistance.”
But Wruble, who left the organization amid a power struggle, won’t be there.
When she arrived on Thursday evening, she was sitting with several parrots, hairless guinea pigs and a zebra in the animal and art reserve she had founded. She is putting things to rest after years of division among progressive organizations that she says are distracted from “prioritizing the real threat.”
“Maybe my story is an example of something gone wrong,” Wruble said.
