The Atlantic's George Packer believes there are important lessons that Democrats need to take away from President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election.
However, he also believes that Democrats need to avoid overestimating the strength of Trump's electoral coalition, which he believes could split relatively quickly.
"The Trump Reaction is more fragile than it now seems," he writes. "Trump’s behavior in the last weeks of the campaign did not augur a coherent second presidency. He will surround himself with ideologues, opportunists, and crackpots, and because he has no interest in governing, they will try to fill the vacuum and turn on one another."
Packer then zeroes in on the contradictions within the Trump coalition that will make it very hard for the president-elect to keep everything held together.
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"The Trump administration, with a favorable Congress, will overreach on issues such as abortion and immigration, soon alienating important parts of its new coalition," he argues. "It will enact economic policies that favor the party’s old allies among the rich at the expense of its new supporters among the less well-off. It’s quite possible that, approaching 80, Trump will find himself once more among the least popular presidents in the country’s history."
He nonetheless says that Democrats need to perform a mental balancing act of both correcting the errors of the Biden-Harris administration while at the same time getting on war footing against an administration that will be unprecedently hostile to them.
"The opposition will have to act," he urges. "Much of this action will involve civil society and the private sector along with surviving government institutions—to prevent by legal means the mass internment and deportation of migrants from communities in which they’ve been peacefully living for years; to save women whose lives are threatened by laws that would punish them for trying to save themselves; to protect the public health from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s security from Tulsi Gabbard, and its coffers from Elon Musk."
