{"id":106088,"date":"2020-11-06T03:57:10","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T00:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/yes-the-election-was-all-about-trump\/"},"modified":"2020-11-06T03:57:10","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T00:57:10","slug":"yes-the-election-was-all-about-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/yes-the-election-was-all-about-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"#Yes, the election was all about Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Yes, the election was all about Trump<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n At a rally before the election, President Trump was talking about the choice between him and Joe Biden. He started to say, \u201cThis isn\u2019t about .\u2009.\u2009. \u201d and then stopped himself and said, \u201cYeah, it is about me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was right. The election was about him.<\/p>\n

Counts and court fights drag on, but Joe Biden seems likely to win. Regardless, one result is clear: Republicans did very, very well in this election despite the fact that the party-defining person at the top of the ticket was extremely unpopular.<\/p>\n

Republicans gained seats in the House when every pundit (including yours truly) and almost every pollster said they would lose seats. In Texas, which many thought might actually go blue for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the earth, the Democrats failed to flip a single House seat.<\/p>\n

As for the Senate, the numbers I\u2019m seeing suggest that, with the exception of Colorado\u2019s Cory Gardner, every Republican senator who wasn\u2019t app<\/a>ointed to a seat appears to have survived. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was easily re-elected despite massive spending by Democrats to unseat him. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who never led in a poll going into the home stretch, was re-elected.<\/p>\n

At the state level, the GOP gained control of two state legislatures (the Alaska House and the New Hampshire Senate), and it didn\u2019t appear they lost control anywhere (though that could change when all the votes are counted).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump underperformed his party. He lost states he won in 2016, and he might have lost the popular vote by a wider margin than he did in 2016.<\/p>\n

This is baffling to many of the president\u2019s most committed supporters. For them, Trump is bigger and better than the GOP. How could Republicans survive when he didn\u2019t? Some even think this is proof the election was \u201cstolen\u201d from him. How could Republicans do so well when Trump didn\u2019t?<\/p>\n

Because the election was about him.<\/p>\n

One reason many of Trump\u2019s biggest fans love him is that he \u201cowns the libs.\u201d As Donald Trump Jr. said on election night, \u201cWe cannot only keep making America great again, but we can make liberals cry again!\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the myriad problems with this juvenile attitude: It invites a backlash. Democrats turned out in massive numbers not to vote for Joe Biden but to vote against Donald Trump. Trump, not Biden and not Kamala Harris, energized the Democratic base.<\/p>\n

Just as important, Trump gave Republicans and independents who prefer Republican policies (or who dislike extreme Democratic policies that have tainted the Democratic brand) an excuse not to vote for him. The fact that Republicans weren\u2019t sent packing along with Trump demonstrates this.<\/p>\n

One of the defining features of pro-Trump apologists is to hold everybody but Trump to standards of decorum, honesty and good character. If you complain about Trump\u2019s unreasonableness, you\u2019re the one being unreasonable. \u201cGet over it. That\u2019s just who he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

One problem with this argument is that it assumes Trump is owed loyalty from those who don\u2019t like his behavior or many of his policies, while Trump owes nothing to them. As with a king, fealty should only run one way, and he shouldn\u2019t have to do anything he doesn\u2019t want to do to earn the support of those who find his schtick tiresome or odious.<\/p>\n

Trump said many times that he could act presidential if he wanted to, but that would be \u201cso boring.\u201d Heaven forbid a president be forced to do something boring for the good of the country or his party.<\/p>\n

This attitude, both on Trump\u2019s part and among his boosters, served him better than many of us expected. He attracted new voters to the GOP and kept most of the party with him.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t enough. It wasn\u2019t enough to counteract the backlash from Democrats and independents, and it wasn\u2019t enough to hold on to the Republicans who were happy to vote for other Republicans but not for four more years of a president who believed that the presidency was only about him.<\/p>\n

The lesson of this election: Americans just weren\u2019t that into him.<\/p>\n

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. Twitter<\/a>: @JonahDispatch<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Yes, the election was all about Trump” At a rally before the election, President Trump was talking about the choice between him and Joe Biden. He started to say, \u201cThis isn\u2019t about .\u2009.\u2009. \u201d and then stopped himself and said, \u201cYeah, it is about me.\u201d He was right. The election was about him. Counts and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/11\/AFP_Trump-Defiant-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[78543,4941,70288,48577,70922],"class_list":["post-106088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-11-5-20","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-gop","tag-us-house-of-representatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}