The 24 Seven: The old gods and the new
Trump wins the White House, Republicans romp with historic margins, and more in the 24sight News digest
Former president Donald Trump has won the White House. Again. Carried on a wave of support from working class men, White, Black and Latino, and younger voters. Vice President Kamala Harris was unable to convince the working class to support her and did not turn out enough college educated women.
American politics was already reshaped well before Tuesday, the election just revealed that transformation definitively for the first time.
🎙️🎙️ Programming note:
I’ll be hosting a livestream on the Substack App at 4p ET for 30 minutes, taking your questions. I’ve been fielding questions from friends and readers for days now over all manner of apps and platforms, I will do my best to provide answers during the livestream.
If you don’t already have the app, download it here and tune in.
Then tune into the Julie Mason Show on SiriusXM Channel 124 at 530p ET, we’ll be breaking down the new American political reality.
And support independent journalism, now more than ever:
1. The price of eggs
This election was decided by the middle of the country who really doesn’t like politics right now and is pissed off that nobody is doing anything about how much they spend every day. Some showed up and voted for Donald Trump and some stayed home, but based on the results it appears hard to call this either resounding support for the nationalist right or a complete repudiation of women running for president.
The gender divide is real, but the class divide is more important. The media environment is an unbridled mess. And a French man won millions betting on the race with a novel concept of identifying “shy Trump” voters.
The partisans will yell and scream, many other factors from immigration and housing prices to abortion access and ennui shaped the electorate, but at the end of the day, this election looks like it came down to a bird flu.
2. The Long Game
Donald Trump and his team successfully transformed the Republican Party into a nationalist populist party, ending the era of Goldwater and Reagan-styled conservative dominance of the GOP.
Economic conservatism in the form of free trade and free markets appears to be out (although tax cuts and slashing regulations is part and parcel of the nationalist right.) The “country club Republicans” are out, even if the Republican Party is now actually stationed at a country club.
Big questions remain of how much of Project 2025 will be enacted once Trump takes office. Abortion policy was a barrier to him winning the race. Now he’s won the race.
3. The old Gods
Harris conceded defeat Wednesday. An American tradition actively battled by Trump, but one the president-elect gladly reveled in its return.
Eight years after a previously little regarded Democratic socialist congressman from Vermont upended the 2016 Democratic primary, the Democrats are now facing their reckoning with their working class roots. What comes next will be fought in the open.
Campaign brutalism is now a fixture of American politics. We don’t know yet whether governing brutalism will match it.
Hard to tell yet whether the media rage-click stories which became a feature of the Trump era will continue or whether something different will emerge. (I’m sure loyal readers here have picked up my thoughts on the sugar-rush coverage which is now almost a decade old.)
Special prosecutor Jack Smith wants to drop the cases against Trump for the historic January 6th insurrection and Trump’s absconding from the White House with boxes upon boxes of classified materials tucked within knickknacks and news clippings.
What comes next for the old conservative alliance pushed out of the GOP by Trump, including Never Trump, looks to be up in the air — a permanent alliance with the Democratic Party, a “third way”, something else? Don’t sleep on this bloc, big numbers can change elections, when they show up.
4. And the New
The second-richest person in the world may be emerging as the most powerful and unelected - Elon Musk, with new unbridled access to the White House and powerhouse political operation which used to be Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’. (Perhaps no small irony here that a similar unelected power emerged from last era of monumental technological change, Robert Moses, who started as an idealist believer in civil service reforms before becoming the God King of New York.)
And Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel will have more influence than ever, with his protégé, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance just a few doors down from the Oval Office in regular meetings with Trump.
Throughout this race, I’ve been more interested by the books written on the mega-power of the new global elites, like Thiel, Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Two of the three locked arms with Trump and now have direct lines to the White House, and the third backed off his previous support for democratic institutions like the press.
The third iteration of Trumpworld will have a lot of new faces different from the first, way back in 2016, but it is now very much cemented as its own institution. Donald Trump Jr., working closely with former Trump strategic adviser Steve Bannon, who went to jail for his role in January 6th, have formed the ideological core of the third Trumpworld with Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk.
The Republican mega-donors of old have all regrouped around Trump directly and Trump’s old New York friends, including transition leader Howard Lutnick, make up another key sphere of influence.
The “White House-in-waiting”, Trump think tank America First Policy Institute, is set to pack a second Trump Cabinet, led by former Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon.
And the tight-knit trio who carried Trump across the finish line, campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita and lead pollster Tony Fabrizio will all get their pick of the litter
And, of course, Trump’s own family, including Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, will continue to be the closest to Trump.
The one thing that’s true of Trumpworld is the dynamics stay the same, because the principal stays the same.
And while it’s possible that accurate intelligence will be posted to X.com or even Truth Social, don’t count on them being consistently accurate sources of information on the second Trump administration.
5. Mandates
Aid to Ukraine is very likely to halt in the second Trump administration. Will the U.S. withdraw from NATO? Maybe, but there are a whole bunch of GOP hawks who have been quietly waiting in the wings, and Trump’s previously stated rationale was that he wanted the other European nations to pay in more money.
Detaining an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants could happen. Or possibly not, if business leaders who flocked to Trump’s side in this election decide the impact on the labor force would be too crippling.
Same for sweeping tariffs. Perhaps. But the one thing we know about Trump after close to a decade of him in politics is that big campaign promises are prone to big hurdles (the courts, Congress, mega-donors in his ear) and often change on a dime.)
6. Recriminations
My advice as a reporter, listen to voters. Talk to some new voters you wouldn’t normally talk to. Trumpers, I don’t know anyone calling you “garbage”, not anyone I interact with anyway (I wasn’t at the White House for the Biden flop last week.) Lefties, feet on the ground, the results are more nuanced than cable would have you believe.
And to everyone in between just trying to get on with things. Yeah, I feel ya.
There’s a lot we don’t know yet. Will Trump try to imprison people he doesn’t like just because he feels wronged by them? That’s not a statute in the criminal code, but he might try. Will Trump gut the civil service and replace them with political appointees? My guess is probably yes, but we don’t know yet.
7. Corrections
And lastly, I would like to apologize to you, friends. My barometers were off toward the end of this 2024 election. Based on everyone I was talking to, everything I was seeing, it did appear that Harris had the edge in this race. But really, it was Trump’s campaign with the definitive understanding of the American electorate and what messages would play to them, and which ones wouldn’t.
I have learned a lot over the course of this election, from the snowpacked backroads of New Hampshire and two historic party conventions along the shores of Lake Michigan through to Tuesday’s resounding close. And I would not have been able to do any of this without you, 24sight News friends and family.
Sometimes people ask me, “What will you do with the name after 2024? Call it 25sight maybe?”
Well, after some thought, and one hell of a campaign cycle, I think I’m gonna stick with the name 24sight. It started as a sorta hokey nod to the effort to look forward and see what’s coming, now it’s a brand.
Look for more in the coming days and weeks for what’s next from me here at 24sight News and the Ground Game Podcast
and I are building.A good and vibrant democracy relies on good and clear reporting, and independent journalism is the way forward.
Excelsior,
Tom