Each day since Donald Trump won the presidential election in the United States, I have been feeling worse and worse. At first, I was just surprised and couldn’t really take it in. I was prepared for the vote counting to take days, and I was prepared for court cases, and threats, and acts of violence, but I was not prepared for him to win.
I think I forgot, or blocked out, a lot of his first term. I remembered enough to never want to go through it again, but I forgot the feeling of chaos that dominated the news cycle, where it felt like Trump was actively trolling us with his cabinet picks. This time around already seems more unhinged than last time (Matt Gaetz for Attorney General? RFK Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services?).
I know there are people who want to think of this as just another election, where one side won and the other lost. And I know there will be a lot of minimization and denial in response to the fear that so many, including me, are feeling. But this isn’t normal. In response to Trump’s win, some young men decided to tell young women – Your body, my choice – as if it was a joke, or worse, as if they really believe that to be true.
I feel this like a knife aimed at my throat and my belly and my heart, not like an intellectual puzzle to be worked out. I am worried, especially, because I rely on disability and Medicare to make my life possible, and I don’t know what impact this new administration will have on those programs. I also don’t know what will happen with student loans under Trump (mine were put into a form of forbearance under Biden, but the $10,000 left of my debt was not officially erased).
And then there are the criminal cases against Trump that are being closed down by the Department of Justice, because once he is President again, he can’t be prosecuted for his crimes. And that will, certainly, embolden Trump in his extra-legal tendencies going forward, as will the supreme court’s wide-ranging decision on presidential immunity for acts done in office.
I grew up in a home run by an unpredictable, predatory, and manipulative man, and I am not feeling good about the next four years. I felt the calm of the Biden years in my bones, when there were days, and even weeks, when I didn’t have to think about politics at all, and I don’t know how my body and mind will respond to the return of the chaos.
I wish, given all of this, that the Democratic party, and the pundits, would stop blaming each other for the loss, and instead focus on how to safeguard our rights as much as possible moving forward. There is room for analysis of what went wrong, and why, but not with the vitriol and self-righteousness that’s filling the airwaves at the moment. Some people believe that the Democratic party lost because it was too hoity toity, or because it didn’t come up with enough policies to help the working class, or it was too progressive, or too moderate, or didn’t reach out to men enough, or didn’t reach out to people of color enough. But my sense, then and now, was that people did the best they could with the understanding they had of the voting public at the time. They were just wrong.
From what I could see, Donald Trump’s campaign set out to discourage people from voting: by creating distrust in government overall, by telling people that their votes wouldn’t make a difference, by cutting legal voters from the rolls at the last minute and limiting the number of polling places in populated areas, and by openly threatening that if people voted for the Democrats there would be violence in the streets. The fact is, Trump won this election with around the same number of votes he had in the last election, when he lost to Biden. His coalition didn’t grow. If he picked up a few new people (Arab and Latino men, for example), he lost others (former Republicans who saw the January 6th insurrection, or any number of other events, as the final straw.). But for some reason, none of the pundits want to acknowledge that what Donald Trump said and did actually impacted the outcome of the election; they’d rather blame Kamala Harris, or Joe Biden, or this or that miscalculation by someone else. But what if there was no Democratic candidate who could have beaten Trump at this moment in history? Can we tolerate knowing that?
And now, with the reality of Donald Trump as our next president, are there lessons we could be learning about why his messages resonated so deeply with some people, and about how we can better meet those people where they are when explaining our goals in the future? Can we turn away from the back biting, blame, and guilt and consider some paths forward? There have been some thoughtful, and possibly helpful hypotheses for why Trump was able to win: some people say that the underlying cause of Trump’s win is the growth of the far-right media landscape, which often eschews main stream journalistic values (aka doesn’t care about validating facts before publishing them); some say that the problem is with the main stream media itself, which claims objectivity even though reporters often have their own unacknowledged biases; some say that our problem is a lack of education in civics, which would allow people to be better prepared to judge political actors for themselves, and also to feel some agency and confidence when engaging with our political system. All of these things sound possible to me, and all of them lay out paths forward for good work to be done by well-meaning, hard-working, and creative people.
One of the things that bothered me, endlessly, in the lead up to election day, was the number of Democratic activists who believed they were accomplishing something by sending out postcards reminding people to vote (I received two or three of these, after I’d already voted by mail), or who went knocking on doors in neighborhoods where they didn’t actually live or know anyone personally (as if I would ever answer the door to a stranger, let alone listen to their political spiel). Busy work in politics, it seems to me, is just as much of a waste of time as it is in the classroom. And busy work that actively annoys people? That’s even worse.
As a teacher, I believe in the power of education to create change, and as a writer I believe in the power of storytelling to reach people in ways that slogans can’t. For example, I learned more about LGBTQ issues, and took them in more fully, by watching TV shows and movies that humanized gay and trans people, than I ever learned from an ad campaign. Show me someone I can relate to, who is impacted by this or that societal wrong, and you have a much better chance of getting me involved than if you yell at me and insist that my views change to match yours, just because you say you’re right.
I believe that we can make lasting societal change by investing our time and energy in telling those stories and allowing people to change their own minds, but it has been, admittedly, very hard to focus on those hopeful, long term paths forward in the face of the firehose of news about what’s coming next in the short term.
What will happen to efforts to prevent climate change? Or to improve accountability among the police? Or with immigration? Will the Republicans finally put through the immigration bill they wrote with the Democrats last year, and then tanked when Trump told them he needed the border issue for the election? Or will they insist on changing the deal, but be unable to agree among themselves over what changes to make? Or will our immigration system remain an unmitigated disaster for the foreseeable future, just to give Republicans something to campaign on in 2026?
When Trump’s promised Tariffs go into place, will some of his newfound voters regret their choice? Or will they believe the spin Trump puts on all of it (it must be Biden’s fault, you’re not seeing what you think you’re seeing, if you were stupid enough to be conned you deserve to be screwed – that was one of my father’s favorite mantras).
And I assume tax cuts, for corporations and the super wealthy, will be a priority and will lead to all kinds of cuts in the social safety net, though it’s hard to know what the new congress will be able to pass, even with a Republican majority in the senate and the house, given the history of disagreements among the Republicans themselves. Trump will certainly be able to load the supreme court, though, and the rest of the federal court system, with young conservative judges who will determine the course of justice in this country for decades to come.
I am frightened of Donald Trump, and of all of the things he has promised to do, and of all of the things he will do that I can’t predict, or even imagine. And I am afraid of how his second presidency will further darken our public discourse, and create even more fragmentation among us; but I want to believe that there are things we can do to prevent all of that, or at least some of it.
As I learned way back when, and still believe, Democracy is the best of all of the imperfect systems of government that we have available to us, because it requires us to be more engaged with each other. It doesn’t require us all to agree; if anything, what it requires is for all of us to feel like we belong at the table, hashing out our differences and finding ways forward that we can all live with.
I’ve found so much solace in writing this blog, and hearing from people who take the time to engage with me, or just to let me know they hear me and I am not alone. We all need that kind of connection and respect in our lives. We all need to hear and be heard, to feel seen and cared about, and to feel an obligation to someone other than ourselves that will keep us going even when our own inspiration and motivation is low.
We still have a Democracy today, even with Donald Trump’s openly authoritarian aspirations, and we need to make the most of it. We still have power, and responsibility, and we can still make sure that our voices are heard. It will be harder, and we (and definitely I) will have some awful days, but we are not alone in any of this. We can help each other get through to the other side, no matter who we voted for. If we choose to.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 