I was wrong about the presidential election. I predicted Vice President Kamala Harris would steamroll Donald Trump. The opposite happened as Trump regained the Oval Office after suffering four miserable years of being on the outside looking in.
Congratulations to Mr. Trump. We respect his victory. I could never vote for him, but I respect the office and he has earned his occupancy of it again. I hope he’ll use his Bible to guide and shape his actions, not the Project 2025 document.
The winning candidate made a lot of promises during the campaign, just as he did during the 2020 election when he was ambushed by Joe Biden.
You remember some of them. He exhorted Mexico to pay for the famous wall to keep out illegal immigrants. Mexico snarled at Trump and totally rejected that plan.
Harris was highly vulnerable on the immigration issue. During the Biden Administration, illegals have poured through the Rio Grande and other waterways like hot water through colanders of noodles.
Biden and Harris claimed the number of migrants was not as large as believed, but the public’s perception was different, and perceptions count.
Mr. Trump’s second most important failed promise was that Republicans would replace the so-called “Obamacare” healthcare program with a completely new one. Mr. Trump and the Republicans never put together a first-aid kit, much less a comprehensive plan to improve the American healthcare system and make it more affordable.
Those failures can be fixed in the next Trump presidency, “in the first minute of the first hour of the first day,” as he promised on other issues eight years ago. We’ll see if he announces something new during his inauguration speech.
What won’t be welcomed or accepted is his plan for high tariffs on imports, sure to drive American consumer prices higher.
Trump romped through the so-called swing states that would decide the election. The prestigious Cook Political Report wrote before the vote that 13 swing-state counties would give a big clue about the election when votes started coming in. Trump eventually won at least 12 of them.
“Trump’s near-sweep of our 13 key counties underscores the staggering scope of the nationwide shift to the Republican Party,” the Cook Report noted. “More than 90% of counties appear to have swung toward the GOP versus 2020, ranging from highly college-educated pockets of Northern Virginia to diverse urban strongholds like the Bronx and Chicago.
“Even in rural Appalachia, Trump managed to squeeze slightly higher shares of the vote than he did in 2016 or 2020,” the Cook Report noted.
Trump didn’t exactly wipe Harris off the map in the popular vote. Two weeks after the election, it appears he beat her by less than 2 percentage points in the nationwide vote total.
“Though Trump’s victory isn’t a landslide — his popular vote margin is likely to end up around 1.5 points — he made decisive inroads across a wide variety of demographic groups,” Cook said.
I worry about several matters pertaining to the coming second Trump administration. His threat of mass deportation is a threat, not a promise, along with his rounding up of “political enemies.” That would be too “third world-ish” for American stomachs.
I doubt he eliminates the U.S. Department of Education’s “Washington Swamp,” as he put it. He’ll continue to ridicule the military service of our military heroes, because he could never be one. It’s been said he’ll drop diversity training in the military.
Some of his announced appointments to run federal agencies are ridiculous, with even leading Republicans suggesting some won’t be confirmed by Congress. You know who they are.
I suspect he’ll do no better than Biden on closing down the borders. I doubt he’ll end the Ukraine war anytime soon. He’ll continue as best buddies with Putin and other crummy dictators of this world.
Purging veteran three-and four-star generals and admirals he doesn’t like? They’ve been to war; he hasn’t.
As he has always been wont to say on questionable matters, we’ll see what happens on all of these issues.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
