Was Trump right about people getting tired of winning?
The odd phenomenon of treating victories as defeats
During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump regularly promised previously unseen levels of winning should he be elected president.
“We’re gonna start winning again,” he said on one such occasion. “We’re gonna win so much. We’re gonna win at every level… We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning.”
Nearly eight years later, I’m beginning to wonder if he was at least partially right.
Earlier this month Hunter Biden, the troubled and oft-criticized son of President Joe Biden, was convicted on federal charges stemming from illegally buying a gun in 2018. He faces maximum prison sentence of 25 years, but in all likelihood won’t face a sentence of more than two years, if recent cases are any hint. It’s possible, given that he is a first-time offender who has largely cooperated with the terms of his arrest, that he won’t see prison time at all.
Within a few days, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that access to the drug mifepristone—which is used to terminate early pregnancies—should remain available under existing FDA guidelines. The Court rejected the arguments from a group of pro-life doctors, determining they did not have standing to bring the legal challenge in the first place. The decision was a win for abortion rights advocates less than two years after the Court’s landmark decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
In these two instances, those on the right and the left should be able to claim victory in major ways. On the right, Republicans have spent the better part of four years claiming Hunter Biden is the beneficiary of favorable legal treatment given his family name. Biden’s conviction should, in theory, put some of those doubts to rest, as he now faces possible jail time despite his father occupying the Oval Office.
On the left, meanwhile, Democrats have made criticism of the Supreme Court a major part of their messaging heading into November’s election. That Donald Trump put three justices on the Court, leading to a dominant 6-3 conservative majority, remains a major point of concern for future progressive policies and initiatives. The Court’s unanimous decision upholding access to an abortion drug should, in theory, give relief to these critics.
But for some on the right and the left, this is not not what has happened.
Responding to Biden’s conviction, the pro-Trump website The Federalist ran the following stories:
“Hunter’s Conviction Is A Fig Leaf To Cover The Biden Family’s More Serious Crimes”
“Media Pretend A Gun-Toting Addict’s Conviction Legitimizes Legal Gymnastics Of ‘Get Trump’ Lawfare”
Meanwhile, the progressive website Slate published a story titled, “The Supreme Court’s Abortion Pill Ruling Should Satisfy Nobody.” Here’s are snippets from the article:
“The Supreme Court did the bare minimum necessary to operate like an actual court of law…”
“The justices do not deserve extra credit for refusing to embrace this deeply unserious litigation, and they should earn no gold stars for maintaining the legal status quo on abortion pills.”
“[The decision] is at best a reprieve—an election-year performance of Supreme Court unanimity and sobriety that masks the damage the conservative supermajority has already inflicted.”
Likewise, Pomona College’s Amanda Hollis-Brusky—who, like me, has studied the nuts and bolts of the conservative Christian legal movement—described the decision as an example of “3-D chess,” writing, “This serves to bolster #SCOTUS legitimacy (“we’re not really handmaidens of Christian Right!”) while they continue to uphold 90% of what that movement wants.”
I’m not naive enough to think that the Biden conviction and the mifepristone decision mark the clear, unequivocal end of these issues. Biden still needs to be sentenced, and litigation on mifepristone will surely continue. Nevertheless, why is it difficult for actors on the right and left to simply “take the W” in these sorts of instances?
I think it’s simple: Victories effectively mean the end of a contest. Without a contest, there’s no messaging. Without messaging, there’s no outrage. Without outrage, there’s no clicks or mobilization or calls to action. And without these things, too many entities with large platforms lose their primary purpose.
We should be cognizant of these sorts of dynamics when we engage with the news of the day and attempt to make sense of political goings on. It’s easy to get swept up in hyperbolic rhetoric directed at one’s opponents without recognizing we’re getting swept up.
To be clear, things are complicated; there’s a reason my students roll their eyes when I remind them, yet again, that when it comes to political and social phenomena, “It depends.” But sometimes, a win is just that — a win. Let’s not be afraid to treat them as such.
Here are some other things that recently caught my eye:
Writing for WORLD, author Daniel Darling reflects on generational trends toward secularism, and why recent developments might be good news for organized religion after all:
Among baby boomers, the rise in non-religious activity continues to rise, but among Generation X, it remained steady and among millennials and Generation Z, there was a significant decline. The drop among the youngest group here, mostly high school and college students, was the most significant.
Though we should be careful not to read too much into one year’s survey data, we can be encouraged that perhaps the march of secularism in American culture seems to have hit a wall and, it seems, has receded among the youngest generations.
Writing for American Storylines, pollster Daniel Cox explains the link between pessimism and partisanship, especially among pro-Trump Republicans:
Donald Trump is far more popular among the country’s least trusting citizens. Forty-three percent of Americans who believe people are not to be trusted have a favorable view of Trump compared to 28 percent of those who say people are generally trustworthy. White Americans with low levels of trust have the most favorable view of Trump—55 percent have a positive opinion of him.
Cox continues:
Trump’s triumph with pessimists cannot be written off completely as an artifact of partisan pessimism. Overall, Republicans express far more cynicism than Democrats about the state of the country, but the pessimism gap is found even among Republican voters. Hopeful Republican voters are most likely to defect from Trump in the 2024 election. Eighty-six percent of Republican voters who say America’s best days are behind it currently support Trump, compared to 76 percent of Republican voters who say the best days are yet to come.
Writing for Reason, law professor Steven Calabresi argues that mail-in voting amounts to an attack on the secret ballot. That’s a fair argument to make (even though I generally disagree, and think the easier we make it to vote, the better for civic engagement and political efficacy). But he then goes on to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election on the grounds that—I am not making this up—that Joe Biden received more votes in Pennsylvania than Barack Obama did in 2008:
I do not myself believe that there was fraud in the counting of ballots or voting machine malfunctions. I do believe, however, that the unprecedented use of mail in voting over a period of many weeks, with the loss of the secret ballot, and drop boxes, produced a fundamentally illegitimate Biden victory in 2020 in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. I simply do not believe that in an honestly held traditionally run presidential election that Joe Biden would get 181,866 more votes for President in 2020 in Pennsylvania than Barack Obama got in 2008.
Calabresi does not explain why it’s acceptable that Trump got 100,000 more votes than Obama but unacceptable that Biden got 180,000 more. Moreover, that there were more people living in Pennsylvania in 2020 than there were in 2008, or that the historical nature of the 2008 election was at least on par with the vitriolic nature of the 2020 election, are apparently inconvenient truths.