Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

Nicole Russell, who writes an opinion column for USA TODAY, got it right in her most recent column, “Voters strongly rebuke Democrats by electing Trump. But will progressives listen?”

Russell essentially writes that the American people, the regular people who get up to work every day, try to get by on what they earn, and are having a harder time doing that, are fed up with the Democrats gaslighting them, insisiting that inflation is under control, the border is secure, violent crime is down, and, by the way, if you don’t see it that way you’re a fascist Nazi. They’re also frustrated, I think, with the Democrats telling us it’s perfectly normal for teenage boys to be showering next to teenage girls at the local high school.

There were so many reasons Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost this election. First and foremost was the last four years under the Biden administration. People saw their grocery and gas prices go up, along with their rent, and the Democrats doing nothing about it except forgiving students loans to kids who borrowed $200,000 for a double major in library science and creative writing, promises to put illegals on Medicare, and more promises to hand out $25,000 for first-time home buyers. Where’s the money for all that gonna come from? From the people who are already paying more for groceries, gas, and rent – and who worked diligently to pay off their student loans.

Harris couldn’t distance herself enough from Biden, perhaps out of loyalty to the old man for putting her in the position she was in as both VP and the Dem nominee. Let’s face it, Harris did nothing to elevate herself to either position. She was famously a DEI pick for VP, checking the necessary boxes for race and gender. She accomplished nothing of significance as VP. I don’t know why Biden decided to coronate her as the nominee when he dropped out. He insists that chooseing her as the VP was the best decision he made. It may be that crowning her as the Dem nominee was a decision made after his mental acuity had declined so much he didn’t quite know what he was doing. Anyway, the Democrats, who could have insisted on an abbreviated primary, went with Biden’s coronation of Harris. That was another reason the Dems lost the White House. After screaming and screeching so much about how Trump was a threat to democracy, they forgot to choose their own nominee by a democratic process.

Then there was Tim Walz. Pundits are insisting that VP nominees don’t make or break a campaign. Maybe so, but Walz sure did his best to break this one. From his consistent habit of lying about his record, to his bumbling through the VP debate, to his coming off as a live-action Elmer Fudd, Walz proved himself a bizarre choice for the second half of the ticket, especially given the other prospects. And that was before anyone considered the fact that he’s even more left-wing than Harris herself. I love Russell’s line in her column about Walz turning Minnesota into a place “where progressives go to prove their ideas are awful.” Why didn’t Harris choose Josh Shapiro, a moderate Democrat who is a popular governor of Pennsylvania? Shapiro could have moderated Harris’ own left-wing extremism (as opposed to Walz, who only exacerbated it), and could have helped Harris win the critical state of Pennsylvania (as opposed to Walz, who is governor of the bluest of blue states that was securely in the Dem column). I’ll tell you why, and it’s not pretty. Shapiro is Jewish and a supporter of Israel. That would have alienated the extreme progressive wing of the Democrat party who oppose the Biden administration’s support of Israel in the war in Gaza and who are unabashedly behind the terrorists of Hamas. But, guess what? They ended up not voting for Harris anyway, so passing up Shapiro was a waste of a better choice (not that I regard Shapiro the better choice – he’s rabidly anti-Catholic and selective in his handling of sexual abuse allegations).

The election was a clear rejection of the Democrat party, left-wing, progressive agenda: DEI, government handouts, open borders, transgender ideology, drag queens in elementary schools, porn in middle schools, girls sharing locker rooms with boys in high school, women losing scholarships to men in college sports, soft on crime, weak foreign policy, hostility toward Israel, support for Hamas, unlimited abortion, etc. Russell asks if the Democrats will listen to the American people in their electoral rejection of these policies. Personally, I doubt it. They will find lots of reasons to explain their loss to Trump, even given the massive nature of that loss. But it will not be attributed to their left-wing, extreme progressive policies. Nope. They are too committed.

Finally, there was Harris herself. She was simply not a serious candidate. See above where I discuss her doing nothing to merit her being elevated to VP or Dem nominee. On top of that, Americans, I think, could not see her standing up to Putin or Xi. She is too weak, too much the clay figurine of those behind the scenes who would certainly have shaped her, her policies, and her decisions. For the last four years, questions have been raised over who really is in charge at the White House. It often didn’t appear to be Biden, and it never appeared to be Harris. Americans are suspicious of candidates who can’t stand on their own two legs, and Harris gave the impression of being just such a candidate, from her waffling on several key issues in an attempt to make her out to be a conservative when everyone knew blasted well she wasn’t, to her vague and content-free or word salad answers to questions, even the softball questions, which represented most of the questions lobbed toward her. She even showed up with Walz beside her at her first real interview with Dana Bash, almost as if she needed Walz as her “comfort animal” to get through the interview. He just sat there beside her with this serious look on his face, as if to convince the American people that at least one person took Harris seriously. Sadly, no one else did. Especially after her interview with Bash.

What about Trump? I heard it on one news outlet that the largest group of Harris voters where actually those who were voting against Trump rather than for Harris. I don’t doubt it. Why else would one vote for Harris? Certainly not for her policies. She never managed to communicate much in the way of policy. Certainly not in expectation of four more years of a Biden-like presidency. Who would want four more years of dumpster fire? Harris herself, in a last-ditch desperate move, adopted the strategy of essentially begging the American people to vote for her because we wouldn’t survive four more years of Trump. The ladies on The View said he would put people in internment camps, and Oprah Winfrey warned that Trump would take away the right to vote. The American people didn’t buy it.

So, those are my thoughts on why Harris lost. Why did Trump win? Trump offered to break the chains of the woke, progressive, cancel-culture, DEI, transgender dominated culture. People are tired of such and they took Trump up on it. They also remember that the economy was better, the border was secure, and the U. S. was not involved in any wars during his first four years. Yes, there came COVID in his last year, and a lot of people blamed him for his reaction to the pandemic. I’m convinced that’s largely why he lost in 2020. But Biden did no better. It was the vaccine, developed during Trump’s last months (despite Biden saying that there was no vaccine when he entered office – whaaaat?), and the natural course of diseases that allowed the U. S. and the world to come out from under the pandemic. But the Democrats and their allies in the teachers’ unions insisted on keeping the restrictions in place long after the worst was over. We’re still recovering from the pandemic in some ways. People are convinced that Trump will do better with the economy, with gas prices (by reversing Biden’s policies on regulating fossil fuels and making us dependent on hostile nations for our oil), with wages, with inflation, with the border, with crime, with girls’ sports, and with other pressing issues, and they’re willing to put up with his mean tweets and bombasticity as the price they have to pay for his actions on these matters.

Trump is also perceived to be a strong president, one who can stand up to Putin and Xi. Whether that proves true or not is yet to be seen. It is true that the U. S. was not involved in any wars during Trump’s first term, and that Putin did not invade Ukraine and China was not so threatening to Taiwan until Biden took over the White House. I have no doubts that the two dictators saw Biden as weak. European leaders may not be happy, because Trump’s victory means the U. S. will no longer follow Europe in cultural fashions and no longer kow-tow to Europe on matters of foreign policy.

The pro-life movement may be in for a disappointment. Trump is almost certainly pro-choice when it comes to the legalization of abortion, as is implied by his support for in-vitro fertalization methods. IVF involves the creation of numerous human embryos, most of whom will be killed in the process. That’s simply how the method works. Trump’s support for such suggests strongly that, unlike pro-lifers, who regard the humanity of the one in the womb to begin at conception, Trump does not share that conviction. His appointing pro-life justices to the Supreme Court likely reflected his conviction, in agreement with many legal scholars, that Roe was badly decided and that the abortion question belongs to the states. Now that it is in the hands of the states, Trump will likely have little to do or say on the matter of abortion. He will certainly not attempt to put in place a national ban on abortion because he doesn’t believe in a national ban on abortion. The best thing Trump did for the pro-life movement during this campaign was choosing J. D. Vance for his VP. Vance is a genuinely devout Catholic who is 100% pro-life. He is now in a position to be Trump’s successor in four years. What Vance will do on the abortion question is still up for grabs, but he will certainly be better on the issue than anyone the Democrats put up in 2028.

What is a Catholic to do? Pope Francis recommended the old advice of choosing the lesser of two evils. When it comes to Trump or Harris, that’s about all one can do. I certainly could not vote for Harris. Her position on abortion and the Biden-Harris administration’s anti-Catholic and anti-religious freedom policies disqualified her because, remember, she said there was nothing Biden had done in his term that she would have done differently. That means she would almost certainly continue to push for abortion without limits and try to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, sex-change operations, euthenasia, and sterilizations, as Biden did. It means she would almost certainly continue Biden’s policies against religious liberty, and ignoring attacks on Catholic churches and pro-life pregnancy centers. Given that she also seems to consider being a devout Catholic as a disqualifying factor for public service, there was no way was I voting for her. Trump’s position on IVF and his weakening opposition to abortion, along with his personal character (or, rather, lack thereof) and what I believe will be a too-sweeping deportation policy against immigrants lost my vote for him. I hope we have not reached the point where character doesn’t matter. Who was the lesser of two evils? That is a prudential judgment that each Catholic had to make in his or her own heart, though I personally cannot justify voting for Harris as a Catholic, not only because of abortion, but because of the Biden-Harris administration’s anti-Catholic policies, and her own anti-Catholic prejudices, which she has made clear.

The American Solidarity Party is a party whose policies are very much in line with Catholic teaching. I voted for Peter Sonski, their presidential candidate, writing his name in on my ballot. This time I wanted to vote for somebody, and not against somebody. I’m also tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. I want to vote for the good. I genuinely believe the ASP represents that in the great majority of its policies. I encourage you to check them out.

I’m not going to pretend that living in a deep red state that I knew would go for Trump overwhelmingly didn’t make it easier to vote third party. My state’s Electoral College votes were going to go to Trump, regardless of who I voted for. I knew that, and that was one of the reasons I felt comfortable voting third party. I’m not sure what I would have done had a lived in a swing state this election. I hope I still would have voted for the good rather than for the lesser of two evils, though I’m not going to pretend to be the saint I’m not and say that I definitely would have.

Elections are hard. Catholics used to overwhelmingly vote for Democrats because the Democrats were perceived to be for labor, for the little guy, for a fair shake for everybody. Whether that perception was true or not is for another post on another day. Since the Democrats have taken an extreme position of abortion without limits (sadly, 61% of Catholics think abortion should be legal, but not without limits) and since Democrats have taken such extreme positions in the culture war issues, they have lost the votes of many Catholics. 58% of Catholics voted for Trump, while 40% voted for Harris, the largest gap in the Catholic vote in decades. Have Catholics found a new home with the Republicans? I’m not so certain. In 2020, Biden won the Catholic vote by 15 points. That may have been because Biden managed to convince many Catholics that he was Catholic, and because he promised a return to normalcy when so many suffered from Trump fatigue. Who knows what 2028 will show. If J. D. Vance, again – a devout Catholic, is the nominee for the Republicans, it’ll be interesting. I’ll prolly still vote ASP.

God bless America. I sincerely pray that Trump does a great job.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.