The U.S. election, unstacked

How Substackers are covering Donald Trump’s win

Image shared by A.M. Hickman

In a twist, what looked like the closest election in living memory is over, quickly and decisively: Donald J. Trump will be the 47th president of the United States. 

Here’s how Substackers across the political spectrum are covering the news.

The results

William Kristol and Andrew Egger: Well, here we go again. 

Bari Weiss and Oliver Wiseman: The red wave that wasn’t in 2022 came crashing down tonight. 

Mehdi Hasan: Trump triumphed on Tuesday. Unlike in 2016, he is also on track to win the popular vote—the first Republican to do so since 2004.

William Kristol: Donald J. Trump will be our next president, elected with a majority of the popular vote, likely winning both more votes and more states than he did in his two previous elections. 

Joshua P. Hill: Republicans will control the Senate. The House of Representatives is still technically a toss-up, but it doesn’t look good for the Democrats.

Jesse Singal: One of the only blessings of last night was that the scale of Kamala Harris’s defeat was so devastating that there won’t be much room for if-not-but-for-ing.

Jessica Reed Kraus: Running on just three hours of sleep but fueled by the undeniable energy in Palm Beach—an energy that reflects all we’ve achieved together as a nation. 

Deborah Copaken: I just … what the fuck just happened?

Red surprise

Bari Weiss and Oliver Wiseman: Every pollster and pundit said the same: It was gonna be a squeaker. Too close to call. We wouldn’t know for days, maybe even weeks! That’s not how it went down. Not at all.

Mehdi Hasan: Trump not only won; he won big and won fast. 

Peter Savodnik: For the past eight years, the Republican Party has been having an honest conversation about the real things that ail us: inflation; the hollowing out of rural America; the rise of China; the housing crisis; the opioid crisis; the chaos at our southern border; free speech; and the decline of American power.

John Ganz: Trump’s campaigns had a clear mythos: a story about what America is and was and where it is going. No Democratic candidate that’s run against him has been able to articulate an opposing vision.

Erick-Woods Erickson: Despite Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial comments about Puerto Rico, a shocking 45% of Hispanic voters voted for Donald Trump, with a majority of Hispanic men backing a Republican for the first time ever. 

Nate Silver: Trump received 27 percent of the vote in the Bronx yesterday, roughly three times as much as his 10 percent in 2016 or Romney’s 8 percent in 2012. The Bronx, which is only 8.6 percent non-Hispanic white. The Bronx, which used to break my congressional models because it was so Democratic.

Dana Loesch: Yes, Republicans finally learned how to build a proper coalition after all this time. No, I don’t know what becomes of Democrats now. 

Blue reflection

Mehdi Hasan: [F]or me, the moment Harris lost this election came on Oct. 8, in an interview on The View, when she was asked if she would have done anything differently than Biden over the past four years. Her answer? “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

Chris Cillizza: For all the talk about democracy and creeping fascism […] this election affirmed a very simple fact: People care about the economy—and their own financial well being—the most. Full stop.

Andrew Egger: She needed to run away from Biden to escape the voters’ wrath at his term. But she also needed to run toward him as her only defense against Republican charges that she was too far to the left: After all, that was how she’d positioned herself in 2020 before she joined his ticket. In a polarized, doom-and-gloom electorate, both moves likely cost her more voters than they gained her.

Wajahat Ali: I know there will be a lot of blame going around. It was Biden! It was Harris! He should’ve stayed in the race! He should’ve resigned sooner! It was Gaza! But I think the answer was clear: a majority of us in the United States of America believed things were headed in the wrong direction and that the economy was bad even though President Biden improved upon the disaster that he inherited from Trump. 

Jesse Singal: Orange Man Bad has just failed, entirely, as an argument, or at the very least it has proven puny in the face of other factors.

Qasim Rashid: Democrats need to pick a lane that actually appeals to people on the left. This campaign wasn’t it.

Johanna Maska: America elected President Trump because a lot of people felt the economic pinch of inflation and they believed Trump would fight for them. They want him to fight for more manufacturing, for American jobs, for peace worldwide. And Democrats’ messaging didn’t resonate with enough Americans this time around.

Now what?

William Kristol: I’ve sometimes quoted John McCain’s wonderful comment, something he used to say with deadpan irony: It’s always darkest . . . before it turns pitch black.

Andy Borowitz: I have plenty to say about last night’s dumpster fire but today I want to take a break from jokes. Many of you are in pain and I don’t want to make light of that.

Nate Silver: For now, I don’t have the answers. But I do know this is a problem the party should have been prepared for, because there was plenty of evidence for it in polls and election data, evidence that was unskewed and denied at every turn. Maybe the first move should be going out to a diner in Queens.

Jessica Reed Kraus: This is only the beginning of something spectacular—a hard-fought revival.

Sharon McMahon: I know today is a heavy day for many of you. And for others, it’s an exciting moment. No matter which side you’re on, there’s something I hope we can remember. And that is that hope does not arrive, unbidden, on the back of a silvery bird, deposited on our doorstep during the night. Hope was a choice. Hope was fought for. Hope rose from the ring, bloodied and broken, to fight again.

A.M. Hickman: If nothing else, patriotism is about to be “in” again.