How Do We Survive Another 4 Years Of Donald Trump? Together

Donald Trump is the next President-Elect of the United States. The same Donald Trump who, during his first administration, issued racist immigration bans, installed judges who have rolled back reproductive rights, and defunded key agencies and programs. Donald Trump who ran for President amidst criminal charges of election interference and falsifying business records. Donald Trump, whose very own Vice President and staffers have denounced him as a threat to democracy saying, “I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” When addressing supporters even before the race was called, Trump said, “We made history for a reason tonight… This will be the Golden Age of America,” he began. Later in his speech, he ominously told his supporters: “Promises made are promises kept and nothing will stop me from keeping my promises to you.”

I’m at a loss for words. I’m hurt that Black people, Muslim people, Latine people, LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, women, and other vulnerable people will be surrendered to four more years of Trump. Hurt that we will face decades worth of consequences from the fall out of decisions made by his appointed judges, cabinet members, and foreign policy officials. Hurt that the Democratic Party didn’t use the four years granted to them in 2020 to build a stronger base and vision that the country would double down on. Hurt that the country has still not proven willing to elect a woman to its highest office. Hurt that so much of the coming months and years are unknown in a terrifying way. 

How did we get here? While we were still in early voting, two brilliant Black scholars made their case for why this race was so close considering all we know about Donald Trump. Isabel Wilkerson, the New York Times and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, recently reflected on what led to this moment. “When people look at this only as an election, then it doesn’t make sense. When you look at this as an existential crisis over what the country will be, then this makes more sense,” she shared. White America’s identity crisis (overwhelmingly, white men and women voted for Trump) overrides the innate pull towards progressive policies and ideals, as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has shared. “There are countless polls that show Americans want things that are anathema to the Republican Party and especially to Trump’s agenda,” Taylor wrote for Hammer & Hope. And yet. 

“The people who are voting for him are not voting against their own interests,” Wilkerson reminded us. “They’re voting for the interests that matter most to them, and for many many many Americans — as we saw on January 6th — this means maintaining their position at the very top of the American hierarchy [and] caste system.” What will it take to get Americans to be more interested in something grander? Perhaps the vision that Democrats, as incumbents, didn’t paint. In her effort to defend the economy and other reported gains, Harris didn’t honor the fears, frustration, and urgent need for something more. “In her unprecedented run for office,” Taylor wrote, “Harris has almost completely retreated from the more progressive positions she took during the heated primary in 2020 and the bolder proposals that the Biden-Harris campaign eventually adopted.” In an ideal world being eloquent and prepared would have been enough. But when you are up against something as irrational as white America’s fear of change, excitement over what is over the horizon is a necessity. 

Trump’s win came down to the battleground states we’ve been hearing about: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. While some counties are still being counted, Trump won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and is leading in both other states. Many of these results mirror those from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run and illuminates an unfortunate discrepancy in how voters showed up for Biden versus Clinton and Harris. In 2016, Clinton failed to secure electoral college votes from Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — all states that Biden picked up in 2020. Did Biden prove that the Democratic Party could flip red and purple states or did he highlight that voters within those states were more willing to vote for a male candidate than a woman? The results seem to convey the latter; a devastating blow to our work to demonstrate that leadership doesn’t have to be masculine.

It would be hard to inspect these election results without considering the impact of the progressive vote. Just over half a million people — or 0.7% of voters — cast their ballots for Jill Stein and other leftist candidates. In most states, this turnout was negligible enough to not make or break the election results. Only in Dearborn, Michigan, and a few other districts, could Jill Stein voters have made the difference by voting for Harris. It still wouldn’t have been enough to change Harris’ electoral college count as she needed many more county wins to tip her over the magic number of 270. In Wisconsin, third-party votes actually shrunk from both 2016 and 2020. By-and-large, even in Michigan, progressive protest voters didn’t lose the election for Harris — though they did make their dissent heard. 

Ultimately, the Harris campaign did lose important momentum with young and racially diverse groups of people which noticeably fizzled as her campaign touted Republican endorsements and avoided substantive action in Gaza, hurting her in states like Michigan. Early exit polls are showing that Latino men and white women both voted for Trump over Harris despite the conservative attacks on both groups. We’ll never fully be able to quantify how many people didn’t show up because they were so jaded and disappointed by the options presented before them. Harris was brought in as a Hail Mary. She was supposed to be “not Biden,” but sticking too closely and defensively to Biden administration positions hurt her in the end. Celebrity endorsements and major fundraising hauls attempted to insulate Harris from those critiques but it, unfortunately, didn’t make the difference.

The fact is that Republicans now control the White House, Senate, and Supreme Court. Donald Trump has always been a rogue politician, so him having such complete federal control is devastating. Where do we go from here? What do we do with our grief? How do we pick our people back up and buckle in for the fights ahead? We do what we did in 2017. As Nikki Giovanni said, “if the enslaved could believe, I know I can.” We are byproducts of hopeful people who made miracles happen in the bleakest of circumstances. Though we have some dark times ahead, there is some light. Maryland and Delaware just gave the nation our fourth and fifth Black women Senators in U.S. history with Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester respectively. (Rochester is the state’s first woman senator, as well.) Monroe Nichols became the city of Tulsa’s first Black mayor, running on a platform that involves co-governance with Indigenous people. 

Citizens around the country enshrined abortion rights or rejected even more restrictions, including in Missouri, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado. Missouri voters also raised their minimum wage and expanded paid sick time. State-level supermajorities in North Carolina and Wisconsin were broken as Democrats picked up key, formerly-Republican-held positions. The outstanding result, which could offer the most significant Democratic victory of the cycle, would be Democrats regaining control of the House. If they are able to manage it, the House of Representatives would become the only federal checks and balances for Republicans. As it stands, though, Republicans currently hold the lead in the House.

Lawyer and organizer Derecka Purnell wrote in her book Becoming Abolitionists, “the greatest threats to our freedom are hopelessness, helplessness, and the criminalization of rebellion.” We don’t know how much Trump and the Republican Party will encroach on our ability to educate and advocate against him and the ideals he represents, but we do control whether we succumb to defeat. We are only here because we have survived so much already and this moment will be no different. One day a woman will assume the Office of the President of the United States. Though that day is not today, we will commit to doing the work that brings that day closer and closer. And in the meantime, we will hold our people tight and get through this the only way we can: together.