An extraordinary presidential election is over—now what?

The election is over. President-elect Trump won an impressive victory. As of the writing of this column, he leads with more than 50% of the popular vote and a margin of more than 4 million votes. Mr. Trump appears to have won all seven battleground states (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada). If he maintains his lead in Arizona and Nevada he will have won the Electoral College 312 to 226.

Perhaps even more impressive, he increased his share of the vote in virtually every one of the nation’s 3,143 counties. In decisively winning another term in the Oval Office, President-elect Trump forged a truly impressive multi-ethnic coalition and increased his share of the vote with women, Hispanics, blacks (especially men) and performed better than in previous elections with both men and women.

In short, Trump has brought about the most fundamental realignment in the American political landscape since President Franklin Roosevelt forged the New Deal coalition in 1932.

Trump has made the Republican Party the party of non-college-educated working people, the blue-collar workers who make this country work every day and who felt neglected or looked down upon by Democratic Party elites who disparaged them as “deplorables” or “garbage” when they disagreed with Democrat policy positions. For the first time since such records started being kept, the Republican Party gained a majority of workers who make less than $50,000 a year!                        

Exit polls showed that 7 in 10 American voters believed that the country was on the wrong track and they voted for a change in direction. The Democratic Party ignored the people’s major concerns about virtually unrestricted illegal immigration on our Southern Border and it cost them dearly in this election.

Inflation also played a significant role. Inflation is a cruel and regressive tax that hurts people disproportionately at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Many of them felt that the Biden administration was not sufficiently sensitive to the suffering inflation was inflicting on the American people.

The bottom line in this election is that the American electorate took a collective shift to the right. Even in liberal bastions like New Jersey and New York, Trump saw his margin of defeat decline (in New Jersey, his deficit went from 16% down to 5%, and in New York, from 23% down to 12%).

President-elect Trump has accomplished a political resurrection that most observers would have thought was impossible. He has secured his place in American history as only the second man to come back and win the presidency having previously been defeated after one term in office.

However, all of us as Americans, whether we voted for President-elect Trump or not, need to remember that no president can solve all of our problems. We are still an extraordinarily divided people with vital disagreements on important issues.

An example of matters that should concern all of us as Americans is the fact that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found that more than half of Americans believe the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” The same survey revealed that 80% of Americans believe “that words can be violence,” which is untrue.

All of us as Americans need to renew our commitment to our First Amendment freedom of speech guarantees and to wed that commitment with a commitment to civility in public discourse.

The antidote to erroneous speech is more speech, not censorship. The best way to guarantee our freedom of speech rights is to exercise them and refuse to be intimidated or silenced.

Also, the Democratic Party has some soul-searching to do on its own. They clearly lost the debate in this election cycle. America is always better off when you have two parties competing for the privilege of leading America. I suspect that Democrats will have the same soul-searching discussions they had after the ultraliberal wing of the Democrats led them to an electoral catastrophe with Michael Dukakis in 1988. Then Gov. Bill Clinton and Rep. Dick Gephardt used the Democratic Leadership Council to pull the Democrats back to the electoral center where the votes are. I suspect Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro might indeed fulfill the role Bill Clinton played in bringing Democrats back to the more moderate middle.

As Christians, we must never forget our obligation to pray for all those who are in authority, whether we voted for them or not. I pray for President Biden every day and I will continue to pray for President Trump after January 20th.

In conclusion, let us all pause for a moment as we approach Veterans Day (Nov. 11) to express a prayer of thanksgiving for all of our fellow Americans who have served in our nation’s armed forces, defending the freedom we exercised last Tuesday in electing our leaders.