Part 1: By the Numbers
There is a great deal to be said regarding the recent national election that returned a despicable scumbag to the White House. Let’s start with the numbers:
The total population of the United States is about 345 million.
Approximately 245 million Americans were eligible to vote in the 2024 general election.
161.4 million people were registered to vote in the US in 2024 (only 66% of eligible voters).
83.6 million people who were legally eligible (34%) couldn’t be bothered to even register to vote.
153,860,442 (154 million) ballots were cast in 2024 (95% of registered voters; 63% of the voting-eligible population).
92 million Americans, or about 37.6% of the country’s voting-eligible population, did not vote in the 2024 general election.
22 million registered voters didn’t bother to vote (37.6% of eligible voters).
76,705,154 (77 million) people voted for Trump (31.3% of eligible voters).
74,153,671 (74 million) people voted for Harris (30.3% of eligible voters).
2 million voted for a third party (0.8% of eligible voters).
So Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by only 1% of the popular votes. Even so, he only garnered 31.3% of the eligible votes—less than a third, since 37.6% didn’t vote at all. This means that over two thirds of the populace didn’t want him to be President! Less than a third of the American people chose a convicted felon, sexual predator and serial liar over a career prosecutor and lifelong public servant. Less than a third of the American people have given Trump license to have his remaining Federal indictments dropped, and possibly pardon the J-6 rioters and the Proud Boys.
Democrat White, Hispanic and Black men either voted for Trump or sat out this election because apparently they did not want a Black woman as president of this country.
The most common reason Trumpers themselves give for why they voted for him is: “He hates all the same people that I hate.” Trump tapped into the hatred and anger that many White male Americans had to keep in the closet for so long. Hatred of women. Hatred of colored people. Hatred of Jews. Hatred of Moslems. Hatred of “queers.” Hatred of anyone different than themselves. Trump openly mocks and insults those groups, and the drooling masses love it. Suddenly, they can go back to saying any damn thing they want, because the President does it, so why can’t they?
Trump is a felon, a criminal, a thug. So is his personal lawyer, his national security advisor, his foreign policy advisor, his chief strategist, his trade advisor, his campaign chairman, his deputy campaign manager, his campaign fixer and his company CFO.
Although the Electoral College with our winner-take-all policy for state electors (with the exception of Maine and Nebraska) handed Trump the Presidency, 31.3% is hardly a mandate to rule. Nonetheless, Trump claims such a mandate and has clearly stated his intention to rule as an absolute “dictator on day one,” pursuing a program not of governance and service, but of “retribution and revenge.”
The extreme right-wing MAGA Republicans now control all three branches of our National Government: Executive (the Presidency), Legislative (Congress: The Senate and the House of Representatives) and Judiciary (the Supreme Court). They now have all the power and wealth of our country.
As Peter Baker recorded in the New York Times, the country that President Joe Biden and his Democratic administration will leave behind when they leave office is in the best shape it’s been in since at least 2000.
No U.S. troops are fighting in foreign wars, murders have plummeted, deaths from drug overdoses have dropped sharply, undocumented immigration is below where it was when Trump left office, stocks have just had their best two years since the last century. The economy is growing, real wages are rising, inflation has fallen to close to its normal range, unemployment is at near-historic lows, and energy production is at historic highs. The economy has added more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs among the 16 million total created since 2020.
Baker quoted chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi, who said: “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets.”
And now we can expect it to become as bad as it ever gets.