Brehm: Democrats have themselves to blame for Trump’s election

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Although the bags under my eyes are dark after a long night watching the election returns, I am elated by what America did yesterday.

I don’t think this red wave was as much of an embrace of Donald Trump — although he deserves credit for a herculean political comeback — as it was a dramatic electoral repudiation of the far-left progressivism Democrats still believed was popular. The politics that might play well among Twin Cities liberals turns off average Americans that comprise the country’s center-right majority. If Democrats want to win nationally again, they better turn off MSNBC and NPR and stop scoffing at, and instead start listening to, these voters they lost.

Democrats truly have only themselves to blame for this historic landslide. The party’s establishment stuck by the clearly incapable incumbent president for too long, burning credibility with the American people, and then foisted upon us an equally unqualified and unpalatable hard left alternative. The simplistic “It’s Hitler or us” shtick didn’t work. At all.

And Democrats’ obsession with exacting revenge on Donald Trump following his 2020 loss through the criminal justice system was a key ingredient to his political resurrection. Americans won’t stand for political lawfare. As Richard Nixon stated as he resigned the presidency: “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” Wise words for us all — and particularly today for those Democrats who have been preoccupied with Trump these past four years.

As exhausting as Trump can be, the U.S. was more tired of Democrats’ deeply divisive identity politics and degradation of those that don’t agree with them. I was on the brunt end of that after my last column endorsing Trump and received a few shocking and mean-spirited divorce letters from treasured longtime friends. While disappointed in that, it also motivated me to pull the lever for Trump even more as democracy can’t function well with that level of political intolerance and enmity. I think cancel culture is over in 2024. And good riddance.

Now is the time for President-elect Trump to bring our country together. While he has a strong electoral mandate to pursue his conservative policy agenda, he should welcome Democrats into his cabinet and administration, return bipartisanship to Washington and do what his predecessor could not: turn down the nation’s political temperature. Magnanimity in victory is a good look. And it’s what our divided country needs right now.