The left made Trump look like the normal candidate
Donald Trump stood at the center of American politics — in both senses — when he was inaugurated in the U.S. Capitol on Monday afternoon.
Pretty much everything of import in national affairs will revolve around Trump for the foreseeable future, and he’s managed, in many respects, to occupy the political and cultural center.
Trump’s critics have long insisted that he be shunned and not “normalized.” Did someone tell Carrie Underwood, who performed “America the Beautiful” at the inauguration (spontaneously going a cappella when there was a snafu with the accompanying music)? Or the richest, most successful entrepreneurs in the country, who were on prominent display? Or, for the matter, did someone tell the Village People?
If someone had predicted that the group formed to appeal to gay disco fans in 1977 would, in the year of our lord 2025, be performing at a pre-inaugural rally for a Republican president-elect considered a troglodyte culture warrior by his enemies, he’d have been justifiably mocked and dismissed.
As it turns out, disco was never dead, it was just waiting for Trump to revive it (actually, disco-inspired music was already on the upswing before Trump came up with his trendy Y.M.C.A. dance).
How did a Democratic Party that has long prided itself on its hipness and future-oriented attitude lose a coolness fight to Donald J. Trump?
Well, for one thing, the party’s primary voters renominated an octogenarian who couldn’t identify or align himself with a cultural trend if he were gently directed to it by a bevy of solicitous aides. He was then swapped out for his unimpressive vice president, who was the beneficiary of a manufactured campaign to make her seem fun and interesting that collapsed of its own weight by November.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had to sit awkwardly and listen in the Capitol as Trump excoriated their governing record. The harshness of his critique has led some observers to deride his inaugural address as American Carnage 2.0, a reference to the famous phrase from his first inaugural. If Trump was unsparing in his description of the status quo, though, he was soaring in his promises of “a thrilling new era of national success.”
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I think voters recognized that they had made a mistake in electing Biden and Harris who promptly accelerated inflation to the highest levels in decades and whose foreign policy resulted in wars in Europe and the Middle East. It is hard to hide such major screw-ups. They managed to make Trump look like a return to normal.
See also:
Tom Cotton Vows to Show Defiant Democrats That Elections Can and Will Have Consequences
And:
MSNBC completely melts down on camera during Trump’s inauguration
And:
Jon Favreau cites Democrats ignoring voters' concerns as a key reason for their loss in 2024
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