Standing at the top of a mountain, it can be easy to forget the effort it took to reach the summit, and even easier to forget that you will eventually have to come back down. If one were to ask the average American in the early 1920s to predict what the coming decade would bring, very few would have economic failure on their mind. Victory convinces people that loss is impossible, that by winning once, you are guaranteed a life free of failure. This thinking has led us into the current political conundrum we are seeing today.
After the 2024 election, many labelled what had happened as a landslide. People were exclaiming that Democrats had been firmly expunged from the fabric of the nation, and that Republicans had finally found a way to break the monopoly that Democrats had had on the popular vote since 2004. However, all of this gloating was done over a 1.5% margin of victory. A difference of a little over two million votes separated Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in the popular vote, yet many people convinced themselves that this election was a sign that America was entering a new age. People began to envision the White House falling firmly into the grip of Republicans for as far as the eye could see, similar to the way FDR was able to have electoral blowouts in each of his reelection campaigns. This belief led to many of the most drastic actions the current administration has taken.
The White House fell into a dangerous belief: they did not understand that eventually they would have to answer for their actions at the ballot box. Under the assumption that their grip on power was everlasting, Republicans began to take radical policy actions: starting a campaign of mass deportations and sending ICE, a militarized police force, into cities across the US, allowing them to kidnap people off of the streets. The White House froze billions in USAID, including PREPFAR, a program started under President George W. Bush to help fund HIV prevention and treatment programs in impoverished countries. Eventually PREPFAR funding was released, but it stands on shaky ground. Trump’s own Big Beautiful Bill extended tax cuts for the wealthy, while cutting subsidies for healthcare and restricting SNAP benefits.
All of these actions are not popular with the American public, with The Economist recording a 39% approval rating for the President as of Feb. 23. These drastic actions were taken because this administration has deluded itself into thinking that it is immortal. It is not. Although, this short-sighted thinking is not a problem that is unique to Republicans.
I would argue that the reason the American public is even dealing with another Trump administration is because of Joe Biden’s own belief in his longevity. When Joe Biden decided to run for a second term, he was coasting off of the high that was the 2022 midterms. Midterms are, historically, bad for the party who is in the White House; however, the 2022 midterms were a mild rebuttal of Democrats, with Democrats only losing the House of Representatives by a small margin. With this in mind, Joe Biden entered the 2024 race, thinking he could ride the coattails of the 2022 midterms and the new anger that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision had injected into Democratic voters. Joe Biden could not. His pride caught up to him as Americans watched him struggle to create a winning message or present a coherent argument in his first debate with Donald Trump.
The gravest mistake any political party can make today is to think that winning once means they can never be defeated. Politicians must walk around with the whisper of the ballotbox in one of their ears, constantly reminding them that nothing lasts forever – reminding them that whatever political empire is in power today might not be tomorrow.
