While votes are still being counted, Donald Trump’s share of the national popular vote is down to 46.5 percent—nearly 2 points lower than Hillary Clinton’s. In a sane world, she would be president — and the Democrats would hold the Senate, as well. But of course, this isn’t a sane world. Trump is president, after all.
Back in 2008, Barack Obama won a sweeping victory, defeating Republican John McCain by over 7 points. Democrats had a 60-seat Senate majority and control of the House. Obama entered the White House with a Gallup approval rating of 67 percent. Only 13 percent disapproved of him at the time. Yet Republicans set out from day one to derail and obstruct his agenda, denying him easy victories, exacting a political price for the few accomplishments trickling out of a filibustered Senate. They even opposed the conservative Heritage Foundation’s private-sector based healthcare reform plan.
{mosads}Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) may have failed in his vows to turn Obama into a one-term president, but Republicans mopped up everywhere else: the Senate, the House, governorships and state legislatures. They gerrymandered the House so severely that Democrats would have to win the national House popular vote by over 7 points to merely have a chance at retaking that chamber.
Now, Trump is about to enter the White House having lost the national popular vote by a significant margin, with a Gallup approval rating of just 42 percent, with 55 percent disapproving. And yet Democrats like incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) say, “When we can agree on issues, then we’re going to work with him.”
No Democrat should ever work with Trump. No Democrat should ever legitimize that corrupt xenophobic white supremacist Russian puppet. No Democrat should pretend that his infrastructure plan wouldn’t be a giveaway to his business interests. No Democrat should pretend that his word has value or that his intentions are ever honorable. This is the same president-elect who just paid a $25 million fraud settlement over Trump University, the same president-elect whose charitable foundation just admitted to rampant self-dealing. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Every day, Democrats should remind voters that America voted for someone else. Every day, they should highlight his racist and anti-Semitic cabal of Cabinet and personal advisers.
You won’t see me use the “alt-right” euphemism.
Every day, Democrats should point to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence on our nation’s president. Every day, Democrats should scream about Trump’s self-dealing and personal corruption, because dear god, he’s not even president yet and it’s already begun.
And unlike conservatives, we don’t have to create a fake-news industry to point all that out. Reality has become far crazier than the most talented fiction writer could ever devise.
And therein lies this cycle’s potential silver lining. With a President Clinton, Democrats would face further devastation in 2018. Not only do first-term presidents historically get walloped in their first midterm, but we’d be in the third consecutive Democratic presidential term. The GOP would control House and state legislative districts through 2030. Instead, Democrats can leverage Trump to retake governorships and state legislatures over the next two election cycles, setting themselves up nicely for the 2020s. But only if they show riled up liberal partisans that they’re not going to let that fraud get normalized.
And that relentless resistance begins today.
Moulitsas is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos.