President-elect Donald Trump’s victory was a sign not just of a realigned American electorate but of a much-deserved defeat for the Washington establishment on both domestic and foreign-policy issues.
According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, the election results confirm the embrace of Trump by working-class voters of all races while Democrats have become the party of the credentialed elites. That means “changing the way we think about terms like conservative and liberal as well as what it means to be pro-Israel or opposed to antisemitism.”
Tobin is joined by author Matthew Continetti, who believes that the November election and the realignment it demonstrated signifies that “the Republican Party become the party of those of every race and ethnicity and creed who believe in traditional America. They believe in certain things, there should be a border, who believe that there are biological men and women, and that biological boys should not play in girls’ sports.”
Continetti also linked the results to opinions about the Middle East. He said that Trump’s appeal was also “a function of the fact that most Americans support the State of Israel and believe that there is a fundamental connection between the United States and the Jewish state. That, I think, is a theme about this campaign that is not remarked on enough. Donald Trump’s position on Israel was made abundantly clear to all, and Kamala Harris’s position was hidden like so many other of her views.”
Tobin and Continetti agreed that the election was in part a repudiation of the mainstream legacy media. According to Continetti, “the legacy media just didn’t matter. What mattered instead were these podcasts, were these influencers who are not even necessarily political. So, you see just how successful I think the Trump strategy of really kind of avoiding the legacy media and going straight to voters through these podcasts was.”
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