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    • Trump's legacy, invisible money and more
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    Trump's legacy, invisible money and more

    Kathleen William Posted on

    Voters who see the opposition as dangerous and dystopian, a threat to democracy itself, will not see a loss as a national consensus. You'll probably see it as the starting signal for the next campaign.

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    It's not just about the winners and losers.

    The astonishing 2024 election saw the incumbent president withdraw and the former president return. The groundbreaking contender who seized the moment. The third-party candidate with the famous last name, who went up and down and then emerged as a player again. Two assassination attempts. And the closest polls in American history.

    This year's contest will have a significant impact on the country's political landscape.

    To get you started, here are four of them.

    The national debate? It's not finished yet.

    An election victory will not resolve the dispute.

    In the last three elections, the divisions in American politics have been razor-sharp and deep – a combustible combination that complicates the winner's efforts to win a mandate.

    How divided are we? In 2016, Republican Donald Trump won the Electoral College count but lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. In 2020, the race was so close in key states that determining that Joe Biden had defeated Trump took the rest of election week.

    This time, final polls across the country and in the seven top swing states showed that neither Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris had a clear lead anywhere that fell outside the margins of error that reflect the polls' uncertainties. (The main states are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.)

    By more than 3:1, voters said they were dissatisfied with the country's development or even worse. In Edison Research polls, seven in 10 said they were either dissatisfied or angry about the state of the country, underscoring a deep desire for change.

    One sign of that unrest: Except when presidents have died in office, the United States has not elected consecutive one-term presidents since the late 19th century — as we have now done with Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

    Half of voters said in exit polls that they would be worried or scared if Trump won another term. Nearly half said the same thing if Harris were elected.

    Today's voters, who view the opposition as dangerous and dystopian, a threat to democracy itself, are unlikely to view a loss as reflecting a new national consensus. They see this as the starting signal for the next campaign.

    The Latino earthquake is shaking racial politics.

    The coalitions of both major parties are changing, and none is as significant as the shift of some Hispanic voters to the GOP.

    Democrats' core support has long been based on voters of color. But this campaign, Trump has made significant gains among Hispanic voters, but more modest gains among black voters, particularly men.

    What this means: Gender, education and class, along with race and ethnicity, are important factors that influence which party and candidate Latino and black voters support.

    In 2016, Trump had an estimated 28% of Hispanic voters, a yawning 40 percentage points less than Hillary Clinton. In polls before the election, this time he has halved that deficit and is now at around 37%.

    If this trend continues, it would increase the diversity of the Republican coalition and force Democrats to appeal to more white voters to win nationally.

    The already significant Hispanic electorate is growing rapidly.

    An estimated 36.2 million Hispanics were eligible to vote this year, and they made up 50% of new eligible voters since the 2020 election, according to a report from the nonpartisan Latino Donor Collaborative. These numbers are expected to increase. One in four American children is Latino.

    In the battleground states, Hispanics make up 27% of the electorate in Arizona and 21% in Nevada.

    Their political influence was highlighted by the furore after a comedian mocked Puerto Rico as a “floating island of trash” while speaking at Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden last week. Harris announced the slur on the stump, and her campaign cut an ad featuring the clip.

    Trump and his campaign denied the statements. “I love Hispanics,” he asserted at a rally in Albuquerque last week.

    Speaking of swing states: Almost half a million Puerto Ricans live in Pennsylvania, the most important state of all.

    It's raining (invisible) money.

    The emerging way of financing elections is obscure.

    The 2024 presidential campaign has set fundraising records, including $1 billion raised by Harris in the first three months of her abbreviated campaign. Under federal law, donations to election campaigns and political parties are limited in amount and are publicly disclosed.

    But the biggest increase in election spending in 2024 came from super PACS and other outside organizations that have no spending caps and are increasingly using means to hide the names of donors.

    Independent spending groups have spent at least $4.5 billion, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finance. That is more than $1.5 billion more than in the 2020 election campaign.

    Although external spending favored Democrats in 2020, this time it is more in favor of Republicans.

    Super PACs are required to disclose their donors, but nonprofit groups called 501(c)(4)s are not. These groups can funnel money to super PACS and be listed as donors, a way to avoid identifying the original donors.

    The amounts involved can be staggering. Chicago business executive Barre Seid donated $1.6 billion to a 501(c)(4) group led by conservative justice activist Leonard Leo in 2020, considered the largest political donation in history. Billionaire entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg reportedly donated not only $19 million this year to the largest Harris-backing super PAC, but also another $50 million to his 501(c)(4), Future Forward USA Action.

    Efforts to figure out who is spending what on campaigns were undermined by the 2010 Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. The court ruled 5-4 that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts on elections regardless of the campaign, saying it was political speech protected by the First Amendment.

    Since then, spending has risen sharply and disclosure has declined.

    Whether you win or lose, JD Vance wins.

    Trump has reshaped the GOP in his image. By choosing Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate, he has also, sooner or later, named a political heir to lead the MAGA movement.

    With this choice, Trump rejected the advice of those who urged him to broaden the appeal of the GOP ticket to voters who were not already on his side – for example, by choosing former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley to support his nomination on strongest opposition.

    Instead, Trump chose another populist and pugilist who defied the old guard establishment and the news media. His best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” depicted a childhood growing up poor in Kentucky and Ohio and made him a cultural hero for some.

    There will likely be an ideological battle for post-Trump Republicans, fought between establishment Republicans who opposed Trump and populists who aligned themselves with him. But the Republican Party's operations nationally and in most states are now controlled by MAGA partisans – people who are presumably paying attention to Trump's views on what should come next and who.

    As a reminder, Vance is 40 years old, about half Trump's age (he's 78) and a generation younger than Harris, who is 60. In 2060, nine presidential elections in the future, Vance would still be younger than Trump is today.

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    Kathleen William
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