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Today we stand on the precipice of what, at least up to now, sure seems like the low point in the history of modern American democracy: we are just less than a week away from the re-inauguration of a man to the White House who encouraged his followers to overthrow democracy itself four years ago and plans to be a “dictator” on the first day of his presidency.

You’re probably distressed. I get it. I know I am. 

But Donald Trump’s election doesn’t mean that the majority of Americans have lost their minds. Far from it. And it certainly doesn’t mean that Trump is now suddenly a popular President. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean that Republicans have realigned American politics in any meaningful way.

I’m not going to tell you the next four years aren’t going to be difficult. But Trump’s win is just the latest example that working Americans (that’s almost all of us, by the way) want something big to change. The question is can we, as Democrats, actually change our politics, because Republicans certainly won’t.

OK, let’s start with some numbers. 

First, this was hardly a resounding win for Trump. At the end of the day, he won the popular vote by about two million votes, and that’s only 1.5% of the Americans who voted. 

That’s hardly the landslide FDR had in 1936 (24.8%) or Lyndon Johnson in 1964 (22.6%). It wasn’t Barack Obama in 2008 (7.2%), and not even Tony Evers in 2022, who won the Wisconsin governership by almost 3.5%.

Last year was also only the second time since 1988 that a Republican has won the popular vote (the other was George W. Bush in 2004). 

In this context, a razor-thin election victory in a very difficult economic climate hardly seems like the beginning of a major shift in the perspective of American voters.

And here’s another number: Trump’s current net favorability rating is -1, meaning more Americans dislike him than like him. His favorability is almost certain to be at its zenith right before inauguration, and it’s still under water (for comparison, President Biden’s favorability was +23 when he was inaugurated in 2021). 

Trump’s got nowhere to go but down.

OK, so then what does Trump’s election actually mean? To answer that, instead of just looking at it from the perspective of this election, let’s look at the last few presidential elections. 

In 2016, Hillary Clinton, who had been Obama’s Secretary of State, was running effectively as an incumbent in 2016. Though she won the popular vote, she lost to Trump in the electoral college. 
In 2020, of course, Trump himself was the incumbent. He lost. And, then, in 2024, of course. Kamala

Harris was the effective incumbent. She lost.

What’s the common theme here? Incumbents losing elections. 

Elections are complicated, and can never be explained by just one factor, but as Neil Kraus and I recently wrote in The Nation, we have an economy that hasn’t worked for most Americans for decades [“Why Democrats Are Losing Americans Without a College Degree – and How to Win Them Back,” The Nation, December 12, 2024]. 

You can check out that piece for more of the explanation, but when half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, millions of people can’t find affordable housing and wealth inequality continues to rise unsustainably, some Americans are voting out of desperation for something, anything, to change. 

And that’s how Trump got elected. Again, remember that it only takes a few million people to shift their votes (or not vote) in a few key states to swing an election.

Don’t get me wrong. Trump will certainly try to do many awful things in the next few years on immigration, workers’ rights, trans rights, reproductive rights and probably some things we haven’t even thought of yet. 

And he will likely get away with some or even a lot of it. But with a razor-thin margin in both the House and the Senate, it’s going to be difficult to get Congress to enact a lot of his agenda of anarchy. 
And one thing I can tell you for certain is that Trumpism will not actually improve the lives of working Americans in any tangible way.

So here’s the good news, in 2026, and in 2028, voters are once again going to be voting against the incumbent. We can take back Congress in 2026, and we may very well be able to win a trifecta in Wisconsin. 

A great candidate who prioritizes economic security for working people in 2028 could retake the presidency and truly realign American politics for the better.

We must lead, however, with a bold agenda that will move the needle for working people, and make sure everyone knows it, too. I suggest we start with Harvey Kaye and Alan Minsky’s call for a “21st Century Economic Bill of Rights” [https://pdamerica.org/economicbillofrights] When you talk to Democratic candidates, tell them you want them to put economic rights for all Americans front and center so we can win elections.

And here’s what you else can do right now: get to work to elect Susan Crawford to the Wisconsin state supreme court on April 1. 

I’m sure you’re feeling the same election fatigue I am, but we must keep the court out of the hands of conservative ideologues so we have a chance of overturning Act 10, so we can preserve reproductive rights, and, above all, protect our election processes.

Then, in 2026 – and beyond – we can, in Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, bend the arc of the moral universe back toward justice and banish Trumpism to the dustbin of history where it deserves to be.  
And if we do that, maybe the election of 2024 will be little more than an asterisk.

Jon Shelton is a professor and chair of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He is the author of The Education Myth and Teacher Strike!, which won the International Standing Conference of the History of Education’s First Book Award. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Dissent, Jacobin and more. Shelton has served as Vice-Chair of Green Bay’s Equal Rights Commission and sits on the boards of the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the Wisconsin Labor History Society. He is also Vice-President for Higher Education of AFT-Wisconsin.