Comment on The next nonproliferation tests

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said Tuesday’s election showed a realignment of the Republican Party and the American electorate that centers less on race and more on occupation, the Washington Post reports. Said Rubio: “Donald Trump won it by fundamentally remaking the Republican Party but I hope also revealing to people that for voters in the United States of America, their primary identity is not their ethnicity, it’s not their race.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said Americans now have a responsibility “to do everything we can to support and defend our Constitution, preserve the rule of law, and ensure that our institutions hold over these coming four years,” the Washington Post reports.

Wall Street Journal: “One reason Republicans performed so well is because of the major inroads Trump made with younger male voters. Voter survey numbers from Tuesday showed Trump won 18- to 29-year-old men by 11 percentage points, securing 54% of that group compared with 43% for Kamala Harris. In 2020, VoteCast data showed that President Biden won those voters by 15 percentage points, 56% to 41%.” “Trump made targeting younger men a cornerstone of his campaign and it appeared to pay off.

New York Times: “Mr. Trump has already sought to undermine the independence of the justice system. During his first term, he demanded personal loyalty from officials across the executive branch and fired those who resisted his demands.” “Now he returns to the White House with the knowledge of how the system restricted his impulses and with a roster of officials more willing to help him circumvent longstanding norms.” “The last time he took office, a culture of resistance emerged from corners that included Democrats, the federal government’s civil servants and even some of his own appointees.

Yascha Mounk: “Back in 2016, the whiff of aberration hung over Trump’s success. His opponents could claim that his victory was some strange historical fluke. They could put it down to foreign interference or to Russian hackers. Political scientists confidently pronounced that he represented the final, Pyrrhic victory of a declining electorate—the last, desperate stand of the old, white man.” “But aberrations tend not to happen twice, and 2024 puts the last nail in the coffin of that distorted interpretation.”

Charlie Sykes: “Whatever the final margin, the American people have returned this blatantly, dangerously unfit man to power. In the end, nothing mattered. Not the sexual assaults, the frauds, the lies, or the felonies. Not the raw bigotry of his campaign; not the insults, nor the threats. In the most graphic terms imaginable, the American people were warned of the danger.