The United States has just endured the most rancorous and contentious presidential campaign in most of our lifetimes. Many pundits (including this one) have also described the campaign as the most divisive in U.S. history. I still believe it was. But what has emerged from the divisiveness is the most diverse coalition that any Republican presidential candidate has ever assembled. President-elect Trump won record numbers of votes from African Americans and Hispanics by a Republican candidate. And he performed much better among women than most election observers and analysts predicted he would.
So what are some lessons from this result? And what mandates remain, especially for American Catholics? The answers are a mixture of economic and social factors.
First, the economics. During the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris was unable to articulate any substantive ways that her administration would differ from the Biden administration. When asked specific questions about inflation, for example, she could not satisfy American voters that she had a plan. In contrast, Donald Trump has advocated specific issues to ease economic pain, including targeted tax cuts on overtime and tips, for example.
Clearly, a large part of the electorate voted for economic change. This confirmed a lesson that was made famous during the President Clinton years: It’s the economy, stupid!
But while economics largely drove the result of this election, we Catholics understand that many cultural and social issues are far more important than decreasing interest rates and controlling inflation. From this perspective, we have reason to be more optimistic than if Harris had won.
This includes issues related to abortion, families and children, and gender issues.
Kamala Harris ran as the abortion candidate. She believed that America is as obsessed with abortion as she is. We are not. To be sure, the election was a setback in the several states that passed pro-abortion legislation or constitutional measures. But abortion was not the slam dunk issue that Harris thought. Many voters cast votes both for Trump and for pro-abortion referenda. This tells us that many Americans want some “protection” for abortion, but are not animated by the issue.
Of course, Donald Trump has compromised his policy stand on abortion, saying that it is a state issue now. Even so, however, Trump’s “pro-choice” position is a more hopeful starting point for advocating policies and regulations that could encourage life and discourage abortion. Tax and regulatory policy can be utilized to foster a culture of life without necessarily banning abortion. With JD Vance as vice president, Trump has an opportunity to utilize his administrative authority to do just that.
This might include following up on increasing the child tax credit and advocating free birth for all Americans. Vance himself has talked openly about the need to increase births through economic measures. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, these are viable policies. We Catholics should advocate pro-life and pro-family policies as alternatives to abortion, while also continuing to work on legislation in the states.
Donald Trump and Republicans also saw that Americans want to put the brakes on the aggressive gender ideology represented by Kamala Harris. In my state of Ohio, long-term and popular Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown was defeated by Colombian immigrant Bernie Moreno.
Down the stretch, Republican ads highlighted Brown’s advocacy of a transgender agenda, which contributed to Moreno’s victory. Americans do not want girls to be forced to compete against boys, for men and boys to use girls’ and women’s restrooms, or to allow the mutilation of minors in the name of gender ideology.
Trump has been blunt and unequivocal about these issues. And while implementing policy is harder than making campaign promises, we can at least see that Americans care about protecting women and women’s spaces.
We Catholics, for whom life and gender issues are paramount, must neither gloat nor rest, however. This is a time to build coalitions and reach across the moral and political divide. We must exercise the same charitable impulses that we would want for ourselves. This includes moderating Republican rhetoric on immigration, for example. To be sure, we need a substantive and comprehensive immigration policy. But we must not use that as a platform for division and hateful rhetoric.
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