Finding the Soul of America
Now comes the battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses
Gilbert S.C. Keith-Agaran | Photos courtesy Gilbert Keith-Agaran
I did not vote for Donald J. Trump. I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in this election. I also did not jump on the Ronald Reagan re-election bandwagon in 1984 or support my fellow alumni George H.W. Bush in 1988 and 1992 or his Yalie son George W. Bush in 2000 or 2004. I have been a pretty consistent Democratic Party voter.
Following November 5th, I have seen some joy on my social media feeds from supporters of the victorious Republican ticket of Trump and J.D. Vance, including confirmation the election results answered heartfelt prayers. Others on the winning side, as might be expected, were decidedly more gloating than godly (so soon after similar thoughts from my hated Dodger fan friends and family celebrated a World Series title). My Democrat and progressive friends were shocked, disappointed, and somewhat dispirited.
Undeniably, Trump won decisively and broadly—not just in the Electoral College but throughout much of the country, making gains across all demographics and ethnicities (even when he did not win a community the data showed him gaining in that area). The former President won all the so-called swing states—not just the tantalizingly out-of-reach Democratic prizes of Georgia (won in 2020) and North Carolina (last won in 2012) or the sunbelt states of Arizona and Nevada but also the vaunted Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Based on exit polling, he made gains among Latinos and young Black men throughout the country, raising questions about the faith in demographic destiny Democratic Party leaders have touted for decades. Trump also continued to win the votes of white women without college degrees.
Trump’s Bruh strategy also successfully energized younger men—a tactic dismissed by political insiders as quixotic given the historical difficulty in getting that low-propensity voter demographic to the polls. The GOP team’s tour of right-wing influencers and vloggers/bloggers like Joe Rogan and Barstool Sports, and the use of those newfangled social media platforms young men doom scroll over and tune in to, in retrospect, makes sense and even brilliant. In this instance, boys beat the girls.
Republicans also won enough seats for a Majority in the United States Senate. The GOP looks poised to hold onto the U.S. House of Representatives, providing a federal government under one-party rule for at least the next two years. With Trump pulling a Grover Cleveland, he now has a chance to emulate FDR more than Herbert Hoover. If both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito retire, Trump could install younger Justices to ensure a generational shift in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Elon Musk, who may wield broad influence in the incoming administration, posted “Novus Ordo Seclorum.” Someone translated the Latin for me: “New World Order.”
Many have offered takes on what happened. Some within the party say we were not progressive enough and failed to offer convincing and expanded economic and social programs for moving the country forward. Others argue we were too woke and dismissive of the large swaths of the country with continuing dissatisfaction about this economy. The GOP messaging emphasized the Democrats’ transformation into the party of the college-educated, elevating Diversity Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, and the concerns and interests of the cultural and social elite (the wine and cheese squad) over the literal meat and potatoes agenda for America’s working families. Some chalk it off to what every major developed Democracy experienced in its elections emerging from the pandemic—the government in power suffered tremendous losses or was displaced by the opposition. It happened regardless of ideology—left-wing, center-left, center-right, moderate, and right-wing. Folks simply took their frustrations out on the people in charge during COVID.
In all the finger-pointing to come, we should extend some measure of grace to one another. While touted as yet another most important election of our time, most of us got up, greeted our families, and went to work the next day. We do well to remember what the Psalmist wrote, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses;/ But we will remember the name of the Lord our God./ They have bowed down and fallen;/ But we have risen and stand upright.”
In 2019, I attended the National Conference of State Legislatures Summit meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Vanderbilt Professor and Presidential Historian Jon Meacham provided a keynote address. He spoke on the aspirational nature of The Soul of America (the title of one of his books). In a wide-ranging and entertaining talk, Meacham assured the bi-partisan audience of legislators, legislative staff, business leaders and community advocates that the country has experienced fear and division before. He noted in 1925, 50,000 Ku Klux Klansmen paraded through Washington, D.C. to make America great again. He also reminded the gathering of the well-regarded Franklin Delano Roosevelt interned 120,000 Japanese living in the U.S. during World War II. He mentioned the McCarthy anti-communist hearings. While a nation made up of imperfect people, Meacham argued what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” moved the country past those challenging moments time and again.
At some point, Meacham became the uncredited ghostwriter, if not muse, for the kid from Scranton’s successful 2020 campaign for President. When the Pennsylvania result clinched an Electoral College victory, Joe Biden spoke about “restoring” the soul of America. He expressed hope Lincoln’s idealistic thinking would overcome less honorable urges. “Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses. It is time for our better angels to prevail.”
In politics, sometimes you have no choice but to play the hand that you have been dealt. I worked for Governor Ben Cayetano after the post-statehood economic boom slowed and sparked a state revenue crisis, resulting in budget cuts and the first reduction in the force of public workers in the state. After his second term, the voters elected former Maui Mayor Linda Lingle as the first Republican Governor in forty years, rejecting Cayetano’s Lt. Governor Mazie Hirono. But after that eight-year interregnum, the voters preferred Mazie to Linda when both ran in 2012 to replace the retiring Daniel Akaka in the U.S. Senate.
While elite economists and pundits touted our country’s recovery from the worldwide inflationary conditions in the wake of the COVID pandemic—good unemployment numbers job growth and booming Wall Street—many people generally have not and cannot feel that raw data. They only see their paychecks not keeping up with the cost of living: rent, food, childcare, and healthcare. The Biden administration and Democratic legislators were deaf ears to the ongoing pain and anxiety of workers throughout the country. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), the CHIPS Act (2024), and the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) may provide jobs and investments but those were out in the future or did not touch their lives directly. Enough Americans apparently thought back nostalgically to the economy from 2016–2019 that Trump inherited from Barack Obama. Since Trump was President at the time, under the norms of civic life, Trump could claim the credit.
Like Hawai‘i, with an economy based largely on hospitality, inflationary prices hit Silver State residents hard. Nevadans took out their unhappiness with the Biden economy on his V.P. Kamala Harris while apparently re-electing Democratic U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen. Voters in Wisconsin and Michigan also split their tickets—casting ballots for Trump while picking Democrats Tammy Baldwin and Eliza Slotkin as their U.S. Senators. Preliminary data suggests much of the first-time Bruh vote in those states cast checked off Trump and simply skipped the down-ballot races.
I read It Can’t Happen Here decades ago in high school (it’s Sinclair Lewis’ dystopian story of the rise of an American populist politician in the 1930s and the journalist who recognized the fascist tendencies and opposed him). I have generally dismissed the premise as unlikely in the United States. I hope my assumptions are not wrong.
On election night, I recalled to my spouse I was surprised in 2016 when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Back then, I somewhat assumed Trump was being hyperbolic and would, upon taking office, abide by the accepted norms. All signs—if you watched or read a lot of mainstream media, pointed to a Harris victory. She won the only debate (although Trump provided the most memorable and meme-worthy response: “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people who live there.”) Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance described the Democratic Party as beholden to childless cat ladies who had less stake in the future of the country accordingly. Then the news covered Harris’ conventional appeals during the closing days of the campaign. In contrast, Trump finished the days before Election Day with often bizarre weaves of his greatest hits, interspaced with a stream of conscious remarks ranging from a golf legend’s long driver, protecting women whether they liked it or not, close to violent comments and name calling about his political opponents and a bizarre rally at Madison Square Garden.
The Democrats believed (certainly President Biden touted) Trump’s actions and statements would have been campaign-ending for any other candidate. Trump was impeached twice. He refused to concede the 2020 election loss despite no credible evidence he actually won the election. He contributed through rhetoric and inaction to the attack on the Capitol to disrupt the January 6, 2021, Congressional certification of the Electoral College votes. He failed to attend his successor’s inauguration. He was convicted of thirty-four felonies in New York City and indicted in Georgia and federal court in Florida and Washington, D.C.
But despite all that and Trump’s performance art during the campaign, a majority of the voters cast ballots for him knowing what he was like. Apparently, it was not the late deciders but those working class and young men who made up their minds early who pushed the Ivy League-educated Trump (UPenn) and Vance (Yale Law) over the Howard University-educated Harris and Chadron State graduate Walz. None of Trump’s past actions or his campaign speeches or Vance’s incendiary remarks were disqualifying for their supporters.
Like Nevada, Hawai‘i did not have an easy time through the pandemic. Despite how COVID and government decisions shut down the Hawai‘i economy in the pandemic response, followed by the Maui fires, the support for the Democratic ticket remained stronger than in many other places.
Here is a caution. I think Hawai‘i is always a bit behind mainland trends. We pick up things a little slower. But you see, Hawai‘i, I fear, is no different. We are just lagging.
While Hawai‘i’s voters rose over “It’s the economy, stupid” you could feel the attraction of change, and no doubt some misogyny (and a dash of racism), economic, cultural, and social resentment and reaction against identity politics, and a resulting utter lack of empathy.
I may spend too much time on social media so I saw the comments from both local residents and mainlanders on various posts comparing how little Maui fire victims received through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—$700 (if you qualified and managed your way through the bureaucratic hurdles)—and foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel for their wars against Russia (and now North Korea) and Hamas and Hezbollah respectively. I dismissed some of it as bots but I suppose some may have been from folks who heard the complaint amplified over the last couple of months.
I can understand how folks who immigrated here the “right” way—petitioning and waiting for many years to get the interview and the visa to enter the country legally—do not have much empathy for those crossing the southern border from Mexico (or quietly across the northern border from Canada). I have not been surprised by the Mountain West Conference player boycotts (including female athletes from the islands) against San Jose State volleyball and its transgendered player, even though I had a visceral and jarring dislike for how many ads scapegoating trans people ran on national sports and news broadcasts. But woke Democratic men like me were not the target audience for those commercials.
While Kamala Harris did not run on identity, the GOP relentlessly defined her as a DEI hire for Vice President, the failed Czar for an ongoing illegal immigrant border crisis and someone in a political party that prioritized issues like access to government-financed transgendered medical treatment for imprisoned illegal immigrants more than addressing economic anxiety. As the tagline noted, “Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you.”
In the local election, the State Senate gained a third GOP lawmaker while the House totaled nine Republican legislators. The GOP, moreover, continued its expansion in West O‘ahu’s working-class neighborhoods.
Statewide, Harris-Walz collected 312,384 (44,000 raw votes less than Biden in 2020) while Trump-Vance scored 193,169 (3,000 votes less than 2020). In my own community, fewer raw votes for the Democrats. In 2016, Kahului voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine over Donald Trump and Mike Pence, 4,583-2,490. In 2020, Kahului went with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over the incumbent Trump administration, 6,091-3,167. This year, while Dream City stayed the course with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, 4,707-3,015, Trump collected about the same number of votes as 2020 while the Democratic ticket lost 1,384.
Whatever the reason people had for electing Trump, it will be interesting to see what he pushes in his first one hundred days. While people may still dismiss a lot of what he says as performative or car salesmanly, I think we should take Trump at his word he will try and do what he ran on. And this time he may well have the enablers in place (and not more conventional GOP folks who adultingly try to slow down or stop the crazy and the nasty). As Trump touted in his victory speech, his first term was successful because of “promises made, promises kept.” At press time, Trump has announced one of the first things on his agenda will be to abolish, by executive order, “birthright citizenship,” overturning through one stroke of his pen the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that applied the post-Civil War amendments giving freed slaves full American citizenship to any child born on American soil. I am sure that will be litigated.
In the coming months, I hope folks in and out of the new administration heed what a Biblical prophet has suggested, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Gilbert S.C. Keith-Agaran, born and raised on Maui, to first- and second-generation legal immigrants from the Philippines, practices law in Wailuku. He has degrees from two coastal elite institutions of higher education after getting a diploma from Maui High School.