Trump’s heir, invisible money and more

Voters who see the opposition as dangerous and dystopian, as threats to democracy itself, will not see a loss as a national consensus. They will probably see it as the starting bell for the next campaign.

It’s not just about winners and losers.

The amazing 2024 election featured the incumbent president who stepped back and the former president who returned. The revolutionary competitor who seized the moment. The third contender with the famous last name who rose and fell and then started to re-emerge as a player. Two assassination attempts. And nearest polls in American history.

This year’s contest will have considerable repercussions for the nation’s political landscape.

For starters, here are four of them.

The national debate? It was not done.

Winning the election will not settle the argument.

In the past three elections, the divide in American politics has been close and deep in the abyss — a combustible combination and one that complicates the winner’s efforts to claim office.

How divided are we? In 2016, Republican Donald Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. In 2020, the race was so tight in key states that Joe Biden’s determination to beat Trump lasted the rest of election week.

this time, final polls nationally and in the top seven states showed neither Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris with a clear lead anywhere, one outside the margins of error that reflect polling uncertainties. (The states considered to be the most important are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.)

By more than 3-1, voters declared themselves dissatisfied or worse with the direction of the country. In surveys conducted by Edison Research, seven in 10 said they were either dissatisfied or angry with the state of the country, underscoring a deep desire for change.

One sign of this turmoil: Unless presidents die in office, not since the late 19th century has the United States elected consecutive single-term presidents — as we now have 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 if Harris was elected.

Today’s voters, who see the opposition as dangerous and dystopian, as threats to democracy itself, are unlikely to see a loss as reflecting a new national consensus. They are more likely to see him as the starting bell for the next campaign.

The Latino earthquake shakes racial politics.

The coalitions that make up both major parties are shifting, and none is as important as the shift of some Hispanic voters to the GOP.

Democrats’ core support has long counted on black voters. But in this campaign that Trump did significant gains among Hispanic voters and more modest ones among black voters, especially men.

What it means: Gender, education and class join race and ethnicity as major factors influencing which party and which candidate Latino and black voters support.

In 2016, Trump had about 28 percent of Hispanic voters, 40 percentage points behind Hillary Clinton. In pre-election polls this time around, he has cut that deficit in half, now pulling in around 37%.

That trend, if sustained, would increase the diversity of the Republican coalition and force Democrats to turn to more white voters to win nationally.

The ranks of Hispanic voters, already significant, are growing rapidly.

An estimated 36.2 million Hispanics were eligible to vote this year, according to a report by the Latino Donor Collaborative, representing 50 percent of new eligible voters since the 2020 election. Those numbers are poised to grow. One in 4 American children is Latino.

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

Their political strength was highlighted by the fury that followed a comic mocked Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” when he addressed Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last week. Harris trumpeted the insult on the stump, and her campaign created an ad using the clip.

Trump and his campaign have denied the remarks. “I like Hispanics,” he assured a rally in Albuquerque last week.

Speaking of swing states, nearly half a million Puerto Ricans live in Pennsylvania, the most important of them all.

It’s raining money (invisible).

The burgeoning way of financing elections is in the dark.

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

But the biggest boost to election spending in 2024 has come from super-PACS and other outside organizations that don’t face spending limits and are increasingly using ways to protect the names of those giving the money.

Independent spending groups spent at least $4.5 billion, according to OpenSecretsa nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finance. That’s more than $1.5 billion more than in the 2020 campaign.

While foreign spending favored Democrats in 2020, it’s tilted toward Republicans this time.

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

The sums involved can be staggering. business executive from Chicago Barre Seid gave $1.6 billion to a 501(c)(4) group led by conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo in 2020, believed to be the largest political donation in history. This year, billionaire entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg not only donated $19 million to the main super PAC supporting Harris, but also another $50 million to the 501(c)(4), Future Forward USA Action.

Efforts to clarify who spends how much 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, independent of campaigns, saying it’s political speech protected by the First Amendment.

Since then, spending has increased and disclosure has decreased.

Win or lose, JD Vance wins.

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

With that pick, Trump rejected advice from those who urged him to broaden the appeal of the GOP ticket to voters who weren’t already on his side — for example, by choosing former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who mounted the strongest challenge upon his nomination.

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

There is likely to be an ideological battle for the post-Trump GOP, fought between class Republicans who opposed Trump and populists who aligned with him. But Republican Party operations nationally and in most states are now controlled by MAGA partisans — people who are likely to pay heed to Trump’s views on what should be next and who.

To remember: Vance is 40, about half Trump’s age (he’s 78) and a generation younger than Harris, who is 60. In 2060, nine presidential elections away, Vance would still be younger than Trump is today.