Democrats and their media enablers are trying to make sense of last Tuesday’s elections – the biggest shift to the right since Ronald Reagan became president in 1980 – looking for where they went wrong. The good news for the Republican Party is that they have no idea.

The main disconnect is that they fail to recognize that tens of millions of Americans I actually like Donald Trump; many even love him. Democrats are so blinded by hate (there’s a reason Republicans have coined the label TDS) that they literally cannot fathom that Trump is personally popular. We’ll explain the reasons for that affection in a moment, but first it’s worth (and, frankly, fun) exploring the self-flagellation and circular firing squads taking place on the left.

Many Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, blame Joe Biden for not withdrawing sooner. Others have dared to suggest that Kamala Harris ran a lousy multi-billion-dollar campaign by turning down, for example, an invitation to Joe Rogan’s podcast, which could have improved her performance among men. (Donald Trump’s free-flowing three-hour conversation with Rogan was viewed by 47 million people; as Trump cheekily noted in a post offering to help Harris pay off her campaign debts, he got a lot of “earned media” that “It doesn’t cost much.”)

Bernie Sanders rightly blames his colleagues for forgetting their roots, saying, “It should be no surprise that a Democratic Party that has abandoned the working class finds that the working class has abandoned them.” Yes, when you promise to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to pay off student loans, and only 34% of Americans are college graduates who typically earn more than non-college graduates, it shouldn’t surprise you that most of the country thinks you don’t. I don’t care much about them.

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All of these reflections may be somewhat valid, unlike accusations of misogyny or racism, but it is surprising that not a single democrat has admitted that the true appeal of Donald Trump also helped him win. Liberals have bought into their own narrative about the president-elect to such an extent, and live in such a cocoon of groupthink, that they cannot conceive that he could be the kind of person people would like to have a beer with.

More importantly, they cannot imagine that he might not be a reflection of our country’s worst impulses and attitudes, but rather embody some of its best. What would those admirable impulses be? Honesty, common sense, patriotism, humor and authenticity.

DEPRESSED MEDIA REACTS TO TRUMP’S VICTORY: HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?

Let’s start with honesty. Democrats accuse Trump of lying about everything, all the time. They have created a cottage industry of verifying their every statement, every facial expression, every sneeze. What do they find? A tendency to exaggerate, to exaggerate the size of his crowds, to inflate his victories and minimize his losses. His is a big, big, beautiful world and those are the terms on which he deals. His exaggerations and hyperbole are often ironic and funny, but only to his followers. For Democrats, they are disqualifying.

On the contrary, Democrats have been the authors of some of the biggest and most serious falsehoods in our history. Pretending that Joe Biden was fit for another four years of service was a blatant lie concocted by the White House, top Democrats, and the media. That is a lie with consequences and now they are paying for it.

WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA – NOVEMBER 6: Republican presidential candidate former US President Donald Trump arrives to speak during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 6, 2024 in West Palm Beach , Florida. Americans voted today in the presidential race between former Republican President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as in multiple state elections that will determine the balance of power in Congress. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Additionally, left-wing media and Hillary Clinton’s campaign concocted the Russia-undermining hoax, while Democrats also smeared the former president with dishonest interpretations of his comments about Charlottesville, veterans, and immigrants. These profound falsehoods unfairly influenced what many thought about Trump.

Even in the final days of the campaign, Democrats took a stupid joke from Trump’s Madison Square Garden event and dishonestly pretended it reflected the former president’s racism. The followers knew better.

The left has branded Trump as anti-woman despite his record of hiring women for top positions (including his daughter Ivanka), anti-gay even though he chose the first openly gay Cabinet member in our history, and anti-black despite his adoption measures such as permanently funding historically black colleges and establishing opportunity zones in black communities. These are false accusations and, consequently, dismissed by his fans.

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Another Trump virtue applauded and shared with his followers is common sense. Allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports is ridiculous; More than 70% of adults agree. Allowing millions of people to enter the country illegally, without authorization, is outrageous; a poll that favored Harris shows that the majority of the country approves of mass deportations. Allowing criminals to walk free is dangerous; Even voters in ultra-liberal Southern California agree, ousting progressive District Attorney George Gascon in a landslide. Common sense voters elected Donald Trump to stop progressive nonsense like prioritizing DEI practices in the military, and he will do it.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at PPG Paints Arena on November 4, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Liberals can’t understand that Trump is authentic. You may not like what he says, but it’s pretty clear that he’s telling you what he thinks. Polls showed that voters thought Trump was serious; that was not true for Kamala Harris.

Finally, Trump has an excellent sense of humor, something his fans enjoy, that the media never showed and the left never appreciated. Showing up at McDonald’s and driving a garbage truck at the end of the campaign was fun and engaging. It was extremely difficult to reconcile those gestures with the left’s desperate depiction of Trump as an authoritarian and the second coming of Hitler.

Finally, Trump is a patriot. Democrats tried to jump on that bandwagon at their convention, which was festooned with American flags and peppered with renditions of the Star Spangled Banner. But since the left for years has denounced our nation as “systemically racist,” rewritten our history to smear our country’s brilliant founders, and denied that America is a land of opportunity and promise for all, his conversion proved as inauthentic as its candidate.

When Donald Trump promises to make America great again, the left scoffs. Voters believe him and have given him a mandate to try.

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