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Maureen Dowd

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist

I can no longer count the number of times I’ve counted out Donald Trump.

Every time, what I thought would stagger him made him stronger.

I assumed that he would have to drop out in 2016 after the “Access Hollywood” tape. I thought he would be driven into exile after he egged on the Jan. 6 insurrectionists hunting down Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. I thought his cynical move stacking the Supreme Court with religious fanatics who yanked away women’s reproductive rights would doom his comeback attempt. I thought his deranged, nasty, out-of-control final weeks of campaigning would surely sink him.

But Trump never disappeared in a puff of orange smoke. Every time, he bobbed back up, defying convention and luring voters I thought he had lost, given how he, JD Vance and his rally carny barkers delighted in disparaging so many voting blocs with utter abandon.

We must now fathom the unfathomable: All the misogynistic things, the racist things, the crude things, the undemocratic things he’s said and done don’t negate his appeal to millions of voters. Because he will once again be our president, and he has declared that he has “an unprecedented mandate.”

Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy America.

We have to accept that a lot of Americans want Trump in charge. Even a lot of Republicans who cringe at his words and actions approve of his policies on the economy and the border and his promise to “keep men out of women’s sports.”

Seeking Black and Latino votes at a Bronx barbershop, Trump delivered this message: “They take your kid. There are some places, your boy leaves for school, comes back a girl, OK, without parental consent.”

“What is that all about?” he wondered.

His support among Latino men jumped, despite the fact that he was running against a woman of color who could have made history as the first Madam President. He held his own with Black men. “A small but significant slice of Black men have historically been hesitant to support Black women seeking the highest positions of power,” Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Erica Green presciently wrote in The Times in August.

As Van Jones noted on CNN, there are many disappointed African American women who are trading in a “lot of hope for a lot of hurt.”

James Carville warned that Democrats needed to stop coming across as the party of preachy women. But then Barack and Michelle Obama tried to woo Black men by scolding them.

“We have every right to demand the men in our lives do better by us,” Michelle Obama said. “Our lives are worth more than their anger and disappointment.”

In the last days of the campaign, as Trump’s language got darker and his insults cruder, as he wore a neon orange safety vest and rode in a garbage truck as a stunt, it felt that he might end up unmanned by women.

This was an epic battle of the sexes. Kamala Harris ended her campaign with Beyoncé, Oprah and Lady Gaga. Trump and Vance went down the rabbit hole of the bro ecosystem and ended with Joe Rogan’s embrace.

Shortly before the polls closed, the Trump........

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