There is no reason why Donald Trump won the recent presidential election. His vote totals were almost exactly the same as they were in 2020 (just about a million votes more, but the population increased). But Kamala Harris earned almost 10 million votes fewer than Joe Biden received four years ago. And, according to the New York Times, this lowering of voting occurred across all areas and all voting groups.

All I can think of is that, in 2020, people were feeling the problems with the Trump chaos, and in 2024, it had receded. But that doesn’t really satisfy me, nor do the various other possible causes listed in the Times’ front page article today. I also can’t believe that 10 million people felt that Kamala Harris was unqualified, while Joe Biden was qualified to run the country. And I can’t blame it on the way she campaigned which, although there were a few things she said that she should not have, was very professional and, I thought, demonstrated her capabilities.

Of course, sitting vice presidents are often faced with dilemmas campaigning for the presidency, especially when they are vice president to unpopular presidents, as Joe Biden now clearly is. They cannot be disloyal to the president, yet they must show that their administration will not be a continuation of an administration that many found less than successful. When asked what she wished the Biden administration had done differently, on national TV, Harris simply said “nothing”. And, even though she tried to set a more independent course later, this remark stuck. Perhaps fear of another four years hung in the air.

So why did so many people stay home? Why did so many people stay home when, supposedly and perhaps accurately, “democracy was at stake”? Wouldn’t such a dire warning increase the turnout? After all, what is more essential to democracy than voting?

Let me suggest another possibility, one that I have not heard elsewhere (yet). American democracy will be 250 years old in less than two years. 250 years is a long time, and maybe we are tired of it. Maybe we have questions about the effectiveness of democracy (democracy as it is manifest in this country), maybe we think our democratic vote doesn’t really matter. In part this might be because each of us is a very, very small peg in an increasingly large machine. Or it may be that the distortion caused by the Electoral College (why do I capitalize that?) diminishes our vote (even though the smaller vote totals were equally found in the battleground states). Maybe we compare ourselves with other “western” countries, including Canada and much of Europe and see that our lives are shorter, our crime is worse, our infrastructure is well behind those of the others, our income gaps are greater, our internal dissent seems more pronounced, our health care system is messed up, our borders are porous, our economy looks better statistically but not per our bank accounts, and so forth. Maybe we simply don’t think, in 2024, American democracy works.

And if we don’t have faith in our 250 year old (and very hard to change) system, we just sit back and let others take over. We want a parent (father) figure. Someone who will protect us and take care of us, and keep us from making decisions we seem incapable of making. We don’t want democracy – we want a strong leader, so that we can forget about the greater world, and find our individual worlds more welcoming.

This would, in a sense, explain why right wing Christian evangelicals, in spite of the details of their faith, flock to Trump. Just like Jesus, or God, or a combination (or maybe they are the same, I don’t know evangelicals think about that), Trump will lead us; we can look up to him. We can rely on him. He will be our protector and savior.

You (the collective you) and I pay a lot of attention to politics. Most people really don’t. They just want to know that their country is working in their interests. And this is why, for those of us who do pay attention, people often seem to vote against their interests. They just don’t think about how policies that might seem helpful at first glance would, in fact, work out. And they aren’t going to think in those terms; they don’t want to. They want someone else to do that type of thinking.

Of course, we will see how all this works out. Trump inherits some of Biden’s successes, and we don’t know what he will do about them. Will he try to halt the push for infrastructure improvements, or will he try to take credit for them? That is just one question of many. And how serious will he be in letting Elon Musk fire hundreds of thousands of federal employees in order to bring our national debt down?

I look at Trump’s presumptive policies and believe that they will be destructive. We shall see what happens. And we will be able to alter the course of American government once again in 2026 if things look bad. Unless everyone decides to stay home.