It became evident early that the so-called “blue wall” which helped President Joe Biden win in 2020, including states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin, was collapsing, clearing the way for Trump to implement programs that will bring radically conservative changes.

Trump’s Republican Party also took control of the U.S. Senate and was likely to retain its majority in the House of Representatives. That would be a trifecta reinforced by a friendly conservative super-majority on the U.S. Supreme Court which, earlier this year granted the president almost absolute immunity from prosecution for official actions and abolished the right to abortions.

In this astonishing development, the electorate has given Trump and his allies the green light to pursue one of the policies dear to the heart of right wingers: dismantling gains that came with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. The expected overturning of such rights will almost certainly start shortly after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

The Trump win also clears the way for his often-stated intention to dismantle the guardrails of the country’s liberal democracy and govern under, at least initially, a quasi-autocracy in which all power will be concentrated in his hands. He has stated that he wants to be a dictator “only on Day One” but that is not how it works. Autocrats and would-be dictators are never satisfied with constraints on the power, as is being shown by leaders, who, like Trump, won through elections. They manipulate the system to ensure that, while they pay lip service to democratic norms, they also remove obstacles to remaining in charge.

They include Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, Narendra Modi of India, Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Vladimir Putin of Russia, as New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat pointed out in her book, “Strongmen,” a cautionary report published almost exactly five years ago. These are leaders who have used whatever means are necessary to remove obstacles such as a freedom of speech and judicial independence.

Unlike many of the current “strongmen,” including some now out of office and several no longer alive, Trump made no secret, in advance, as to what he plans to do. Action to at least begin deporting the 11 million undocumented immigrants can be expected to start almost immediately and, despite his frequent denial of any knowledge of the Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership,” many of the far-reaching proposals from that Heritage Foundation-sponsored document will be implemented.

Trump labels all critics as “the enemy from within” whom he will deal with as he pursues a path of revenge for what he still perceives as electoral fraud in 2020. He has told his followers, “I will be your retribution.”

He should be expected also to move quickly to order changes in the Justice Department so as to make pending criminal indictments against him disappear, to keep a promise to pardon at least some of the more than 1,000 persons convicted in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and to prosecute his “enemies,” including Biden and Harris.

The question that will haunt the Democratic Party, which will almost certainly be relegated to a minor role in national affairs – similar to what has taken place over the years in Florida – is how the defeat happened.

The Democrats, after considerable infighting, finally settled on Harris, the current vice president, as its candidate after Biden bowed out in July. She could not have been a better choice – if the battleground was one of good vs. evil, a female Luke Skywalker against Darth Vader.

Accepting her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris declared, “I know there are people of various political views watching tonight, and I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self, to hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.”

She wrapped up her three-month run by saying, “Our campaign has brought together people from all corners of this nation and from all walks of life, united by our love for our country and our faith in a brighter, stronger and more hopeful future that we will build together. And tonight, then, we finish as we started, with optimism, with energy, with joy.”

“We are not going back,” became a Harris campaign theme.

That all sounds fine and uplifting but, while an element of “going back” can be expected from the new Trump administration, it will be to undo progressive policies. Then it will all be going forward.

In addition, the collapse of the Harris presidential bid most likely came from the fact that the political value of emphasizing democracy as being at stake was evidently greatly overblown. The main concern of voters was, in the words of Bill Clinton’s strategist Jim Carville, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Another key strategy failure was the way illegal immigration has been handled at a time of “white replacement” angst, especially with Harris being the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.

There would probably have been a different ending if the Biden administration – including Harris – had devoted substantially more time on the economy to stave off the crippling hyper-inflation that led to soaring prices for essentials such as grocery, gas and housing. Biden managed to push through multi-trillion-dollar legislation paving the way for multi-billion-dollar federal investments in infrastructure improvement, many of them in states which have rejected Harris, in coming years. Voters apparently gave a nod to such a move but were consistently more interested in the immediacy of the untenable cost of living.

Similarly, the administration gave the impression of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of undocumented migrants crossing the border and being dispersed into a variety of places, many of them in small communities, where they undoubtedly have become an economic burden and the butt of fake stories about pet-eating. Biden evidently stuck to a humane approach to the plight of those fleeing persecution but that gave his opponents – and, of course, those of Harris – an opening to push the racist “America First” argument.

Then, too, there was the Biden/Harris lopsided total support for Israel’s Pime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his genocidal military assault on Palestinians. Arab and Muslim Americans defected in large numbers to Trump.

As the Democrats flounder in the wilderness at least for the next four years, they will be unable to stop the avalanche of policies and legislation that will come from the White House and a possibly Republican-dominated Congress. And those who disregarded the background of the man whom they have elected president are most likely in for their own rude awakening starting on “Day One.”

In case they forgot, this is how Peter Baker of The New York Times put it: “America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes.” Trump, Baker wrote, has “a record of scandal stretching across his 78 years starting long before politics. Whether in his personal life or his public life, he has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.”

NOTE: In Florida, Trump and incumbent Senator Rick Scott won and the marijuana and abortion amendments failed.