In the wake of Donald Trump’s dramatic political comeback and return to the White House, it’s hard not to notice a “vibe” shift in the country. Tech CEOs, once fearful of an alliance with Republicans, have marched down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. Democrats, who once called him an enemy of democracy, now signal a new openness to working with him. Others are decrying the identity politics of the left as an electoral albatross. Some of this is expected in the wake of a popular vote victory.
One stubborn shibboleth that deserves to die is the tortured thesis that demonizes evangelicals for voting Republican and blames this preference on darker notions of white supremacy. This is a hard argument to make when you observe the multiracial makeup of Trump’s electoral coalition. He won an astonishing 45% of Hispanic voters. He won the Hispanic male vote after losing them by 23 percentage points in 2020, and he improved his number among Hispanic women by 14 points. One heavily Latino district in Texas hasn’t gone Republican since 1896 flipped red. Among black voters, long a staple of the Democratic base, Trump drew numbers in swing states that Republicans haven’t seen in several generations. He also won a majority of Native Americans and made gains with Arab Americans and Asian Americans.
NBC analyst Chuck Todd, not exactly a right-wing pundit, declared of Trump, “He’s put together the multiethnic working-class coalition, and it’s a majority of the country, it’s over 50 percent.” It turns out voters of all ethnic backgrounds rejected inflationary economic policies, radical transgender policies, and an out-of-control border.
However, this reality conflicts with the persistent narrative churned out by the anti-evangelical industrial complex. Consider Kristin Du Mez, author of the bestselling jeremiad Jesus and John Wayne, who warns darkly that the new administration “will embolden and empower the White Christian nationalist movement.” She asserts, “In all likelihood, it will institutionalize White Christian nationalism.” She goes on to offer, as proof of this new apocalypse, conservative attempts to adopt school choice legislation, a policy position favored by 74% of African Americans and 71% of Hispanics.
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