Democrats have the tools to fight Trump's worst impulses

This is an adapted excerpt from MSNBC's special coverage on Wednesday.

Across the country, people are still understanding what happened on Tuesday. It's fair to say that many Americans, myself included, feel that it was a bad outcome for the country. But I think it's very important to be as clear as possible, not just what happened, but what is happening Why it happened.

Donald Trump won a majority of votes in the Electoral College and appears poised to win the national popular vote for the first time in his three presidential elections. But when you look at why he won, I think it's clear that it was a rejection of the status quo at a time when many voters feel alienated from their leaders and pressured by high prices.

They think this way everywhere in the Western world, where the established parties left, right and center suffered the same electoral fate after the Corona crisis. This election was about rejecting a status quo that the vast majority did not like.

Trump and the Republicans have a vested interest in interpreting this outcome as a mandate for their worst governing impulses – all the dark, Stephen Miller Project 2025-style fantasies of dismantling the “administrative state.”

But these ideas were never popular. Trump tried to distance himself from them when they voted terribly. So that wasn't the cause of this victory.

You can see it across America in Tuesday's results. You can tell by what happened in the vote. In North Carolina, voters narrowly chose Trump. At the same time, they elected Democrats as governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and school superintendent. And they may have flipped enough House seats to deprive Republicans of the supermajority and veto power.

You can see it in referendums across the country. In seven states, including Trump states Arizona, Missouri and Montana, voters approved measures to enshrine abortion rights. Voters in deep-red Missouri and Alaska also approved minimum wage increases and joined Nebraska in calling for paid sick leave for workers.

Additionally, New Jersey elected its first Asian American U.S. Senator. Maryland elected its first black U.S. senator. This also applies to Delaware, which means that for the first time in American history two black female senators will serve together. Delaware also gave Congress its first openly transgender member.

This is not a nation that has fully embraced the far-right agenda of Trump and his Republican Party. But we know they will interpret this election as a mandate for full MAGAism.

And we know that they have a plan, a destructive plan for the American Constitution, for American democracy and, most importantly, for so many of our fellow Americans, immigrant families, transgender people, women and working-class voters who rely on it will take chin from tariffs and the erosion of labor law.

We also know that Trump is a rising authoritarian. He doesn't have a democratic bone in his body. He tried to overthrow the constitutional order by force. He celebrated it and spoke repeatedly about the use of political violence during his campaign.

For all these reasons, we know that they will seek to undermine and alter the constitutional order. But the most important thing for those of us committed to stopping them is to remember that their success is in no way predetermined.

Yes, they will try and there will be many people trying to stop them, but the outcome is still uncertain.

I don't say this out of hope. I've been covering Trump since 2015. I covered his first term. He's tried to do a lot of bad things and failed because he's completely distractible and inconsistent, because he's a whirlwind of chaos, and because he can't be stopped from doing stupid, self-destructive things.

Nothing changed because he won an election. Are Republicans better prepared this time? Are they more loyal? Is the justice system more in their favor? Yes.

But that doesn't mean that the outcome is predetermined. The reason I say this is because mass opinion is not a fixed thing. It is a real force that changes, flows and responds to events.

Even Trump gave in when he found himself on the wrong side. He has tried to move away from his most extreme anti-abortion position because he knows it is unpopular and there has been mobilization against it.

One of the most egregious things he did in his first term was separating migrant children from their families, as documented in my colleague Jacob Soboroff's incredible documentary and book Separated. As the press reported it and the courts reviewed it, it became clear that it was cruel and illegal.

While it was initially a federal judge who blocked the decision, the issue that ended child separation was merely a complete rejection by the democratic community. Thanks to the organizing, mobilization, and protests, Americans rightly recognized that it was monstrous and loudly opposed it

In the end, Trump signed an executive order ending the practice and even tried to take credit for repealing the abhorrent policies he had implemented. They had to abandon it because it was so unpopular.

That's just one example, and there will probably be things in his second term that he won't miss out on. But given that, it's really important not to admit up front that these things don't matter. That's what they do.

Public opinion still matters. Politics didn't disappear in America because three out of every 100 people switched their presidential votes. Politics depends on the work of organizing, mobilizing, and persuading our fellow Americans.

None of these tools have disappeared anywhere. In fact, they are all even more important this time. We must pick it up and not allow anyone to take it out of our hands.