buyer’s remorse: “A sense of regret after having committed to an endorsement, policy, plan of action.” –second definition, dictionary.com
Millions of people voted for former Pres. Donald J. Trump in last November’s election. Yet he won only 49.9 percent of the popular vote, less than half of those cast. His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, earned 48.3 percent. He promised many things, but many of the president-elect’s supporters may soon face “buyer’s remorse” once his policies turn out to be very different from his promises.
In Massachusetts, all 11 of the commonwealth’s electoral votes went to Vice President Harris. She won nearly 61.6 percent of the popular vote in the commonwealth, compared with Trump’s 36.2 percent. The presidential vote on the Island also gave strong support to Harris. In Aquinnah, she won almost 88 percent of the vote. She had healthy margins in the other five towns: Chilmark, 84 percent; West Tisbury, 80 percent; Tisbury, 76.5 percent; Oak Bluffs, 72.6 percent; and Edgartown, 68.3 percent. Overall, Harris won Dukes County with 74.8 percent of the vote.
The national picture is quite a bit different, and here’s where buyer’s remorse may set in.
The Democratic loss at the polls was due to many issues. One is the economy, not the overall improvement in high employment and lower inflation, but rather expensive gasoline and groceries. In August on the campaign trail, Trump promised that “prices will come down. You just watch: They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast.” But after his victory, he told Time magazine, maybe not: “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.” More than likely it’s why some Islanders voted for him, but lower prices may not happen.
Trump’s voters will find that his goal to place high tariffs on goods from China, Mexico, Canada, and elsewhere to be highly disappointing, as prices rise because of these tariffs. He told Time, “When they send products in, they will have substantial tariffs, and it’s going to make it very hard for them to do business with us.” According to Forbes magazine, “economic studies have found that in most cases, the extra costs are passed along to American consumers — and that the current plans could increase a typical household’s costs by $2,600 a year.”
Many people on Trump’s transition team, and several of his nominees for cabinet and other high executive positions are billionaires. Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite business and other interests already have lucrative federal government contracts. They will grow. The president-elect appointed Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a near billionaire, to head an unofficial agency called the Department of Government Efficiency to recommend cuts, some $2 trillion in the federal budget. This may mean that most of it will likely come from safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Trump voters will likely be unhappy with cuts to these programs, should they occur.
Many of Trump’s cabinet picks are also hugely wealthy. As the Washington Post notes, “Trump has assembled an uber-wealthy cabinet, raising risks of ethics conflicts.” If they take office, his cabinet will consist of “one of the richest in modern history.” While campaigning, he promised to support the working and middle class.
The focus of these nominees may well be on their business interests, and not on the needs of the working and middle class: tax cuts that primarily affect the wealthy and industry, and fewer regulations.
The president-elect nominated several people to oversee the nation’s health policy who are vaccine skeptics. Notably, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services founded an antivaccine organization that promotes the bogus link between childhood vaccines and autism. Pres.-elect Trump agreed with this view in his Time magazine interview. Food and Drug Administration nominee and Kennedy supporter, Johns Hopkins surgeon Dr. Martin Makary, favored “herd immunity” during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Herd immunity is when so many people contract disease that natural immune systems come into play to combat its spread.)
Former Florida Rep. Dr. David Weldon, the nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while in Congress sponsored what is called “the Weldon amendment.” According to the Guttmacher Institute, it “emboldens health insurance plans, healthcare institutions, and medical providers to deny abortion services and coverage … often under the rubric of protecting ‘conscience’ or ‘religious freedom.’” It passed into law in 2005.
Many families may find that radical changes in healthcare, vaccinations, and women’s rights may make life more difficult.
There are other areas of concern, such as immigration, national security, foreign policy, and tax reform, that we’ve not touched on. In the meantime, we may not have to wait long before we see a trend of buyer’s remorse among those on the Vineyard and elsewhere who put their hopes on a second Trump presidential administration.
Jack Fruchtman, who lives in Aquinnah, taught constitutional law and politics for more than 40 years.
