Has Donald Trump broken the Left? Has he taken the fight out of them? Has he done to the Democrats what Ronald Reagan did to them 40 years ago with his 49-state, 525-vote electoral landslide?

To look around us, we’d say maybe he has. Just consider the difference in animation between the post-election Left of 2016 and the post-election Left of 2024. As Axios reports, “2016 birthed The Resistance, a political movement to protest Trumpism online and in the streets. There’s still plenty of resistance to Trump across the country, but little mass mobilization.”

Little mass mobilization? Try none at all. They were marching in the streets in 2016. They were wearing anatomical pink hats and shouting obscenities. Six cops were injured, and 217 people were arrested for rioting during Trump’s inauguration. Madonna was fantasizing about “blowing up the White House,” and actor Johnny Depp was extolling the virtues of a fellow thespian named John Wilkes Booth. “It’s been a while,” he said, “and maybe it’s time.”

One reason for the lack of strife this time around is the decisiveness of Trump’s win. Whereas the 2016 election was decided by narrow Trump wins in the so-called Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the 2024 election saw Donald Trump sweep the battleground states en route to a 312-electoral-vote, 2.5-million popular vote shellacking. When you get trounced, you tend to shut up and slink away.

Another reason for the quietude was the lack of racial strife. Indeed, what little strife there was had come from the Left, with Barack Obama condescendingly scolding black men about supported that old white guy and not the Bay Area progressive woman of Jamaican-Indian descent who “grew up in a middle-class household” in Canada and whose ancestors were slaveowners.

While it’s true that Trump’s win on November 5 wasn’t in the same league as Reagan’s historic landslide, in another way, it was more impressive. When Reagan won in 1984, whites constituted 86% of the total vote, and Reagan won 66% of that 86%. There’s your landslide. Forty years later, whites accounted for only 71% white, and Trump won just 57% of that 71%. This means he had to grow the Republican tent among minorities. And grow it he did, winning 13% of blacks compared to Reagan’s 8%, and winning 46% of Hispanics compared to Reagan’s 34%.

Again, the lack of unrest this time around is at least in part due to the lack of racial unrest.

The media, too, seemed to have been utterly defeated by the 2024 version of Trump. Take Joe and Mika, for example. Shortly after the election, they were bowing to the Trumpian reality, meekly making their way to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the man’s ring. Just like eight years ago, Trump had been a racist and a sexist beforehand. And this time around, they added “fascist” to the mix. And then, poof, On November 6, 2024, it all went away.

Perhaps it was also the sense of Trumpian inevitability this time around. Recall that in 2016, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton nationally in the final RealClearPolitics polling average by more than three points, whereas he and Kamala Harris were essentially tied this time around, with just a tenth of a point separating them in the final national polling average. Remember, too, that just two weeks before the 2016 election, The New York Times famously gave Clinton a 91% chance of winning. To have the rug pulled from under them so brutally on election night must’ve been too much for the Democrats and their leftist ilk.

From a global perspective, Politico observes that Trump’s 312 electoral-vote win earlier this month “is part of a broader, inexorable rightward trend on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving a dejected liberal left to helplessly scratch their heads as the fickle tide of political history turns against them.” They add:

While there have been a number of small-scale demonstrations across the U.S. and U.K., with more planned for the coming weeks and months, none have so far come close to the fury and fervor of the marches and riots that colored Trump’s first few days as president-elect last time round, when protesters burned effigies of him. Instead, world leaders rushed to congratulate Trump before the election results had been officially called, and former Australian Prime Minister and current ambassador to the U.S. Kevin Rudd even scrubbed his social media of former critical comments about the Republican.

Things can change, of course. During the 2016 campaign and throughout his first term, Trump was beset by the Russia collusion lie. This time around, the mainstream media floated a Russian-interference trial balloon here and there, but it became pretty clear pretty quickly that that dog wasn’t going to hunt this time around.

Additionally, soon after Trump was sworn in on January 20, 2017, The Resistance began using the legal system to thwart his agenda. Remember the judge shopping and all those federal injunctions? As Seth Barron writes in City Journal:

In his second term, Trump and his team must take a strong stand against vexatious federal lawsuits filed before pliable and friendly judges who overstep their jurisdiction to impose their views. The judicial maneuver known commonly as a “nationwide injunction” — whereby a district court judge blocks a law or order’s implementation across the country, even for parties unconnected with the case at hand — is novel in American jurisprudence, dating back only to the 1960s. … Universal injunctions were nevertheless rare until the Obama years, but they exploded under Trump, when dozens were issued.

Making matters worse, a new post-election poll indicates remarkably high approval and optimism for Trump’s transition and second term. As CBS News writes, “President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration starts off with mostly good will from the public: a majority of Americans overall are either happy or at least satisfied that he won and are either excited or optimistic about what he’ll do as president.”

In 2016, there were no such polls. No such enthusiasm about a Trump presidency. What a difference eight years makes.