Throughout Vice President Kamala Harris’s abbreviated presidential run, she often emphasized one key principle that separated her campaign from that of former President Donald Trump. When Trump mocked her laughter, Harris pushed back by framing her propensity for exuberance as an invaluable strength: “I find joy in the American people,” she said in September. “I find joy in optimism, in what I see to be our future and our ability to invest in it.” On Tuesday afternoon, several hours before the polls closed, Harris once again reminded the voting public of this core value. “To everyone who has worked hard and brought back the joy during this campaign—thank you,” she captioned a video posted to her X account.

But as election results came in, jubilation seemed limited to supporters of her opponent, who espoused a very different view of the fractured electorate. Early Wednesday morning, the media projected that Trump would win, affirming that American voters remain entranced—and energized—by his divisive rhetoric. In her concession speech that afternoon, Harris asked her supporters not to succumb to despair over this moment of darkness, and instead to “fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars—the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.” Harris’s loss is not an unequivocal indictment of joy as an organizing strategy, in electoral politics or otherwise. But it does illustrate the limits of peddling optimism as a change candidate without rigorously critiquing the status quo—especially when voters see you as part of maintaining it.

Hope is always a hard sell, and Harris inherited an unenviable candidacy: President Joe Biden didn’t step down from his reelection bid until a disastrous June debate performance (and some serious muscling within the party) forced his hand. Not only did Harris have less than four months to make her case to the American people, but as Biden’s VP, she was also saddled with the baggage of his administration—right as his approval rating hit a new low. To many voters, Harris represented an extension of the Biden policies that they (sometimes unfairly) blamed for inflation, low wages, and unemployment, a message that Trump hammered home with his slogan “Kamala broke it. Trump will fix it.” Whereas Trump was able to galvanize the GOP base by stoking economic resentments, Harris was tasked with gamely winning over frustrated voters without undermining her party’s sitting president.

Harris’s position in an unpopular White House made her a tricky messenger for idealistic visions of the future, amid both economic discontent and tremendous geopolitical instability. Her ties to the Biden administration also put Harris in a categorically different position than Barack Obama was in during his first presidential run, in 2008, when his sanguine campaign promises landed with voters in part because his call for unity offered a stark departure from hawkish, Bush-era partisan politics. As a presidential candidate, Obama was also a blank slate, having spent just part of his sole senatorial term in the national spotlight; he had more latitude to define himself because he was weighed by very little history.

When asked what she would have done differently from Biden during the past four years, Harris said last month, “There’s not a thing that comes to mind”—other than that she would have had a Republican in her Cabinet. For some voters in the Democrats’ base, that type of rhetoric just didn’t inspire excitement—moderate Democrats’ attempts at bipartisan collaboration, which Republican lawmakers have been less keen to initiate, have at times yielded disappointing results. Nor did it ameliorate concerns about the Biden administration’s continued support of Israel’s war in Gaza, which put the party at odds with some young voters, as well as many in the Black, Muslim, and Arab American communities. Harris, a supporter of Israel, often spoke more empathetically about the conflict in Gaza than Biden did, but she also skirted the issue; asked during a CNN town hall what she would say to someone who was considering supporting a third-party candidate because of her position on the conflict, she deflected by saying that voters “also care about bringing down the price of groceries.”

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Moments such as this undercut the Harris campaign’s cheerful aesthetics. Asking voters to look past humanitarian atrocities in the name of curbing inflation may be a strategy with precedent, but it’s not one that feels driven by a joyful service mandate. And during a year that’s been disastrous for incumbent politicians around the world, the Democratic Party failed to offer an energizing vision of doing things differently. Take The New York Times’ reporting on how Wall Street’s private-equity firms, investment banks, and wealthy corporate executives were influencing Harris’s economic-policy agenda. Giving “large corporations a seat at the table and giving them a voice,” as one executive put it, sounded to some voters a whole lot like business as usual.

For many Americans feeling the downstream pains of corporate greed, preserving the sanctity of a dysfunctional political system is not a motivating factor at the ballot box. But as in 2016, the Democrats focused heavily on how unfit Trump is for the presidency—an argument aimed at wooing suburban Republicans and independents—rather than offering their base exciting, practical solutions to the country’s problems. In 2016, substantial portions of the party’s base rallied around the populist senator Bernie Sanders, but the party instead backed the establishment figure Hillary Clinton (and, according to Sanders’s camp, ignored attempts to help keep his supporters engaged in crucial swing states). The following election cycle, the party again picked a more centrist candidate over Sanders, but Joe Biden heeded some of the lessons from Sanders’s popular campaigns—and forged a broader coalition by moving left on some issues.

Several years later, Harris could have used that enthusiasm—but Democratic leadership didn’t seem to give much thought to why those voters supported Sanders in the first place. Despite the fact that voters consistently identified the economy as the issue most important to them, Harris stopped criticizing Big Business abruptly during her campaign, and the party walked back an earlier proposal to lower everyday costs by combatting grocery price gouging. In the immediate run-up to the election, the campaign pivoted away from emphasizing other commonsense, populist ideas that have clear benefits for average working Americans. Paid family and medical leave, which Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, signed into Minnesota law as the state’s governor, is tremendously popular. So, too, is raising the minimum wage, as results on some state ballot measures show, even in red states such as Alaska.

The rich may insist that money can’t buy happiness, but anyone who has struggled to feed their children or afford rent knows that nothing is more thrilling than finally attaining a modicum of financial security. Addressing the barriers that many Americans face when trying to get there—and their frustrations that the Democratic political establishment doesn’t share their priorities—might just have inspired some lasting optimism this time around.  

Americans voted for change in this week’s presidential election, and in foreign policy, they’ll certainly get it. Donald Trump has shown disdain for the priorities and precedents that have traditionally guided Washington’s approach to the world. He speaks more fondly of America’s autocratic adversaries than of its democratic allies. He derides “globalism” as a liberal conspiracy against the American people. And he treats international agreements as little more than wastepaper.

At stake is not only the survival of Ukraine and the fate of Gaza, but the entire international system that forms the foundation of American global power. That system is built upon American military might, but more than that, it is rooted in relationships and ideals—nations with shared values coming together under U.S. leadership to deter authoritarian aggression and uphold democracy. The resulting world order may be badly flawed and prone to error, but it has also generally preserved global stability since the end of World War II.

Despite its endurance, this system is fragile. It is sustained by an American promise to hold firm to its commitments and ensure collective defense. Trump threatens that promise. His plan to impose high tariffs on all imports could disrupt the liberal economic order on which many American factories and farmers (and Trump’s billionaire buddies) rely. His apparent willingness to sacrifice Ukraine to Russian President Vladimir Putin in some misguided pursuit of peace will strain the Atlantic alliance and undermine security in Europe. By signaling that he won’t defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, he could undercut confidence in the United States throughout Asia and make a regional war more likely.

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The American global order could end. This would not be a matter of “American decline.” The U.S. economy will likely remain the world’s largest and most important for the foreseeable future. But if Washington breaks its promises, or even if its allies and enemies believe it has or will—or if it fails to uphold democracy and rule of law at home—the pillars of the American international system will collapse, and the United States will suffer an immeasurable loss of global influence and prestige.

The risk that this will happen has been gathering for some time. George W. Bush’s unilateralist War on Terror strained the international system. So did Trump’s disputes with NATO and other close allies during his first term. But world leaders could write off Washington’s wavering as temporary deviations from what has been a relatively consistent approach to foreign policy over decades. They understand the changeability of American politics. In four years, there will be another election and a new administration may restore Washington’s usual priorities.

With Trump’s reelection, however, the aberration has become the new normal. The American people have told the world that they no longer wish to support an American-led world order. They have chosen U.S. policy makers who promise to focus on the home front instead of on the troubles of ungrateful allies. Maybe they’ve concluded that the United States has expended too many lives and too much money on fruitless foreign adventures, such as those in Vietnam and Afghanistan. And maybe now America will reassess its priorities in light of new threats, most of all China, and the potential burden of meeting them.

The problem is that if the United States won’t lead the world, some other country will, and a number are already applying for the job. One is Putin’s Russia. Another is the China of Xi Jinping.

China began to assert its global leadership more aggressively during Trump’s first term and has worked ever harder to undermine the American system since—strengthening China’s ties with Russia and other authoritarian states, building a coalition to counterbalance the West, and promoting illiberal principles for a reformed world order. Trump seems to believe that he can keep China in check with his personal charm alone. When asked in a recent interview whether he would intervene militarily if Xi blockaded Taiwan, he responded, “I wouldn’t have to, because he respects me.”

That’s narcissism, not deterrence. More likely, Putin and Xi will take advantage of Trump’s disinterest. Once appeased in Ukraine, Putin may very well rebuild his army with the help of China, North Korea, and Iran, and then move on to his next victim—say, Georgia or Poland. Xi could be emboldened to invade Taiwan, or at least spark a crisis over the island to extract concessions from a U.S. president who has already suggested that he won’t fight.

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The result will be not merely a multipolar world. That’s inevitable, whatever Washington does. It will be a global order in which autocrats prey on smaller states that can no longer count on the support of the world’s superpower, regional rivalries erupt into conflict, economic nationalism subverts global trade, and new nuclear threats emerge. This world will not be safe for American democracy or prosperity.

The fate of the world order and U.S. global power may seem of little consequence to Americans struggling to pay their bills. But a world hostile to U.S. interests will constrain American companies, roil international energy markets, and endanger jobs and economic growth. Americans could confront bigger wars that require greater sacrifices (as in 1941).

Perhaps Trump will surprise everyone by pondering his legacy and choosing not to pursue the course he has signaled. But that seems unlikely. His messaging on his foreign-policy priorities has been too consistent for too long. Over the next four years, Americans will have to decide whether they still want the United States to be a great power, and if so, what kind of great power they wish it to be. Americans wanted change. The world may pay the price.

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