Sometimes fear triumphs over hope.

Donald Trump's shocking victory in the 2016 US presidential election was described as a leap into the political unknown. This time there is no excuse. America knew he was a convicted criminal, serial liar and racist demagogue who tried to overthrow the government four years ago. It still worked out for him.

The result is a catastrophe for the world. It showed Kamala Harris' competence and expertise, her decency and grace, her potential to be the first female president in America's 248-year history. It also showed Trump's venality and vulgarity, his crass insults and gross populism, his dehumanization of immigrants reminiscent of Adolf Hitler. And the world asked: How can this race even be close?

But elections hold a mirror up to a nation, and the nation doesn't always like what it sees.

Future historians will marvel at how Trump rose from the political dead. When he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, people gathered outside the White House to celebrate, waving signs that read “Bon Voyage,” “Democracy Wins!”, “You're Fired!”, “Trump is Over.” and “Losers.” There was a tone of finality, a feeling that this particular national nightmare was over after four grueling years.

For many it was the comforting idea that moral order had been restored. It was Trump who was the aberration, not Barack Obama, the first black president who preceded him. Hope, not fear, was the national default. Now America was back on track after its unfortunate zigzag of history.

Then came Trump's greatest disgrace, the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He seemed content with the idea that his own vice president, Mike Pence, could be hanged by the rampaging mob. He had finally gone too far. “Count me out,” Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, once a staunch Trump supporter, said in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor.

But the political obituary writers forgot that the 78-year-old Trump is the happiest man in the world. A number of opportunities to end his political career and banish him to Florida golf courses for the rest of his days were missed.

Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for the second time. At his Senate trial, Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who called Trump “stupid” and “despicable,” could have ordered his colleagues to convict him and thereby ban him from ever running for office again. But McConnell choked and Trump was acquitted.

Trump immediately began to regain political strength. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who initially denounced him, made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and bent the knee. From that moment on, it was clear that the Republican Party was still the Trump Party. Not even the electoral defeat and its violent consequences could break the fever.

In the 2022 midterm elections, Trump failed again at the ballot box, throwing his full weight behind a parade of grotesques and outsiders who lost winnable elections. Again there was a bright spot, a moment when the Republicans could have corrected their course. But potential challengers like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley were overwhelmed by the Make America Great Again movement.

Trump was lucky again on July 13 this year when a suspected assassin's bullet hit him in the ear at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. A last-second tilt of his head to look at a table of immigration numbers saved his life.

A photo of Trump standing with his face covered in blood as he raised his fist and shouted “Fight!” became the indelible image of his election campaign. Still, the man who lost his first popular vote by 3 million and his second by 7 million had to convince America that he was worth a second look.

His next stroke of luck was to initially run against Biden, an even older incumbent who received little recognition from voters for his significant legislative and economic achievements.

In a panic, Democrats swapped Biden for his vice president, Kamala Harris, with only about a hundred days left. They claimed that their election campaign was not about building the plane in the air, but about building the same plane with a different pilot. Either way, she faced inflation fears and the daunting task of portraying herself to the electorate as neither Biden-lite nor too eager to throw her boss under the bus.

She was dealing with a man who drove a wedge between men and women, between black and white, urban and rural, young and old. As a woman of color, a nation that had become jaded and indifferent to Trump's excesses became different Standards applied to them. “He becomes lawless. It has to be immaculate,” noted CNN senior political commentator Van Jones.

Many voters spoke of the Trump presidency with a rosy tinge of nostalgia, apparently overlooking the 400,000 coronavirus deaths, the worst year for jobs since World War II and the systematic attempt to divide, not unite, the American people. He could do no wrong in the eyes of his cult-like following, an incredibly resilient appeal made up of three main components.

First, there is the personality of a celebrity and successful businessman, formed over the years by his book “The Art of the Deal” and the reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Harris recruited numerous big-name endorsers such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé; Trump was the star of his own show.

Second, Trump understood that while Ronald Reagan and Obama resonated in an era of aspiration, this is a time of fear. The upper working class and lower middle class fear loss of status and long for a security blanket. Young people fear that they will be worse off than their parents' generation and will not be able to buy a house. Many people mistakenly think of Trump as an economic populist because he rails against elites and “tells it like it is,” or “says how they feel,” or “gives a damn.”

Third, there is Trump, the culture warrior. For nearly a decade, he has exploited America's identity: a long and painful racial history of progress and backlash, fueled again by the election of Obama and the fact that white Christians are in the minority. Xenophobia is at the core of his political identity. Additionally, his campaign spent millions on ads that stoked hysteria over transgender rights (“Kamala’s agenda is they/them, not you”).

Together with the sinister support of billionaire Elon Musk, it was enough to achieve victory. Now get ready for another Trump inauguration – American Carnage Redux – and another fantastic claim about his viewership. Be prepared for norms to be trampled on, institutions to be undermined, and opponents to become targets of retaliation. Get ready for an Oval Office, this time occupied by a malignant narcissist with no guardrails. Be prepared for unhinged, all-caps tweets that trigger news cycles and move markets. Brace yourself for national unrest and global convulsions from China to Ukraine. Also prepare for new resistance and a surge in anti-Trump energy.

How did it happen here? America had many opportunities to stop Donald Trump, but botched it every time. It will not become an autocracy overnight, but there is no doubt that it is a democracy in decline. As Oscar Wilde never said, voting for Trump once could be considered bad luck; Voting for him twice looks like crazy.