Opinion: Progressives insult Americans because Trump won. Guess who that helps?

Progressives have responded in extraordinary ways since Donald Trump secured a whopping 312 Electoral College votes to win the presidency for a second time. Some have thrown temper tantrums. Others have expressed elitist disdain. And some have decried the 75.6 million Americans who voted for Trump as uneducated, sexist and racist.

Leftists' inability for self-reflection, along with their self-righteousness and delusional sense of superiority, have been stunning to observe in the wake of the Republican Party's sweeping victory.

If progressives don't want to understand why voters rejected them and Vice President Kamala Harris by a wide margin, that's fine by me. It's their loss. The nation will leave them even further behind as conservatives shape the future.

Even so, I hope even more Americans will soon see that they, too, will benefit from a conservative president.

Are more than 75 million Americans stupid? Or are progressives out of touch?

In the days after the election, leading leftists reacted with scorn for everyday Americans, slamming their intellectual capacity, moral center and choices. Here's a sample:

• Jill Filipovic, feminist author and columnist, wrote on her Substack: “In the coming days and weeks, you’ll read a lot about what Harris did wrong. ... But we should also be asking why so many Americans were willing ‒ even enthusiastic ‒ to again vote for Donald Trump. This election isn’t an indictment of Kamala Harris; it’s an indictment of our nation.”
• MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle described Americans' choice of Trump as a gamble: "The person we are now betting on ... is Donald Trump. A man who did two almost impossible things. He won the American presidency twice, and he drove a casino into the ground. What will the future hold, now that America has just decided that we're gonna f around and find out?"
• "Standing in the center of Trump’s election night 2024 watch party thrown near the president-elect’s Florida home, it was gratuitously apparent just how much the American elites and our ruling class are disproportionately populated by Trump’s most shockingly boring psychos," Asawin Suebsaeng wrote in the Rolling Stone.
• Susan B. Glasser wrote in The New Yorker: “It (Trump’s election) is a disastrous revelation about what the United States really is, as opposed to the country that so many hoped that it could be.”
• "I wish, you wish, so many of us wish this hadn't happen, but that is not for us to decide. This is a democracy. ... And in this democracy, the majority has spoken, and they said they don’t care that much about democracy," Stephen Colbert told his late-night audience after the election. 
•  

So much is so wrong with these pronouncements about America and Americans. To start, voters didn't reject democracy. They rejected far-left policies and politicians.

Conservatives care deeply about democracy and America. But we − and an increasing number of moderates − don't accept a far-left view of how the world works, or should work.

We've had leftism pushed at us from every faction of news media and the entertainment industry for decades. We understand the left well, and so we voted against progressive leaders and their agendas.

Opinion:I voted for Trump. Your insults won't change my mind.

Progressives' immature reactions to the election are rooted in their world view: More government is the answer to every problem. So if the "wrong" people are elected, disaster is imminent.

The left is so worked up that they're even willing to wreck relationships with friends and family. A Yale-affiliated psychiatrist, Dr. Amanda Calhoun, said on MSNBC that it was "completely fine to not be around" family who supported Trump.

On "The View," co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg agreed. "I think when people feel that someone voted not only against their families, but against them and against people that they love, I think it's OK to take a beat," Hostin said.

In fairness, not all Democrats have had such extreme reactions to the election results. But the leftist media's reaction is still incriminating.

Voters rejected leftists' warnings about Trump

It's hard to find out that you were wrong. (I'm wrong every day. Just ask my kids.) But the left's reaction to Trump's win has been both disappointing and revealing.

Much of the mainstream media learned once the votes came in that despite cranking out overwhelmingly negative coverage of Trump every day for nearly a decade, none of it stuck. Americans reelected Trump − and handily.

Yet, some journalists' reaction was to rage and to condemn. To stomp their feet and to belittle. I haven't seen anything like it before, even in 2016.

For years, progressives pushed narratives about news and information − from the Russia collusion hoax, to ignoring disclosures about Hunter Biden, to censoring COVID-19 information − that proved to be wrong. Despite being told they were dangerously misinformed, conservatives turned out to be right.

Conservatives got tired of being lied to and of being told they were ignorant and immoral. But the left refused to listen.

Instead, they came from a place of elitism, smugness and superiority. On Nov. 5, Americans made their choice − and indicted years of progressives' self-righteousness.

Why are progressives so angry?

The left's reaction to the democratic process has been infuriating. I've been tempted to scold, ignore or sneer right back at my friends on the left.

I didn't even get to take a victory lap before I heard leftists suggest I and the other 75.6 million Americans who voted for Trump were ignorant and stupid. Even before Election Day, the sitting president called us "garbage."

The contempt, self-righteousness and the utter lack of self-awareness from the left have gotten old, quickly.

But if Democrats continue to smear a majority of the electorate as stupid and racist, without a moment's pause for self-reflection, it's they who will pay the price, not conservatives.

The Make America Great Again train will go forward regardless. Godspeed.

Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.