The angry American re-elects Trump, embraces his dark vision
At the end of the day, it was the economy, stupid
“FOR the past nine years, we have been fighting against the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth,” Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters during the election campaign. “With your vote in this election, you can show them once and for all that this nation does not belong to them, this nation belongs to you.”
On Tuesday (Nov 5) it became clear that a discontented nation – or at least a large slice of it – has embraced this dark, if not apocalyptic, vision of an America in decline and under attack, and which requires the power of a strong leader to save it from ruin. In this age of distrust and dissatisfaction, Trump’s message became a winner.
In a way, for more than nine years and during three presidential campaigns, Trump has been making the same argument: That the political and economic systems are rigged, and that domestic villains and foreign invaders, the “globalist” elites, Democratic politicians, the Chinese – or for that matter, illegal Mexican immigrants – are threatening the nation.
And as he has called for revenge against his political rivals and seems to be setting the stage for mass detention and deportation of illegal immigrants, Trump has vowed to radically change American government and society, and advance a right-wing agenda that appeals to his populist electoral base.
Trump’s message – one loaded with racism, xenophobia and misogyny, not to mention vulgarity – has energised members of his base, and ignited a surge of working class and rural voters ready to come out and vote for him.
Trump’s opponent, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and her campaign had hoped that the race would be close, and that the former president would only succeed in reaching the same voters who had backed him in the past while failing to bring in any new support.
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But they were wrong. Trump was able to chip away at traditional elements of the Democratic coalition, such as African Americans, Hispanics and young voters.
His appeal to the disaffected and conspiratorial quarters has broadened to include working class minorities as well as whites without college degrees, accelerating a long-term trend under which the Democrats have lost their traditional support base of blue-collar workers.
In fact, Trump ended up winning close to a third of Latino voters, as well as the votes of more Blacks than any other Republican presidential candidate since the 1960s.
Vice-President Harris and the Democrats were hoping that their message of hope for a better future would resonate with voters and contrast with Trump’s dark vision, and what they insisted was his disdain for democratic values.
On the eve of the election, Harris delivered a speech intended to be her closing argument from The Ellipse in Washington, the site where Trump spoke on Jan 6, 2021, to a mob that would proceed to storm the US Capitol.
The crowd of 75,000 waved flags as Harris spoke before giant banners reading “Freedom”. “Look, we all know who Donald Trump is,” she said. “He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago, and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election that he knew he lost.”
The enthusiastic crowd in Washington welcomed her message, and the Democrats had hoped that it would help them win the support of independent voters, in particular, suburban folks including moderate Republicans, who picked former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley during the Republican presidential primaries.
But those voters failed to change the direction of the vote on Tuesday. Educated suburban voters in Michigan and Georgia did not come out in droves to vote for Harris, and were certainly unable to counterbalance the force of Trump’s electoral base.
Similarly, the Democrats’ hope was that the so-called “gender gap” would make a difference during the election by encouraging women to go out and vote for Harris. Indeed, Harris suggested that Trump would take steps to impose a national abortion ban.
Unfortunately for the Democratic presidential campaign, many white suburban women whose support the vice-president thought she could get ended up voting for Trump. Overall, the Democratic presidential candidate’s percentage with women failed to overwhelm the Republican candidate’s advantage.
Harris reiterated her commitment to fighting for abortion rights during her concession speech at Howard University in Washington, DC, on Wednesday.
She highlighted her pledge to fight for the “dreams, ambitions and aspirations” of Americans, including the dream “where the women of America have the freedom to make decisions about their own body and not having their government telling them what to do”.
But the other side of the gender gap was that Trump benefited from the votes of men who have been critical of the Democratic Party’s embrace of identity politics and the entire “woke” agenda.
At the end of the day, it was the economy, stupid.
While it is true that the inflation numbers have begun to fall and the American economy has become “the envy of the world”, as The Economist put it, most Americans were complaining about the high cost of living, and regarded that as more of a threat to their interests, than Trump’s challenge to the nation’s democratic tenets.
With the Republicans expected to take control of the Senate and possibly the House of Representatives, and with conservative justices in control of the US Supreme Court, Trump may feel that he has a mandate for a radical overhaul of the country.
But the political reality is that half of the American people did not vote for him. Considering that, would he pursue pragmatic policies and a more centrist agenda, or will he allow his dark vision to dominate his administration?
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