By now, you don’t need me to inform you that a convicted felon sporting a notoriously ginger mug is officially back in the White House.
Every single media outlet in the world is busy breaking the news as we speak, so I’m sure you don’t need another opinion piece about what Donald Trump’s return to power means for both the US and the world at large. Though Trump is as cracked as the earth’s crust, vague intent is one thing he cannot be accused of.
Instead, I’d like to use this column to talk about the broader ‘why’. This result is not just a consequence of the immediate comparison between Donald Trump and former vice-president Kamala Harris. Trump trouncing Harris is one, long fumble that’s been happening in slow-motion for decades. It is a phenomenon that is presently unfolding across faltering democracies across the globe.
Let us be unequivocal: if democracy’s guardrails were still intact, the choice between Trump and Harris would have been straightforward.
Trump defies reason, truthfulness, objectivity, cooperation, and all other fundamental traits that make human beings instinctively helpful towards each other. Traits that shaped the evolution of human collaboration, the foundation of all society, are antithetical to Trump’s brand. He is liked because of his opposition to these cooperative instincts. He crushed the popular vote because he appeals to base instincts and does not pretend to do otherwise.
Harris was the Democratic Party’s best answer to that. She attempted to project herself as the opposite. The last bastion of American normalcy. A successful state prosecutor who had put away crooks before and would have no qualms doing so with her opponent. She who carried the torch from her ailing predecessor and hoped to take her party across the finish line.
The Democrats made one, colossal miscalculation above all others. ‘The return to normalcy’ was not on voters’ minds. Saving what they described as American democracy was not on voters’ minds. The vote for Trump is a vote that spells out: ‘ah, the death of things as they stand, you say? Well, that doesn’t sound half bad at all.’
Democracy’s guardrails are no longer intact now. All thresholds of what was perceived as the baseline level of decency for someone to be considered a trustworthy character in politics were smashed a long time ago. It is not about trust anymore – politics in and of itself has been slowly eroded over time because it became increasingly detached from voters’ real world needs. The American election is no different.
For decades, Democrats promised Americans they would not send their soldiers to fight wars they had no place fighting. They promised to protect civil rights from a Republican onslaught. They promised more affordable medical care and education for everyone. They promised a better life for the ‘average American citizen.’ And in very limited ways, the Biden administration did shift the US’ giant machinery in the right direction on tricky policy files like balancing the green transition and protecting US industries.
The elephant in the Oval Office, however, is the fact that the US government never really bothered to meet its people’s real needs. The United States is not a country that belongs to the ‘average American citizen’ which both parties claim to do so much for. The US is a country that belongs to the world’s wealthiest. In fact, one of them just blitzed right into the White House, in spite of the obvious fact that he is a deranged, vindictive, and downright sadistic individual who is clearly unfit for the role.
The Democrats always tried to pose as a party that is closer to its people than the Republicans, who they always portrayed as the traditional base for the wealthy and the privileged while always failing to admit how closely aligned with the wealthy they are themselves. Trump’s shirking of the brand of ‘American normalcy’ which Harris proudly stood for was the catalyst that set off a chain reaction in the nation’s collective psyche. It flipped a switch that suddenly turned the Democrats into the elitist enemy of the people that should be blamed for America’s woes.
That is the real tragedy of American politics and why duopolies fail to drive any kind of positive change when it is most needed: the fact that the system failed to take care of voters’ needs so much that all it took for ‘American normalcy’ to come crashing down was one particularly polarising outsider who was willing and able to do whatever it took to clinch the presidency.
The Democratic Party failed to offer a radical vision of ‘the paradise that could be’. The Republican Party offered a radical vision of ‘the scorched earth that will be’. Faced with the prospect of more of the same or a promised, dramatic readjustment of the status quo, even if that readjustment looks a lot more like an inevitable downward spiral by every practical measure, the American electorate went for the readjustment.
Trump’s erratic, violent persona was merely the tip of the spear that was driven straight into the Democratic Party’s chest. Equally so, Harris’ attempt at becoming a counterweight to that was not the deciding factor that led to this devastating loss for her party.
Trump was elected because both so-called progressive and liberal governments failed to cement progress and liberate their country, while past conservative governments failed to actually bring forth the prosperity for all they always promise. Trump was elected because he divorced himself completely from all aspiration towards a freer, fairer, more just world (and all the broken promises that were made in that regard) and instead promised to rain fire and brimstone on all enemies.
Trump was elected because he capitalised on widespread dissatisfaction with successive governments that failed to resolve longstanding, existential problems that are largely a result of the immense inequality between the ultra-wealthy and literally everyone else. He sold the idea that he will upend everything and change everyone’s lives, making ridiculous claims like ending wars within days of taking office, presumably by swinging his ego around the whole room until everyone who’s still fighting eventually gets knocked out by it.
The 47th President of the United States sold a successful lie, and the Americans were desperate enough to buy it in droves.