Trump is Back

That Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US Presidential election will become part of global political fork lore which will last for a very long time is certain. Like all such achievements it can be attributed to a number of factors. These include his response to his defeat in the 2020 election to Joe Biden which ensured that he held on to his strong base in the Republican Party; unlike Jimmy Carter and George Bush Senior the two one-term Presidents (which Trump had become in 2020) he did not become a political has-been for his party.

Ironically, in retrospect, his refusal to accept defeat and try his best to sabotage the result of the 2020 poll showed to his base that he was a strong person who was unwilling to pass into political shadows even if that meant earning the opprobrium of the traditional political class and led to an inquiry and criminal investigations. His approach ensured that his stranglehold over the Republican Party continued. Consequently, when he announced in 2022 that he would make a bid for the White House in 2024 there was no one in the party to really challenge him; the reason being that his base was intact.

Trump’s base remained faithful despite his conviction for felony in New York. Though he attended the court hearings he continued to show vigour and also continued to show disdain for the standard conventions of US democracy. He had done so unapologetically as President and showed no remorse for his conduct. If anything, he hardened his language in his rallies and demonstrated a disregard for facts. He had done so as President and his demenour did not change.

On the other hand, President Joe Biden who decided to contest for a second term though he would have been over 80 at the time of the election began to show his age. This became especially apparent during his disastrous performance in his debate with Trump in June. It was only in July that he decided, under pressure from his party leaders, to stand down and endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris; but he barely left her a little over a hundred days to mount a campaign with a battle-hardened rival who had been in the field for two years.

Trump won this election, as he had won the 2016 polls by taking the ‘swing’ states from his Democratic rivals. He won Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania. These accounted for 93 electoral votes. He had lost to Joe Biden in 2020 because except for North Carolina he had lost these swing states. While in 2016 it was alleged that Hillary Clinton had neglected the so called ‘Blue Wall’ states—Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—and hence lost the election, Kamala Harris paid great attention to them. Yet, she lost by a substantial margin in each. This shows that Trump was successful in exploiting the unhappiness in these states as in the rest of the country on the state of the economy.

People all across the country were unhappy with the economy. This showed up in the traditional Democratic states. While the party won these the margin of its victory was lower than in the past. This also led Trump to win the popular vote. He won 50.8 % of the votes to Harris’s 47.5%. He can thus claim that he is now the undisputed leader of the country.

The Democratic Party has been almost completely routed at the US federal level. It has lost control of the Senate and while final results for the House of Representatives are awaited, as of now, the Republicans have 206 seats to the Democrats 191. If the former are able to get even a slender lead, then it will be a clear manifestation of the direction in which the US has gone.

Unlike Trump in 2020, Harris graciously accepted her defeat but told the party faithful that the struggle for the values that it espouses will continue. The fact is that despite the Republican party victory America remains a divided country. And, these divisions are not limited to policies—domestic and foreign—but lie at its very social core. For the Trump followers the US should be a conservative country where the values based on orthodox interpretations of the faith—Christianity--- should prevail. On the other hand, those who flocked to Harris—a woman of Trinidadian and Indian descent---believe in an open society. These contradictions were most sharply profiled in the issue relating to abortion.

For over fifty years the US had nationally relaxed laws on abortion. These made it relatively easy for women who chose abortion to have the necessary medical procedures for it. This had followed the US Supreme Court decision in Roe vs Wade in 1973. However, Trump, as President, appointed three conservative judges to the Court, turning its ideological direction completely. Consequently, in 2022 the Court overturned Roe vs Wade. It held that the decisions on abortion could only be made by the states. This led many states to restrict the rights of women to abortion.

Kamala Harris made abortion rights a major issue of her campaign. She argued that women should have control over their bodies. However, this did not obviously resonate as much with the voters electorally as the issues that Trump raised—illegal immigration and the state of the economy. That does not, however, mean that the struggle between liberalism and conservatism is over in the US with this election.