Donald Trump’s resounding victory has shattered the Democratic Party and the coalitions that sustained it since Franklyn Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. A Republican Party that has been having great difficulty in recent decades in sustaining an electoral majority captured enough of the white working class in 2016 to give it electoral victory. It has now expanded that support to include enough African-American men, Latinos and youth to give Trump an overwhelming victory. Trump is no longer an “outlier,” an “aberration” or a “fluke.” He is a transformative figure engaged in reshaping a new coalition for the Republican Party on a dark vision of an economically crumbling United States, beset by hordes of criminals illegally entering through an “open” border and a world exploiting the US.
For an outsider, trends in US politics sometimes appear confusing. It was said that Obama had a transformational presidency, overcame the 2008 economic crisis and restored the economy and hope in America. Then Trump won the presidency. It is said that Biden’s presidency is consequential with many achievements that benefit American working people, including an economy that is the envy of the Western world. Now Trump has again won the presidency and with a wider margin. No adequate answer has appeared for these contradictions. Why did Trump lose in 2020 only to win it back in 2024? If an economy that is unresponsive to the needs of the American working and middle classes is the fundamental problem, as many suggest, the Trump presidency did no better than the Obama’s. It was therefore logical for the electorate to reject him in 2020.
Many have complained that Biden unduly delayed his withdrawal, thereby giving Kamala Harris insufficient time to become known by the American people. Criticisms are being made about her failure to distance herself from the policies of the Biden administration. Consequently, she became tainted by the administration’s failure to arrest the economic decline of the American middle and working class and the unrestrained illegal immigration. Other suggestions will appear with time.
Kamala Harris and the Democrats sought to focus their campaign principally on the dangers of a Trump presidency to US democracy. She subscribed to the description of Trump as a “fascist.” She criticized his authoritarian instincts and his attraction for authoritarian figures, his use of “vermin” and of “poisoning the blood of our country” against “illegal” immigrants – language right out of the Nazi playbook. She pounced upon his accusation of immigrants eating neighbours’ pets, and threats to deport millions. Kamala Harris accused Trump of being “unserious,” “unhinged,” “a convicted felon” who only cared about himself and the wealthy. None of this stuck.
The New York Times Editorial Board described him as follows: “At this point, there can be no illusions about who Donald Trump is and how he intends to govern. He showed us in his first term and in the years after he left office that he has no respect for the law, let alone the values, norms and traditions of democracy. As he takes charge of the world’s most powerful state, he is transparently motivated only by the pursuit of power and the preservation of the cult of personality he has built around himself.”
An outsider, seeking an explanation for the collapse of the Democratic Party, may find some resonance in the arguments relating to immigration and the economy.
Undocumented immigration across the southern border of the United States is an old problem. The world economic crisis of 2008 increased the flow of illegal immigration to the US. The economic hardships brought about by Covid-19 triggered an additional flow of immigrants. A large number of people entering the US in this manner created great consternation among all sections of the US. The potency of immigration as an electoral issue is well known. It was demonstrated by the Brexit vote in the UK which was exploited by the Reform Party led by Nigel Farage. Right wing parties, exploiting the immigration issue, are being strengthened all over Europe. Trump’s exploitation of this issue has attracted wide support across political boundaries.
The US middle and working classes have been losing their share of the economic pie since the 1970s. More recently, since the 1990s their economic position has continued to decline, perhaps because of a combination of the 2008 economic crisis and Covid-19. This probably, more than anything else, weakened the hold of the Democratic Party on the working class. Senator Bernie Sanders put it directly: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”
There are other issues such as the Biden-Harris fulsome diplomatic and military support for the genocide in Gaza. Peter Beinhart, in the New York Times, makes a case for the issue softening Harris’s support citing reduced Arab, youth and Black support – groups active in the anti-genocide support.
Hints of a debate to restore the coalition behind the Democratic Party have already started. As expected, many are suggesting that the answer is to go right because the policies proposed by the ‘left’ are ‘unpopular.’
(This column is reproduced with permission from Ralph Ramkarran’s blog, www.conversationstree.gy)
