Donald Trump presents his comeback as a miracle and the world is in for months of punditry on what he did right and what Kamala Harris got wrong. We’ll leave candidate-watching to the pundits. What follows is based on observing the voters who actually determine election outcomes. We’ll also look at a couple of mysteries the election threw up. Neither thread shows human nature or intelligence in a good light.
The central mystery is, in a nation that takes the law very seriously (the volume of courtroom dramas and cop serials bears testimony), why did most Americans reject a prosecutor and embrace a convicted felon who thinks erratically, speaks menacingly and promises pain for all?
There are two answers, and the first is remarkably stupid: Trump’s supporters identify him as an entertainer. Aren’t stand-up comics abrasive, too? Entertainers can make good heads of government, like Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine and Ronald Reagan in the US. If Taylor Swift ran for president, she could actually win. But career politicians identified as entertainers are a different species, especially if the entertainment colours governance.
The second reason for choosing Trump is more substantial: the working classes felt insecure under the Biden administration, the Democrats were in denial of this, and the far right campaign playbook sounded reassuring. Once more, it was the economy, and the Democrats were being stupid.
Trump has constructed Joe Biden as a genial doofus who wrecked the economy. The truth is that the Biden administration salvaged the economy after the pandemic. In his victory speech, Trump promised to build the world’s strongest economy. That shouldn’t be hard: the US economy is already the world’s healthiest.
But there is a vital difference between facts about the economy, which few are equipped to process, and everyday perceptions of value for money and quality of life. Working class people have been keenly aware that the basket of goods they bring home remains smaller than it was before the pandemic.
The economy has recovered but household budgets have not—and people are upset because what Trump calls the ‘deep state’ didn’t get their pain. Trump appeals to indifferently educated conservative men, precisely the demographic which feels degraded if they can’t support their families.
A less congenial compulsion of the ‘doofus’ may have cost the Democrats dearly: Biden’s commitment to continue arming and funding Netanyahu’s war on civilians in Gaza, which Harris would have maintained. Long before the election, campus protests across the US demanding disinvestment from Israel had shown that people were uneasy about their tax money being used to bomb civilians, especially children. Harris showed no appreciation of this unease.
Trump’s supporters believe that being a businessman, he will withdraw America’s commitment to wars as they’re bad for business. They couldn’t be more wrong. War is lucrative for the well-connected.
Trump’s campaign was built on a bedrock of anti-immigrant propaganda which, over a decade, has taught people to believe the US faces a horde of illegal aliens who are being given a red-carpet welcome by namby-pamby liberals, that they are natural-born criminals, and Trump will kick millions of them out.
None of this is true. While immigration is up, even from countries like India, the volume of illegal migrants is nowhere near the figures claimed. The crime rate is actually falling. And the government does not have the manpower to locate millions of illegal immigrants. Trump’s anti-immigrant drive will produce heart-wrenching political theatre, not a real purge.
But here is a mystery: Why did Latinos support Trump, despite the racist insults his campaign hurled at them? Because immigrants who have already joined the US workforce oppose further immigration from their own community, for fear of opportunity loss.
Immigration has always been differential in the US. Incoming traffic from the ‘home countries’ like the UK, Italy and Germany have been more welcome than poorer immigrants from Central American nations. Now, racist divides within those nations are springing up to bar new immigrants.
Abortion rights were a prominent talking point for Harris, because if the women endangered by the ban in the US had voted against Trump, he would have lost. That was the picture when Harris took up the gauntlet. But now, the issue feels less urgent because seven states are legislating in favour of abortion. Surprisingly, they include states like Missouri, which Trump has won.
Looks like America supports both Trump and abortion, which he opposes. Such paradoxes are possible in a society in which the lines are no longer clearly drawn, where union workers and immigrants are breaking with decades of tradition to vote Republican.
More than one US analyst says poll analysis is pointless because America is not ready to hand over the most important job to a woman of colour. Besides, while the Trump campaign promised that he would “fix it”, a communication as heartily workmanlike as a plumber’s calling card, Harris’s main message was negative: she asserted that she is not Trump. She did stand for joy and light, while the Old Dreadful peddled fear and darkness. Sadly, the dark side usually wins.
(Views are personal)
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Pratik Kanjilal | For years, the author has been speaking easy to a surprisingly tolerant public