The first issue of The New European following the US presidential election had a front cover showing a revolver being held to the head of the Statue of Liberty. The caption read:
“Trump wins – the world loses”.
In most European capitals, informed opinion was shocked and horrified that we were in for another four years of Donald Trump in the Whitehouse. Five months into his second term as president, our worst fears are being realised.
Trump is an archetypal case of ‘malignant narcissism’ and brings a whole array of bad character traits to the Oval Office. Among American clinical psychologists, there is a thriving cottage industry of writing up what are seen as Trump’s psychological flaws – see, for example, the podcast Shrinking Trump.
Trump is known to have falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election and that the presidency was stolen from him. That ‘theft’, in his eyes, justified inciting an insurrection on Capitol Hill to try to prevent Joe Biden’s victory gaining formal recognition. Aside from that, Trump has been found guilty in court of 34 felony charges – he is a convicted criminal.
When we add in the policy mistakes of the Trump first term – the general disruption and tearing up of international agreements – we have a shedload of reasons why the US electorate should have rejected Trump out of hand. But it chose to favour Trump over Kamala Harris and the world has been left with a bull in a china shop.
Trump the campaigner
There are many reasons why the Trump team won on 4 November and the Harris team lost. Trump is a canny, insightful campaigner who knows just how to reach a particular section of the electorate and turn them into loyal supporters who are uncritical of his obvious shortcomings. Rarely has a presidential candidate been cut so much slack.
Trump is skilled in the use of social media and uses it to get across his ‘alternative facts’. Abuse of social media in the USA has allowed the growth of a whole series of conspiracy theories. Take, for example, QAnon, which has as its core belief that there exists a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters, in league with the deep state, who are operating a global child sex trafficking ring. Lo and behold, they continue, and it is Trump who is secretly leading the fight against them.
The Trump team are well aware that this is absurd nonsense but are happy to reap the support the conspiracy brings them.
The anti-establishment felon
Naively, many expected Trump’s 34 convictions on felony charges to absolutely sink his campaign. This certainly would have been the case in Britain and no candidate in the UK with such a criminal record would stand a chance at the ballot box. Trump, however, adeptly turned the convictions to his advantage.
They were added to the Republican narrative that Trump had been cheated out of the 2020 election and that thereafter the Democratic team and all the insiders on Capitol Hill had been out to ‘get’ him. He was more sinned against than sinning. It was all a political put-up job. Those in thrall to Trump easily bought the line – and it strengthened their support.
Some Americans retain a soft spot for disruptors and that might extend to some criminals. In the 19th century, Jesse James, as an outlaw, attracted public sympathy, and in the 20th, the criminal activities of Bonnie and Clyde gave rise to a very popular film where again the actions of the pair gained similar sympathy. The political system in Washington has been branded ‘the swamp’ and Trump, as ‘disruptor-in-chief’ offered himself as just the person to “drain the swamp”. This was all framed as Trump versus ‘the establishment’.
Trump the messiah?
From criminals to Christianity, we find that Trump reaps fervent support from a section of the evangelical Christian community. Trump is not a particularly religious person but in voraciously chasing power, he is happy to milk any situation. On 4 November, as results arrived and victory looked more certain, Trump asserted, in relation to the failed assassination attempt on his campaign: “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
Television evangelist Hank Kunneman of the Lord of Hosts Church, saw the election as “a battle between good and evil”, adding: “There’s something on President Trump that the enemy fears: it’s called the ‘anointing’.”
In his first term Trump had pleased the evangelicals (and Catholics) by the appointment of conservative jurists to the supreme court. This made possible the rescinding of Roe versus Wade, (the previous supreme court decision had made abortion access easier across the US). This all helped shore up his vote in 2024.
It’s the economy, stupid
Negative campaigning generally wins elections. This was not true of Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 but was certainly true of Trumps in 2024. Trump worked hard – and successfully – to instil in the electorate a sense of grievance and cultivate a sense of nostalgia. The past 20 years had seen strides made in equality and diversity in the USA.
White males of limited education and modest incomes not only felt left behind, but out of sympathy with so-called ‘woke’ issues. Many manufacturing jobs had been lost – leaving the rust belt of industrial dereliction. Trump found ready listeners when he spoke of those nations exporting into the USA as “taking the country for a ride”. “Tariffs on imports” sounded an appropriate solution to those who had not undertaken a basic course in economics.
In the early decades post-1945, the USA had been content to act as the world’s police officer. Vietnam and other inglorious episodes had meant that the appetite to be that police officer had diminished. The embarrassment of the withdrawal from Afghanistan was the most recent episode that was causing the USA to revert to a more isolationist posture. Trump promised “No more foreign wars” and this found a ready hearing. Trump promised to focus on domestic issues – to concentrate to “Make America Great Again”. No time would be wasted on cooperating in international projects.
For the Democrats, the state of the economy should have been a strong card to play in the election. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act had caused post-pandemic economic growth in the USA to be vigorous – the best in the G7 group. Thousands of new jobs had been created and the economy was thriving. But the benefits of economic growth had not been equally shared.
Real incomes for the lower 70% of employees have been stagnant for decades, and the dream of ‘a better life for my family’ – the American Dream – has been realised by too few. Except, we should add, for those at the top – the other 30%. And it was the incomes of the top 5% that had grown most quickly. The USA has become the land of inequality for all. Post-Reagan neoliberal economic policies have a lot to answer for.
To mix metaphors, a quirk of how inflation is measured in the USA wrong-footed the Harris campaign and presented the Trump campaign with an open goal. US government statisticians do not include food or the price of fuel in the calculation of the price index (strangely omitted on the grounds that these prices fluctuate too much). Hence when the Democrats claimed that inflation was under control, the Trump team could point to soaring petrol prices and the cost of eggs. Voters sided with the latter on this issue, and the Democrats once again looked out of touch, while Trump came across as ‘authentic’.
Rise of the billionaires
The Trump campaign benefited in at least two ways from the support of Elon Musk. Not only did this immensely rich entrepreneur subscribe hundreds of millions of dollars (helping to finance social media campaigns), but the fact that this self-made billionaire was putting his full support behind the Trump team greatly impressed those voters who looked to live the American dream – albeit that here it was ketamine-fuelled and South African.
In the longer run Musk will be in line – with other billionaires – to benefit from Trump’s planned tax cuts for the wealthy. In short, the USA is transitioning from a democracy to a plutocracy. Musk was not alone amongst tech billionaires in falling behind Trump, but he was the closest and most influential for a time.
The Democrats
Finally, we must make mention of the false steps in the election taken by the Democratic team.
The party stuck with Biden for far too long. There was a lack of self-honesty in not acknowledging that Biden was not fit for a second term. This should have been made clear many months before November, leaving space for a contest to select a replacement candidate.
Harris was the emergency replacement candidate and was bright, upbeat and hard working. She struggled, however, to appeal to economically precarious white males in the rust belt. Misogyny, still endemic in the USA, told against her, as did her ethnicity. Trump successfully portrayed the Democrats as out of touch – certainly less ‘authentic’ then he was.
Conclusion
No single factor led to Trump winning but a whole series of tides could be seen running in his favour. Ideally a democracy operates within an electorate that is well-informed, dispassionate and objective. It is very tempting to be critical of a set of voters making such an obvious (to UK eyes) mistake – even given that Harris was less than perfect as the alternative. But before I assert “it could not have happened here” I have to recall a certain referendum in 2016.
