Source: Reuters

By Ramesh Thakur

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Donald Trump’s 312-226 landslide victory in the Electoral College is not a repudiation of democracy but a triumphant affirmation of its liberating power. He lost the popular vote in 2016 by three million votes (two percent) and in 2020 by 7 million (four percent). This time he won the popular vote by three million (76-73) and two percent (50.1-48.1) – his first victory in the number of ballots and in securing an absolute majority. About 90 percent of over 3,000 counties across the nation shifted to the right.

Trump won in 2016 with a winning coalition of disaffected working-class whites. More than half of workers are living paycheck-to-paycheck, the purchasing power of which has been falling with high inflation. Contrary to the American dream of intergenerational progress, many young people have a worse standard of living than their parents. While consolidating that voting base, the more sweeping triumph this year was helped considerably by substantial inroads into ethnic groups traditionally aligned with Democrats. Trump described his diverse and inclusive coalition as a ‘beautiful,’ ‘historical realignment’ in his victory speech on the night. Harris refused to give a concession speech until the day after.

In an NBC exit poll, Trump won 57 percent of white and 55 percent of male voters, retaining his hold on these groups. In an AP exit poll, he won 20 percent of the black vote, up from 8 in 2016 and 13 in 2020. Harris’s 80 percent black vote is a ten-point drop from Joe Biden’s four years ago. In addition, he also won the support of 46 percent of Latinos, 39 percent of Asian-Americans, 54 percent of ‘Other,’ 45 percent of women, and 43 percent of 18–29-year-olds. Hence the prospect of a major new realignment of American politics. There are important lessons in all this for centre-right parties across the West: authentic conservatism attracts more voters than it repels.

Trump’s success in creating a new multiethnic winning coalition indicates that voting trends may be coalescing, with previously segmented cohorts normalising and starting to vote more as Americans and less as ethnics. Thus in an AP analysis, the economy and jobs rated as the top issues for voters overall, for blacks and Latinos, and for the youth. Phrases like the Latino, black, or Asian-American vote are increasingly meaningless. What once were voting blocs are fragmenting into individuals with agency. This can only be good for the long-term health of American democracy, contrary to the hysterical warnings of its imminent collapse should Trump win.

In the history books, 2016 might be described as a dress rehearsal for the real deal in 2024. Trump won back the White House and delivered Congress on his coattails, with a net gain of four Senate and 1-2 House seats. Plus he will have a favourable balance of justices on the Supreme Court. All this will be crucial in confronting the expected challenges from Resistance 2.0, aka swamp dwellers protesting at the swamp drainage scheme. So will the lessons internalised from the experience of 2016–20, including the choice of top personnel who understand and are committed to the Trump agenda.

Traditional Voter Concerns Beat Woke Neoliberalism

Progressives once again went into meltdown. Writing in The Globe and Mail in reliably woke Canada, Andrew Coyne solemnly describes Trump as ‘manifestly, palpably, incontrovertibly unfit for public office, not only in his own character and abilities, but for what he represents, including his attacks on the rule of law, basic freedoms and democracy itself.’ His take on the outcome? ‘Sometimes the people get it wrong.’ He echoed the instant reaction from Jill Filipovic that ‘this election was not an indictment’ of Harris but ‘an indictment of America.’ At least one Guardian columnist gets it. John Harris concluded that the ‘simple, inescapable message’ from Trump’s victory is that ‘many people despise the left’ with progressives seen as ‘one judgmental, “woke” mass.’

Harris goes on to note that support for border security and enforcement was higher among blacks and Hispanics than among white progressives. So too for statements that ‘America is the greatest country in the world’ where ‘most people can make it if they work hard,’ again contradicting the core tenets of critical race theory. The fact that Trump’s 14-point advantage among voters without college degrees flips into a 13-point loss among the college-educated indicates the source of the luxury beliefs. This in a tough economic environment in which, in a survey last year, 39 percent of Americans admitted to having skipped meals to keep up with housing payments.

Trump was authentic and Harris inauthentic, intellectually shallow, morally vacuous, and prone to mistaking platitudes as policy pronouncements. Harris held a celebrity-studded rally in Philadelphia on 4 November. Speaking at his own overlapping rally in Pittsburgh, Trump said: ‘We don’t need a star because we have policy.’

She recruited Republican reject Liz Cheney whose surname remains toxic among true-blue Democrats. He won over disillusioned Democrats Robert F Kennedy, Jr (nominated to be Secretary of Health and Human Services) and Tulsi Gabbard (the new Director of National Intelligence) along with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (co-chairs of a new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE). Her only sales pitch was ‘I am not Trump. I am not Biden.’ This was delivered with an accompaniment of trademark word salads, infamous cackles, and a baffling array of accents to suit every audience.

Trump dodged bullets, Harris dodged questions. He had a record to defend, she had one to airbrush. Democrats voted for the party, not Harris. MAGA people voted for Trump more than the party. Harris neither explained and defended the last four years nor articulated a vision for the next four. All she did was to attack Trump. He closed with the simple yet powerful question: Are you better off now than then? They replied: Diversity hire, you are fired.

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Echoing the ‘quadfecta’ of the GOP capture of the Presidency, Senate, House, and popular vote, the MSM too suffered a quadruple calamity. Their preferred candidate lost. Their already dented credibility was torn to shreds. Echoing the George Costanza strategy, some voters did the opposite of what the media hacks told them, echoing last year’s Voice referendum here in Australia. Also like the Voice, Harris’s massive spending advantage merely reinforced the perception that she was the candidate of the wealthy few and he of the more numerous little guys.

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Growing the Trump Voter Base

There isn’t just one US presidential election but 50 simultaneous but separate ones in every state, each with its own rules and processes. Similarly, there isn’t one unified and cohesive electorate but several distinct voting cohorts. As alluded to above, the Trump-led Republicans deepened their appeal among white working-class Americans but also broadened it to peel away once-solid support for the Democrats among specific cohorts and bring them inside the Republican tent.

This was particularly true of but not limited to the immigrant ethnic groups. According to a Forbes analysis, Harris’s six-point lead over Trump among Latinos was a steep drop from the 33 and 38-point margins for Biden and Clinton in 2020/2016. In Starr County in south Texas with a 97 percent Latino population that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1892 and Clinton won by 79 points in 2016, Trump won 58 percent of the votes this time round. In Queens County, NY, one of the most ethnically and racially diverse counties in the US, the needle moved 20 points towards Trump from 2020. For all the brouhaha over an insult comedian’s off-colour Puerto Rican joke, even heavily Puerto Rican Osceola, FL, which Biden carried by nearly 14 points, flipped to Trump.

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The established immigrant populations too see economic downsides to having newer immigrant workers come in and compete for jobs. They too object to unlimited immigration on cultural grounds, having become proud of their American citizenship. They may even become more vociferous defenders of Americanism than whites who can trace their ancestry in the US further back but are wracked with guilt over historical sins like slavery and racism. They fault the Democrats on immigration, culture wars, and pronouns, and net zero obsession and costs be damned. Their optimistic vision for America is one based on promoting nationhood, national identity, American culture, secure borders, a history of many accomplishments to be proud of and celebrated, social conservatism, the prosperity of people who actually live in the country, and a better life for their kids.

Democracy Under Threat

In a surreal bait-and-switch tactic, the Democrats campaigned heavily on the fear that Trump, a closet Hitler, would begin to establish a dictatorship from Day One. This is from the party that overturned the democratic choice of 14 million voters to dump Biden and impose a DEI pick for the ultimate job, even though she failed to win a single delegate in 2020 and did not contest the party primary this year. She knew it, Americans knew it, the world knew it. Everyone also knew that the Democrats had lied about Biden’s cognitive health for four years and then, after replacing him, lied about Harris’s fitness for office. They treated voters with open contempt and they’ve returned the favour.

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The Democrats mostly refused to accept the legitimacy of Trump’s victory in 2016 and worked assiduously to undermine his presidency with guerrilla tactics and the Russia collusion hoax. Fifty-one former senior intelligence officials ran election interference against Trump in 2020 with knowingly false declarations on the Hunter Biden laptop story as classic Russian disinformation. They spied on his campaign, impeached him twice, arrested him, and tried to bankrupt, incarcerate, and throw him off the ballot. He was twice the target of assassination attempts and famously rose up from one with defiant fist pumps of ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ He absorbed all the punches and just kept coming back at them.

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Immigration

Immigration has long been argued to bring multiple benefits of economic stimulus and growth, replenished gene pool, enriched cultural diversity, exposure to the world’s diverse range of scrumptious cuisine, and so on. In the US, Republicans tolerated illegal immigrants as a large pool of cheap labour and Democrats as a large bloc of reliable long-term votes. But in recent times mass and illegal immigration in particular have tipped the balance away from net benefits to harms, including net lifetime drain on public finances and stressed out public infrastructure. This is more so for the working classes than the elites.

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By reversing Trump’s efforts to control the southern border and opening it wide to floods of illegal aliens on Harris’ watch as the border czar, the Democrats left her candidacy hostage to fortune and have paid the price. Exit polls showed immigration and the economy as the voters’ top two concerns and Trump – with a tough message on immigration, border enforcement, and mass deportations – won on these with 90 and 80 percent support.

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Indo-Americans

For reasons that should be self-evident, I am more familiar with Indo-American than with other groups’ sentiments. The comments that follow draw on many conversations over time with colleagues, friends, and relations in the US.

Unlike the low depression hanging over many Western capitals led by people yet to outgrow student politics, in heavily polluted Delhi the Modi government will be pleased to see the House of Orange restored to the White House. Speaking at a function in Mumbai on 10 November, in response to a question from the audience on the implications of Trump 2.0 for India, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar remarked (at around 25 minutes) that ‘a lot of countries are nervous about the US…We are not one of them.’ He said that Modi’s call of congratulations was among the first three that Trump took from foreign leaders.

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It’s worth remembering that small numbers can tip the outcomes in just a handful of states to determine the overall winner. There are over 700,000 Indians in the seven swing states. In 2016, 84 percent of Indo-Americans voted for Hillary Clinton, falling to 68 percent for Biden in 2020. Harris’s share fell again to 60 percent, despite her mother being Indian. Support for Trump was 31 percent, up from 22 percent in 2020.

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Via https://brownstone.org/articles/trumps-multiethnic-winning-coalition/