1 week Ago
This is Trump’s America now. The victory was emphatic. It will go down in modern American history as the greatest political comeback.
Trump went from twice-impeached former president and convicted felon, owing millions of dollars in civil actions and facing charges relating to his role in the January 6 riots to second-time president, winning the electoral college and the popular vote. “Campaigns are contests of competing visions,” as Joe Biden put it on Thursday in his first public remarks after the election. Donald Trump arrives to speak during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Centre.
Photo: Getty The Harris and Trump campaigns stood in stark competition. “We’re not going back” from the Harris camp to the “We want to go back” from Trump supporters. There can be no doubt in American politics now.
Donald Trump is a defining force. The Republican Party is the party of Trump. Republican policies are now Trump policies.
He has led an evolution of the party to be a bi- tent party, while the Democratic Party has shrinking appeal. Read more “It’s the cost of living, stupid” doesn’t have the same ring as “It’s the economy, stupid”, but 32 years later, James Carville’s philosophy holds true. The Trump team was confident.
Senior aides were briefing reporters on Monday that they felt Donald Trump would be making a victory speech late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday. Not because he was going to declare victory for himself without any evidence, as he had done in 2020, but rather that he would have enough electoral college votes by then to do so. He had the votes.
He made the speech. Stunned Democrats began soul-searching and hand-wringing immediately. “How did it all go so wrong? What should they have done differently? Should Joe Biden have left sooner? Should Kamala Harris have used a different message? Why do Americans not like what we’re selling?” The early exit polls showed what surveys from the non-profit, non-partisan Pew Research, Gallup and others have shown for months now.
The image fitted perfectly with his slogan ‘Kamala Broke it and Only Trump Can Fix It’ A significant majority of American people feel the economy, and the country as a whole, is going in the wrong direction. It is an extremely expensive place. Groceries have increased in price by nearly 25pc in the last four to five years.
Inflation and unemployment are down. Wages are up, but so are rents. Trump remains a master marketer and people live busy lives and have short attention spans.
They want short, sharp messaging. At Madison Square Garden, when a comedian made a so-called joke about Puerto Rico being “a floating island of garbage”, the Democrats thought this was an election eve white knight riding over the horizon. But the crass, rough and ready language and attitude are what Trump is known for.
It’s baked in. When Joe Biden in an off-the-cuff remark referred to Trump supporters’ as “garbage”, Trump flipped that to his advantage. Riding around in a bin truck with a hi-vis vest and a hard hat was a new viral, striking image for him.
It reminded people of his builder-developer roots and allowed him to claim, once again, to be a man of the people, looking after those who felt left behind and forgotten by the system. Furthermore, the image fitted perfectly with his slogan “Kamala Broke it and Only Trump Can Fix It”. Just as ear bandages became the accessory of choice at Trump rallies following July’s assassination attempt, construction wear became the preferred outfit in the final days of the campaign.
While Kamala Harris was surrounded by glitzy, glamorous pop stars and movie stars in front of iconic backdrops, Trump was a man among the people. Kamala Harris delivers her concession speech at Howard University. Photo: Getty One of Hillary Clinton’s final campaign rallies in 2016 was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with Lady Gaga and Bruce Springsteen on the bill, while Trump was in a field in Grand Rapids, Michigan, telling those who had waited hours to see him that while Clinton was on stage with the Hollywood elite, he was there in a mucky field with the hard-working people of America.
On Monday, Trump returned to Grand Rapids for his final rally. Harris was on a big stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin. One of them with the glitzy, wealthy individuals who aren’t thinking about stretching money, the other in a field full of people worried about the price of eggs (up 83pc in five years).
On Drivetime on RTÉ Radio 1 a few weeks ago, I was asked to call the election. Gingerly, based on my travels around the seven swing states, I said I felt Trump might just have the edge. Everywhere I had been, I heard from voters what I had heard in 2016.
Voters saying “I don’t like Donald Trump as a person, but I want him as my president”, adding: “I was better off with him.” Harris scored a lower percentage of women than did Biden or Hillary Clinton Last weekend, with momentum on Harris’s side, watching the feel-good vibes of big crowds reacting to the rousing rhetoric of Barack and Michelle Obama on the campaign trail, I was starting to slightly rethink my theory. Do eggs trump vibes? Could vibes beat eggs? The women were going to push her over the line, Democrats said.
A silent majority of Republican women would make the difference, they hoped. There were stickers on the back of toilet doors in the swing states reading: “Nobody knows what you do in here, and they won’t know what you do in the voting booth either. Vote Harris.
Tell no one.” The support didn’t materialise. According to the exit poll information, Harris scored a lower percentage of women than did Biden or Hillary Clinton.
There is much debate over how Trump managed to grow his support among certain groups – young people, Latino voters, black voters and, particularly, men in those groups. And he did. But he also managed to grow his vote all over, building on a pattern from the 2022 mid-terms when the Republicans also improved their performance on the 2018 elections by boosting their turnout across the board.
The Trump campaign targeted these groups particularly, but with that broad appeal affordability message. A universal pitch, with the constant refrain: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” It’s not a phenomenon unique to America. In this year when half of the world’s population goes to the polls, incumbent governments have paid the price for the cost-of-living crisis that is in part a Covid hangover.
As a rule, the president’s party takes a drubbing in the mid-terms. His didn’t Should Biden have stepped out of the race sooner? Possibly. But with Trump about to become the oldest person sworn in to the office, age and competency, as they relate to him, still seem to be second-tier concerns to kitchen-table issues.
With a life dedicated to public service, and buoyed by a tremendous 2022 mid-term result, Biden had indicated early on that he was going nowhere. As a rule, the president’s party takes a drubbing in the mid-terms. His didn’t.
The 2022 mid-term elections were only the fourth time in a century that the president’s party didn’t lose Senate seats. That performance perhaps solidified a view in Biden’s mind, and in those around him, that only he could beat Trump. That only he could save the “soul of America”.
It silenced party critics. Stepping aside would have triggered a primary contest to pick his successor, and could have seen Harris as the nominee anyway. Would a longer run have helped her? We’ll never know.
The sense of economic despair squeezing so many in America means a sitting administration candidate would always have struggled to counter a message that is subconsciously reinforced every time voters go into the supermarket or look at the price of eggs. Can Trump fix it? He says he can. Caitríona Perry is a Chief Presenter with BBC News and a host of The Global Story podcast Read more.
