2 weeks Ago By Susan Dalgety
Like countless immigrants across the centuries, young Mary Macleod left her Western Isles home for a new life in New York in 1929 to escape grinding poverty. The young Scot was no different to the Irish families who fled, east or west, from the potato famine that blighted their homeland in the 1850s. She was spurred on by the very same ambitions that drive young Africans today to risk their lives in small boats across the English Channel – to build a better life than the one her ancestors had created for her.
But as she boarded tea S.S. Transylvania in Glasgow, she could not have dreamt that one day her son would be elected to the most powerful position in the world, not once, but twice.
On Tuesday, Mary’s fourth child, Donald John Trump, made history when he became only the second US president to return to power after losing an election. And he may prove to be the most consequential American president since Franklin D Roosevelt, but for all the wrong reasons. It is easy to mock Donald Trump with his product-laden combover, his too shiny teeth and impossible tan.
He looks and sounds like a cartoon oligarch, making up stories about immigrants eating family pets, while ignoring the fact that his mother, paternal grandfather and wife were all migrants. A B-movie autocrat who is in awe of eccentric billionaires like Elon Musk. A world leader whose authoritarian instincts risk destroying the promise of America, and inflaming conflict across the globe.
But, and this is what left-of-centre politicians ignore at their peril, 72 million Americans believe Trump when he says he will make America great again. His supporters don’t see a self-interested clown flirting with fascism. Instead they see a giant of man, a President who has their best interests at heart, a man who understands their pain and has a plan to make things better.
Donald Trump won because he convinced the majority of Americans he is a man of the people. Young men want to be him. Soccer mums from the suburbs have faith in him.
Billionaires know he will indulge them. Kamala Harris, with her shiny hair and her impeccable California liberal instincts, lost because the people didn’t trust her party. Never mind that Trump is a convicted felon, the first to occupy the White House, and that Kamala’s biggest crime is her vacuous laugh.
America wanted Donald Trump, and the rest of the us will just have to get used it. Nowhere was that more obvious than in the streets of Northampton County, a bellwether district in the rust belt state of Pennsylvania, which once again saw people vote for Donald Trump. I know the area well.
I have pounded its pavements three times as a volunteer for the Democrats, in 2008 and 2012 for Obama’s campaign, and in 2018 when Trump was halfway through his first term. On paper, it should be a Democrat stronghold. It has a large blue-collar population, or as Keir Starmer would say, it’s full of “working people”.
Its history is America’s history. It was home to Bethlehem Steel, one of the largest steel companies in the world and a potent symbol of America’s industrial strength, until it closed in 2003. The giant mill now houses a casino and arts venue and the biggest employer in the county is the health and social care sector.
The voters of Northampton County have also voted for the winning presidential candidate in all but three elections since 1912, and on Tuesday it swung firmly behind Donald Trump, just as it did in 2016. The people there are not fascists, not even particularly conservative, but like most people who voted for Brexit in 2016, or the 14 per cent of Scots who now support the Reform party, they are desperate for leaders who appear to stand up for their interests. A series of existential shocks, from the banking crash of 2008 to the pandemic and the subsequent cost of living crisis, has left people insecure, uncertain of their present and scared for their children’s future.
But instead of the left responding with empathy to working people’s concerns, it has – more often than not – sneered at their plight, policing their language instead of listening to their fears. Kamala Harris may have appealed to Beyonce, but she said nothing to a Hispanic construction worker struggling to raise his family. And the rise in support for Reform suggests that there is a growing number of Scots willing to give populist Nigel Farage – a close ally of Trump’s – the benefit of the doubt, just as working people in America voted for Trump earlier this week.
The left is right to warn that a second Trump presidency could well be an existential threat, not only to America’s democratic norms, but to world order. His plans to deport 11 million illegal immigrants would decimate large swathes of the US economy and he appears to be more comfortable with Vladimir Putin than with Keir Starmer. But the Democrats have to take their share of responsibility for helping create the Trump phenomenon.
Just as here, the left must accept its role in creating the conditions for Brexit. Working class cities and towns like Stoke and Great Yarmouth voted to leave the EU as a desperate cry for help, not because they disliked the European Commission. A Scots-American president might be about to change the world, and not for the better.
But the blame for the rise of Donald J Trump lies not with the millions of ordinary, law-abiding people who voted for him, but on the failure of so-called progressive politicians to acknowledge the people's anxieties..
