Whichever way the chips fall when the final votes are counted across the Atlantic, Tuesday’s election was a huge victory for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Whether we have a President Joe Biden in the White House or another four years of Donald, Trumpism has shown that it is a force to be reckoned with rather than a problem. Likewise, the Democrats have been unable to articulate a vision for the United States.
America has changed and Donald Trump is more a symptom of that change than its cause. Remember, until he became interested in running for office, Mr. Trump was a Democrat. His “make America great again” cult of personality was an effective take on the Republicans that the party greats resisted until they realized he was a force of nature.
His kind of economic populism and nationalism has struck a chord with many people who have felt their lives have been on the decline for years and wonder where they fit in today in America, where Democrats seem obsessed with identity politics. Why not put America first, many voters obviously think? This week’s results show that the 2016 elections were not an aberration, and if experts persist in denouncing Trump supporters as deplorable, the divisions in America will deepen and our political and media establishment here will be even more disconnected from it. that is happening in the United States. .
I lived in Louisiana for a time in my 20s and am a frequent visitor. It was right on the Texas border and in the heart of the so-called ‘Bible belt’. People liked to cook delicious Cajun food, hunt deer and alligators, and go to church. A recent survey found that 71% of Louisianans said religion was “extremely important” to them.
Most of the people he knew were registered Democrats, but they had voted Republicans for years. Bill Clinton’s southern style of the Democratic Party took the state comfortably in 1992 and 1996, but has solidly voted Republican ever since. There is a feeling that many people feel that the Democrats have broken away from traditional values. It was a feeling of alienation that intensified in 2008 when Barack Obama referred to working-class voters in industrial cities decimated by unemployment: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who they are not like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. “
The comments surprised many people by being elitist and disconnected and raised questions about how the ruling class in Washington could understand the small American town. Trump has successfully exploited the disenchantment and, rightly or wrongly, has given the impression that he is on the side of the common man.
Many of my friends in Louisiana who voted for Donald Trump this time are good and decent people. They are not racist or misogynistic, much less “deplorable”. They all see Trump’s obvious flaws, and yet they see someone who can relate to them. In Joe Biden, they saw little more than a man whose main selling point appeared to be that he was not the other. His election of Kamala Harris, someone seen as on the far left of the Democrats, certainly did not help his campaign to win the middle ground. The abortion issue remains a living issue in the US as well, and the fact that Democrats have made pro-abortion virtually an article of religion in recent years also discourages voters who are pro-life and it leaves them with nowhere to go but Trump. But abortion is just another symptom of a clash of cultures. American politics is deeply divided, and Donald Trump did not initiate that division, even though he exacerbated it.
The idea that a President Biden would be the time when political divisions would begin to heal in America is an illusion. There are very different and conflicting ideas of what the United States should become. In electing Joe Biden, Democrats made a big tactical mistake in thinking that Trump was easily beatable given his disastrous handling of Covid-19. The truth is, the coronavirus ranked pretty low in terms of priorities. The exit poll showed, to borrow a cliché, that economics was stupid. And many voters trust Trump on that and are prepared to endure the crazy press conferences and the rest of the administration’s daily chaos.
Many commentators will scratch their heads in amazement at Trump’s impressive performance. Democrat Van Jones told CNN when the picture became clearer: “We wanted to see a repudiation of this leadership for the country, and that has not yet come. That hurts”.
Being horrified that so many millions of American voters are relying on Trump can make people feel moralistic. But the real test of whether or not politicians want to heal divisions is whether they can have the humility to listen to why people vote for Trump rather than label them all stupid.
And if we in Ireland think that we no longer understand America, we have to expand our circle of American friends. It is a changed country and Trumpism is here to stay, even if it is the wrong answer to the right questions.