The original is always better than the sequel, right?
It seems appropriate writing for a Sunday newspaper to begin with a Biblical quote. I guess I could reach for something from Revelations, the impending apocalypse and the Four Horsemen – and, indeed, that would seem fitting. But the one that keeps coming back to me is from the Old Testament.
“There is nothing new under the sun” Ecclesiastes tells us. Or in modern language, “we’ve seen this movie before.”
Another US election has come and gone, riven by division, partisanship and polarization. A campaign characterised by distrust, distaste and disgust. One party nominates an outsider, a populist that thrives on large crowds and controversy, promising the world and rallying supporters with empty rhetoric. The other party nominates a centrist, long-established in legal and political circles, experienced and professional, but considered representative of ‘big government’, a symptom of the problems of Washington rather than the solutions.
Those sentences could have been written about 2016 or 2020. And while the results in those elections differed – the outsider triumphed over the establishment in 2016, the centre regained the White House in 2020 – the outcome in both was the same. More distrust, more distaste, more disgust. More division. More partisanship. More polarization.
I wrote the above before we knew the result of Tuesday’s presidential election. I could probably have written the below before it too, because the result doesn’t really impact upon the outcome. Division and partisanship aren’t going anywhere. The incoming president has an impossible task. The ‘United’ States are anything but.
The new president is also the old president. On 20 January, Donald Trump will return to the White House, beginning a second term interrupted by four years of Joe Biden – only the second president to achieve such a feat.
He’ll return to office vindicated – and probably a little vindictive. We’re yet to find out how he’ll govern, or who he’ll appoint to his Cabinet but given he is ineligible to run for the office again in 2028, he’ll be a president unleashed. With no need to consider re-election, or indeed any plan to assist a successor, we can expect his term to lean to the extremes. He’ll be unfiltered – even more than before – and this is a prospect that most European leaders are nervous about.
How did he win? A combination of factors were at play, but James Carville’s 1992 assertion that it’s ‘the economy, stupid’ played a large part. Exit polls suggest that while ‘democracy’ was the concern of 35 per cent of voters, the economy placed second on 31 per cent. Economic data shows that across the US inflation is outstripping wage growth – meaning voters could feel the impact directly on their pockets, and end up voting with their wallets.
Somewhat more surprisingly given recent derogatory comments about Puerto Rico at a campaign rally, Trump did remarkably well among Latino men across the US. In 2020, Joe Biden had won this demographic by 23 points – this time out, Trump won this group by 8 points. This helped particularly in the Sun Belt states of Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, as well as the key battleground of Pennsylvania, which has a significant Latinx community.
The Glass Ceiling remains well and truly unbroken. Kamala Harris, like Hillary Clinton before her, failed to win a presidential election, and the prospect of a female president seems ever more distant in the aftermath of this vote. Unlike Clinton, the Harris campaign approached the election with fewer policy promises, attempting to avoid being held as a hostage to fortune. The strategy seemingly backfired, with voters unsure of what a Harris administration would look like.
The same could not be said for Trump – a known entity, a straightshooter with a record of doing exactly what he said he would do. Whatever else might be said about American voters, it cannot be claimed they do not know who Trump is, or what they were voting for: a twice-impeached, thirty-four time convicted felon that sparked a violent insurrection at the US Capitol, boasted about sexually assaulting women and pledged to upend the US economy.
What does a second Trump presidency mean for the US? Probably a similar experience as 2017-2021, but with more vehemence, more rhetoric, more bombast, and fewer reins. A who’s who of hangers-on will likely join his Cabinet, happily confirmed by a new Republican majority in the Senate.
What does a second Trump presidency mean for the rest of the world? There are lots of answers to this, but the word that most consider realistic is ‘unstable’. Trump’s admiration for Putin, his unflinching support for Israel and his weird bromance with Kim Jong Un suggest an unpredictability in global affairs for the next four years.
“Trump II: The Sequel” is at all good movie theatres beginning 20 January 2025. Get your tickets now: its going to be compulsive viewing.
Dr Malcolm Harvey is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Aberdeen.
This article was published in the print edition of the Sunday Post on 10 November, 2024.
