It is nearly a week since it became clear that Donald Trump was going to win the US presidential election. There has been no shortage of analysis from all points of the political spectrum in which the result is interpreted as confirming whatever the author previously thought. This piece is no exception.
For Trump supporters, his victory confirms the view that he is a political genius with a unique ability to attract working-class voters. For some on the right in the UK, it is a model that can be replicated here: a more insurgent, anti-establishment, populist form of politics. There is no doubt that for those of us who think that centre-right politics should distance itself from Trumpism, the result is a setback.
But before anyone claims that Trump’s victory is convincing evidence of his personal popularity, it is worth noting that his personal ratings – even at the moment of his triumph – are poor. He may have won more than 50 per cent of the vote but far more Americans have an unfavourable rather than favourable view of him. As for those in the UK who see Trump as a role model, they really should not forget that he is deeply unpopular in the UK, including among Conservative voters.
What really mattered as far as US voters were concerned is that they overwhelmingly thought the country was on the “wrong track”. The Democrats lost more than Trump won. A more mainstream Republican candidate – without the baggage of 6 January, the criminal conviction, the incompetent debate performances, and the general weirdness – would surely have won even more convincingly.
That 6 January, and much else, was insufficient to discourage 75 million Americans voting for Trump is deeply depressing. It is, of course, unhelpful for a political party aspiring to persuade those voters in the future to be critical of them, but the rest of us need not be so reticent. They know who he is; they know what they are getting. What were they thinking?
“We don’t like the Democrats,” is the answer in many cases. It is an inadequate response in the circumstances, but one that the Democrats need to address. They should start by thinking about their candidate and confront some hard truths.
Kamala Harris became the Democrats’ nominee when it was all too obvious that President Joe Biden could not run again. She was anointed for no other reason than that she was vice-president. Not an impressive vice-president who had established herself as an effective and articulate member of the Biden administration (because she hadn’t), just someone who occupied the position. And she was vice-president because Biden – in August 2020 – felt obliged to choose a black woman as nominee.
Harris did not have a track record as a great campaigner (she effectively finished last in the Democrat primaries) and had never defeated a Republican in a marginal election. She did not have any link to a swing state, did not bring experience of economics or foreign affairs, and her views were far more liberal than the typical voter. In other words, she was picked as the vice-presidential nominee and, consequentially, the presidential nominee not on her individual electoral appeal but on the basis of her sex and race.
Identity politics is unpopular in most of the US, including (as is evident in the black and Latino vote last week) among many of those who are supposed to benefit from it. By running Harris as their candidate, the electorate was reminded at every instant of the Democrats’ instincts on this matter.
This would not have been the case if she had been a consistently impressive candidate. In truth, she performed better in her convention speech and in her debate with Trump than might have been expected, and she wisely refrained from much “breaking the glass ceiling” rhetoric. But for much of the campaign she was protected from interviews and when subsequently exposed to tough questioning lacked confidence and authority. This undermined her as a candidate but also strengthened the Republicans’ arguments against identity politics.
This then takes us to the Bernie Sanders critique of the Democrats’ campaign. Abandon the woke obsessions of the liberal intelligentsia and focus on delivering a left-wing economic agenda for the working classes, he argues.
But the difficulty with the second element of this argument is that, to a very large extent, that is what Biden sought to do in office. His administration was heavily focused on protecting and expanding manufacturing jobs by adopting a high-spending industrial strategy, maintaining the tariffs he inherited from Trump and pursuing a pro-trade union agenda. Biden was unfortunate that worldwide inflation hit the US economy on his watch, but some of his policies (such as his high spending and misnamed Inflation Reduction Act) contributed to the higher prices which proved to be such a political problem.
This is a bad year to be a political incumbent. Rather than the result being evidence that Trump is a political colossus, the Democrats only had a chance to win because the Republicans put forward such a flawed candidate. Regrettably, the Democrats failed to take that chance because they too put forward a flawed candidate, incapable of either defending Biden’s economic policies or distancing herself from them. She also embodied unpopular cultural values; her frailties as a candidate only further discrediting an approach of prioritising identity over merit. The world – God help us – will now have to face the consequences.
[See also: Donald Trump is right. There is a “swamp”, but it’s the left that must drain it]
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