The battle might be over for Joe Biden but the war has only just begun – and it’s one the world can’t afford him to lose
The battle might be over for Joe Biden but the war has only just begun. Now the struggle to save the soul of America rests in the hands of a man who struggles to remember the name of the man he’s fighting against.
The good news is that this is no longer a fight against Donald Trump but a fight for the hearts and minds of the 70 million Americans who turned out to vote for him. The bad news is that unlike Trump they are not going anywhere.
There will be a lot of armchair quarterbacking after this stunning US election, the most electrifying presidential poll this century. It is therefore important to record in this first draft of history the facts as they stand, before they are rewritten by the victors.
The first is that virtually all the mainstream polls and pundits got it wrong again. And not only did they get it wrong after getting it wrong the first time and promising they’d learnt from their mistakes but they got it even more wrong.
Four years of constant commentary about Trump’s record unpopularity, his accidental and undemocratic somersault into the White House, his illegal and illegitimate presidency, his murderous incompetence and his projected electoral wipe-out once he sought a second term have all proved to be utterly, utterly wrong.
Yes, after days of nailbiting vote-counting where swing states have flickered red to blue on the slimmest of margins, it is impossible for Trump to win – assuming none of his conspiracies about voter fraud come true.
However that does not erase the fact that he turned out a record number of votes for any Republican candidate in US history and came within a bee’s bollocks of winning a second term – again in flagrant defiance of just about every public poll and prediction.
Democrats should thank their lucky stars that they preselected Biden as their candidate, a genial, familiar and moderate man who is as close to the embodiment of mainstream Middle America as the party has on its books. It is why I backed him in the primaries and why I nervously maintained he would win even as the electoral map turned into a sea of red.
Only Biden was able to straddle an incredibly broad spectrum of voters that stretched from young Trump-hating socialists to urbane Trump-hating Republicans and the bare minimum of working-class white men in the Midwest. The result was the highest vote for any presidential candidate in American history and it’s impossible to see how other contenders like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Harris could have done the same. Biden might not be lucid but at least he is likeable.
But the second highest vote for any presidential candidate goes to Donald J Trump and now those voters are looking for a home.
It is clear now, as it was four years ago, that the political, media and academic establishment simply does not understand them and dismisses their hopes and fears as illegitimate – even “deplorable” you might say. Whether by accident or design Trump tapped into these hopes and fears and a new American revolution was born.
And so there are more than 70 million souls sitting there waiting for the next messiah to take them to the promised land and unless the Democrats think they can pull together a bigger coalition of communists and corporates at every election in the future then they’d better start listening to them.
And the key word here is listen. The one thing that keeps coming up again and again is that these people are sick of being dictated to and told they have to squeeze into a preordained ideological template or be cast on the political scrap heap.
One example is the gobsmacking video voiced and distributed by Harris in which she used cartoon figures and comic book font to explain the difference between “equality” and “equity” to people who were apparently too stupid to understand it.
Maybe it was an attempt to scold voters for their privilege or maybe it was an attempt to provide a theoretical framework to explain how she was helping poor oppressed people who were apparently too ignorant to know they were oppressed. Either way I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more nauseatingly condescending piece of political propaganda.
And so it goes on. Working class people are told they have to sacrifice their jobs for the sake of climate change, that they have to sacrifice their religious views for the sake of progress and that they have to sacrifice their language for the sake of tolerance.
And, quite frankly, they’re f***ing over it.
Joe’s genial demeanour and big smile went a long way to reassuring those people that the party was listening again but it will have to do a lot more than that. Even as the penny drops among the so-called educated classes the belated evolution from bewilderment to enlightenment is itself a damning indictment.
As one US Professor of Economics observed of the result: “My takeaway is that a large number of people HATE the cultural left (not the econ left) and are willing to put up with almost anything, including incompetence, chaos, corruption and bad policy, to signal their views loud and clear.”
Well, yes. No shit.
Likewise a social science and psychology lecturer from New Zealand tweeted: “We social scientists failed to predict or even understand the appeal of Trump. We need to do better to understand why people chose to vote for him. A lot of people did, so there are probably some strong reasons. If we don’t understand we’ll miss the next one, too.”
Again, quite so. And yet how chilling that the academic class is so mystified by Trump’s appeal that they feel the need to study his supporters like lab rats.
And full credit to this brave lone columnist from the New York Times for his soul-turning mea culpa: “Our job in the media is to capture reality so that when reality voices itself, like last night, people aren’t surprised. Pretty massive failure. We still are not good at capturing the rightward half of the country.”
So true. Even after four long years of chaos and condemnation they were still not good. And they also still fail to realise that this “rightward half” includes vast numbers of working class people who thought they were the left until the left left them behind. In all the blue-collar swing states we still talk about today they voted for Obama and then they voted for Trump.
Democrats will rightly be breathing a massive sigh of relief after this election – an election that was a far more close-run thing than it should have been – but they should not for a minute think that the struggle is over.
Unless they win back the working class and win back Middle America, unless they start reflecting their values instead of dictating them, it might just be the last election they win for a very long time.
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Think a Trump defeat will be the end of Trumpism? Think again
Within a few days - or weeks if the result is disputed - we will know if Donald Trump is to remain US president or if his Democratic challenger Joe Biden will take over the White House.
But even if Republican Mr Trump loses on 3 November, his legacy and impact on American society are clear.
And according to some political experts, it’s one that will endure for years.
The beliefs of many of his supporters will remain, they say, as will the underlying factors that led to his victory. His impact on how future leaders choose to govern will also be significant.
'Trump’s legacy will endure'
Mr Trump appealed successfully to voters with his breed of conservative populist nationalism in 2016.
In office, those ideals were given credence with bans on immigration from Muslim-majority countries, trade wars with China and the removal of the US from global groups such as the World Health Organization.
He mixed it with his style of fiery populism, making an enemy of the press while branding himself an ‘outsider’ president, damaging governance institutions and making friends with dictators.
His response to the COVID-19 pandemic, by reassuring people it would just “disappear”, could be said to be populism 101; a simplistic response to a complex problem.
But his brand of nationalism and populism has been dangerous, says Brendon O'Connor, an associate professor in American politics at the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre.
“We've got two very broad brush and often simplistic ideas that can be dangerous without moderation or at least some degree of more sophistication,” he told SBS News.
“And that's what you've got with Trump. You know, these simple solutions, often targeting groups or scapegoating based on fear and opposition, and not much regard for negotiation or compromise.”
'Radical beliefs won’t change overnight'
There's no denying Mr Trump's popularity - 62 million voters threw their support behind him in 2016.
Even if some of those have since been put off by his leadership to change their votes, his die-hard fans will remain, as will their belief structures.
“You're still going to see a lot of white people vote for Donald Trump in this coming election no matter what his record is,” Associate Professor O’Connor said.
For those who felt left behind by globalisation, not much has changed economically. And a financial crisis fuelled by COVID-19 won’t have made things any easier for many.
“There’s clearly a lot of people in America who feel financially vulnerable. That's not going to change overnight and certainly not in a COVID-created sort of recession,” Associate Professor O’Connor said.
“There’ll be plenty of people who have a sense that politics and the economy haven’t served them particularly well.”
US Political Scientist Seth Masket, who is based in Denver, Colorado, says the sense of economic dislocation and the polarising issue of race will still be there.
“People have just become more polarised and there's a deeper strain of radicalism since [the Obama era] so I think we're still moving in that direction,” he said.
Trump supporters who are against immigration, believe minorities get better treatment, and that white people are losing their status, aren’t likely to change their mind soon either, Associate Professor O’Connor said.
“This kind of status entitlement is really the current thing being whipped up by Trump.”
“We've seen that people who see themselves as being the ‘real Americans’ because they’re white and have been in America for maybe a little longer than more recent immigrants - that element of politics has been really destructive.”
Mr Masket has a different view. He says like most other types of supporters, Trump backers rely on the man himself to fuel their beliefs.
“I think the main thing that was motivating them was their enthusiasm about Donald Trump. And they were willing to adopt a lot of the things that he believed, simply because they liked him,” he said.
“These supporters might adapt their views somewhat but they're going to be looking for someone new to sort of carry that mantle forward.”
'Conservative media will be emboldened'
Associate Professor O’Connor says the role of the conservative media is also significant; they’ve seen what rates and will sell that, regardless of its impact or validity.
“These people have been whipped up into a frenzy by the sort of media organisations supportive of Trump.
“Those people won't suddenly go, ‘Ahh, that was a bit over the top’. You know, the media stations keep them coming back for more by having this level of frenzied alarm.
“And that style of politics will be one of the big legacies of Donald Trump - that by saying ridiculous things, by using scare tactics, by kind of being abusive of your opponents and making all sorts of outlandish claims against them - gets a lot of attention.
“It will be hard to believe that another showboating sort of narcissist won’t want to replicate that.”
'Trump will keep tweeting'
Even if Mr Trump loses, he’s unlikely to disappear from the public sphere and will probably continue to rally his base behind him via his social media accounts, political experts say. And that’s likely to have an impact on public discourse and how future leaders after him govern.
“If Trump is alive and well, it’s hard to imagine him maintaining a low profile," Brandice Canes-Wrone, a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey told The New York Times.
"And, even without Trump, there are likely GOP presidential candidates popular with this wing of the party [Trump insurgents].”
But, Mr Masket says, Mr Trump will lose a lot of the power he wields against elected Republicans if he loses.
“While he'll still be very vocal and they'll still be using Twitter a lot and giving speeches and everything, I think a lot of Republicans would feel a little more free to essentially ignore him.”
'We’ll probably have someone like Trump again'
Political experts say the next leaders, especially from the Republican base, may well follow aspects of Mr Trump's leadership style.
“He'll leave a long stain on the Republican Party for his racism and his xenophobia," Associate Professor O’Connor said - allegations Mr Trump has denied.
"So that will be a common legacy that the Republicans will need to reckon with.”
“And I think that it's pretty likely that there will be future candidates who campaign in the Trump mould. We probably can't see them because they may come from outside of elected politics.”
Mr Trump’s strategy in 2016 was so successful it’s already been replicated in some of the congressional races since, he added.
“A lot of people who've taken the Trump path and drawn on a similar voting base that Donald Trump got to get the Republican nomination in 2016, they've been pretty successful, becoming the party candidate.”
Mr Masket says the level of coarseness in politics that worsened in the Trump era might remain.
“We're seeing at least some evidence that Republicans have largely followed his lead on that and it's at least up until now, they haven't lost a whole lot of elections because of it. I don't know that they see that there's a major political price for following this path.
“Things could still grow coarser.”
And it might not be the end of Mr Trump trying to win the White House back.
“I think there's a good chance he will be trying to run for president yet again in four years,” Mr Masket said.
One thing is for sure, if Mr Trump wins, Trumpism certainly isn't going anywhere.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/think-a-trump-defeat-will-be-the-end-of-trumpism-think-again
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