America wants Trump – no ifs or buts

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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

So much for Kamala Harris’ vibes, joy, optimism and Hollywood smile. America has rejected the sale. Four years ago, a victorious Joe Biden wrote off Donald Trump as an “aberrant moment.” Given that Trump has a reasonable chance of winning the popular vote, in addition to the US Electoral College, history will surely now award Biden this designation. After all, Trump is among the most well-known and highly scrutinized nominees in American history. Choosing him once may have been an accident; doing it twice came with open eyes. Trump is legally the next president of the United States.

The question is why? A big part of the story is that enough Americans want what Trump is selling: mass deportation of illegal immigrants, an end to globalization, and a middle finger to the liberal elite’s often self-parodying approach to identity, better known as wakeness. All of this outweighed any doubts voters had about Trump’s character. That the United States has elected a convicted felon who is also indicted for attempting to overturn the last election and is an open admirer of autocrats can be interpreted in one of two ways. Either voters don’t take the risk Trump poses seriously, or they know exactly what they’re letting the country in for, but still prefer it to business as usual.

Either way, Trump’s re-election is an existential disaster for Democrats. It is also a historic game-changer for America’s allies. Democratic accusations will come thick and fast. Any postmortem is sure to highlight the fact that a visibly ill Biden waited far too long to give up his party’s nomination. Had Biden bowed out six months earlier, Democrats would have had time to find a better prospect than Harris. Maybe having a real primary contest wouldn’t have made any difference. To be fair to Harris, she ran a well-oiled campaign, beating Trump in their only debate and uniting Democrats behind her. But she was mediocre at best when the conversation turned to the economy – a topic she did her best to avoid. Lack of a compelling economic narrative would be a major mistake in any American election. Competitive primaries would have figured that out.

Having so seamlessly inherited the crown, Harris had little time and incentive to correct his shortcomings. Yet she still could have pulled off a “Sister Souljah moment” to prove she was no Berkeley radical. Bill Clinton’s criticism of the anonymous black writer in 1992 showed that he was not an old-fashioned liberal, which helped make him electable. Harris was careful to avoid association with the more outlandish progressive causes during his brief 16-week campaign. But she did not convincingly reject her previous support for e.g. open borders and defunding the police.

Biden can also be blamed for over-interpreting his victory in 2020. This was a result of Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, not concerns about the health of American democracy. Biden won by promising to end the pandemic and restore normalcy to American politics. Somewhere between his nomination and his inauguration, however, Biden began to believe he had a license for sweeping change. His redundant $1.9tn stimulus poured fuel on inflation already rising due to supply-side disruptions. To be sure, Trump posed a profound threat to America’s constitutional order—as he does now on steroids. But in Merrick Garland, Biden chose an attorney general who was in no rush to hold Trump to account. Historians will wonder about that.

As with Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, there are many fingerprints on Harris’ defeat. But it will be much harder this time to blame foreign bad actors. Russia’s Vladimir Putin will no doubt see big benefits from Trump’s re-election, especially in Ukraine. Yet it was Americans who put Trump back in office with no apparent help. Either way, the democratic blame game will be secondary to understanding what comes next. Trump has promised retaliation, and he means it.

It is entirely possible that the Republicans will win a trifecta: the Presidency, the Senate, which is now a certainty, and the House of Representatives, which remains in the balance. Should Republicans take full control of Capitol Hill, there will be little check on Trump’s executive branch. The US Supreme Court already wrote Trump the equivalent of a judicial blank check when it ruled in July that he had broad immunity for his actions as president.

America has turned a decisive corner. It would be foolhardy to assume that Trump didn’t mean what he said when he promised to come after his enemies. It would also be delusional to think that he will feel in any way constrained by his country’s 50-50 split. Trump has a mandate to overhaul the United States in unimaginably disruptive ways. There will be no turning back from the seismic outcome of the 2024 US election.

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