Election Reflection
Scott Montgomery reflects on the causes of Trump's recent election victory and what it may mean for reactionary movements elsewhere.
There is a view that says one should wait, reflect, try on and castoff ideas, before offering comments on a major event. The second election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency would seem to qualify. More than two weeks have passed since this seismic event, and enough has been written to fill a small library.
A major earthquake rings the Earth like a bell, says geoscience. It is an apt metaphor. Trump’s election has shaken governments worldwide, not least those of U.S. allies, who are perhaps trembling from political concussion, facing uncertainty about their future security. For autocrats, there is more complexity, but they are far from universally pleased. Mr. Xi, for example, faces the prospect of massive new tariffs, Mr. Putin more oil on the market from America, lowering prices.
Most national leaders appear to understand, as a majority of Americans do not, that the worst has indeed happened. The politics of reactionary rancor are no longer merely in ascendency. Democrats have said that Trump could be the country’s first dictator. But the truth is that a bona fide tyrant isn’t needed for liberal democracy to end. It requires only that a voting majority believe the democratic ideas and ideals on which the country was founded are irrelevant, useless, or harmful. Whether Trump goes on to pave the road to serfdom, he will likely surpass his first term as an executive the founders most abhorred but failed to fully anticipate.
Much gloom and soul-searching have descended upon Democrats and their sympathizers overseas. Yet, a different kind of response has also emerged, not without purpose. This view sees the election result as not so much disheartening as outrageous, appalling, and repulsive. America was once a place, it says, where most people had the self-respect, decency, and integrity to look for something similar in their leaders. They understood that some degree of truth and reason is important, and that at least the appearance of character and dignity mattered for one who represented the United States to the world. That kind of country, it now appears, no longer exists for a majority of the voting public and would be despised in any case.
It is true enough that Americans have had eight full years to learn what kind of person inhabits Donald Trump’s skin. The portrait is widely recognized in both political parties as less than admirable. Time and again, he has shown himself to be crude, bigoted, callous, abusive, self-infatuated, openly immoral, scornful of intelligence, but an effective merchant of fear, hate, and threat. Very few, if any, voters from either party see Trump as an honest and ethical human being. Even fewer would describe him as thoughtful, respectful, or sympathetic.
No one who has voted for him, moreover, wants or cares that he be better than he is. They deny the Big Lie (that the 2020 election was “stolen”), ignore the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and wave away the violent promises Trump has repeatedly made, like calling for the execution of military leaders and former senators and swearing to jail his domestic “enemies.” Trump is the one who will “do what’s needed” to put America on the right track once again.
Put this way, it’s hard to debate a dreary view of American voters. Many of these supporters have said we need to “look past” Trump’s bluster and braggadocio, as well as his threats. The greater part of his rhetoric is mostly an act, they say, part of the performance. More important are his comments about “the issues.”
But what are these issues? They turn out to be more of his cartoon nightmares—a failed U.S. economy with soaring inflation and need for high tariffs; a southern border overrun by armies of murderous illegals; an epidemic of crime reaching to every corner of every town and city; “wokeness” as the universal cancer in the U.S. military, public schools, universities, HR departments, etc.; a “climate crisis” that is nothing but a total fiction and an outright scam.
That so many adults have chosen to believe in these phantoms in whole or in part, and seize upon the frightful outlook they promote, are said to reveal how debased a large part of the American populace has allowed itself to become. The only conclusion to make is that America has become populated with profoundly gullible, self-centered, weak-minded citizens who were persuaded by lies, “rage and resentment.” As one young voter expressed it, “We can elect a rapist before we can elect a woman.” Such is how those who are outraged by the election tend to view things. They feel all the more justified by the “alarming” choices Trump has been making for his cabinet.
Overall, this kind of perception is difficult to dispel. That American voters are more ignorant and credulous than in the past has been proposed before. That so many millions chose to believe in Trump’s hallucinations, or that, for whatever reasons, he would be “better for American business,” does not speak particularly well of basic acumen and common sense. It matters not at all that many college-grads, including high-tech types and financial mandarins, were supporters. The historical record of educated followers aiding the designs of vulgar, violent leaders, whether for courtly rewards or hopes of power, is long enough to reach from Moscow to Mar-a-Lago.
The wealth and standing of such types suggests a reason for some to explain the extensive losses of the Democratic Party. That may or may not be. Meanwhile, blame has been generously spread among other factors as well: grassroots grievance against “coastal elites;” a prestige media too ready to give Trump “equal time;” the crisis in masculinity and bias against white males; and a takeover of social media by the far-right, supercharging it with disinformation. A moment’s thought, however, indicates that most of these perceptions also depend on an overly naïve and uncritical populace.
Campaign tradition, however, demands fault be found with the loser. Indeed, here is where some degree of consensus exists for both sides of the political aisle. But how much blame do the Democrats really deserve? There’s no denying they’ve been ineffectual against GOP assaults on democratic norms, liberal values, even on science, since the 1990s. They’ve been unable or unwilling to be aggressive against the longstanding Republican attack on government and trust in social institutions. This failure has decidedly helped water the tree of unfreedom so that Trumpism could eventually prevail.
For this particular election, it also seems that Democrats graciously handed the GOP an arsenal of weapons. Such extends from the excesses of identity politics (“wokeism”) to Biden’s frailties of body and policy. Against Trump, they repeatedly hurled the terms of “fascist,” “racist,” and “unAmerican,” somehow unaware that these epithets had as much effect as marshmallows thrown at a Russian tank. To whit, the Biden policies for Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, as well as the flight from Afghanistan, made the U.S. look weak and self-doubting. If the first half of Biden’s term had great achievements (and it surely did), the second lost its way in timidity, aided by a media that sided with Trump himself about Biden’s age. This allowed Trump’s own self-pitying rants to take center stage even more.
All of this seems comparatively true, and Democrats can be pummeled with still other facts and factors (too many Hollywood celebrities!). But can such things really explain the wholly unanticipated Great Red Shift of 2024 (red = Republican)? As one observer has rightly noted: “Mistakes were made in the Harris campaign because mistakes are always made in presidential campaigns.”
Shouldn’t a fair amount of agency be given to those who actually voted, and those who chose not to do so? As of November 22, after all, less than 64% of the eligible population voted. In no less than 13 states, turnout was under 60%, and while this included several with smaller populations, like Alaska and Hawaii, it was also true for Texas and New York, the second and fourth most populous. In key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, fewer Democrats came out than in 2020. At the same time, a fair portion of the Latino vote, as well as a larger portion of Asian voters than in 2020, went Republican.
Exit polls in 10 states reveal that the main issues for those who went for Trump were immigration (90%) and the economy (80%), exactly the ones he emphasized and lied about most. This was no less true for non-white voters, who were also concerned about the (wholly invented) surge in nationwide crime. It is revealing, however, that 80% of those polled who voted Republican also said they weren’t confident the election would be fair.
There seems little doubt that a very large number of voters simply drank the Kool-Aid that Trump was offering and then asked for more. Rant, cant, and delusion went down all too easily, with much help from media of disinformation. This includes X (formerly Twitter), that Elon Musk bought, renamed, and used to spread Trumpian lies to his 200+ million followers. It could be, therefore, that Trump’s victory needed no help from the Kremlin this time. As might be said, America now has more than enough “Russians” of its own, who helped “rig” the result.
In the end, a bleak view of the voting majority appears not only warranted but necessary. Those wanting to know how this happened will discover it has been long in the making. The period of pandemic, which pulled the veil off a widely shattered faith in institutions, knowledge, factuality, and democracy, seems yet to be grasped in its historical significance. Perhaps the greatest fault of the Democratic Party is that it has never allowed itself to realize the depths of madness and ferocity the other side has embraced.
In a historical perspective, it is not the Democrats but America itself who lost the election of 2024. And America’s loss is modern democracy’s loss. Trump’s win is a win not only for reactionary movements everywhere but for uncritical, thoughtless obedience. The world waits to see what this triumph of ignominy will yield.
Photo by Polina Zimmerman
