Disclaimer: Politics is a universally sensitive and potentially incendiary subject, and one that is almost impossible to write about completely objectively. That said, my blog posts will never endorse or criticise a particular political party or ideology, but rather will offer an opinion (and hopefully a little insight) into the themes and stories that have personally resonated with me. I will try to be as neutral and as scholastic as I can in my analysis and encourage anyone who reads the following to absorb and react to it in a similar spirit.
So, Donald Trump has done it again. It has been hailed as the ‘most dramatic comeback in political history’, as four years after losing the office to Joe Biden and subsequently inciting an attack on the US Capitol, and astonishingly only six months after being found guilty on multiple counts of falsifying business records, the American people have voted to re-install Trump as their leader. Throw in a couple of assassination attempts and a few further unresolved criminal cases and, like it or not, there is no denying his is a political story that will be studied in history classrooms for years to come.
However, whilst this may be a remarkable moment, it should not be a wholly unexpected one. Unlike in 2016, when Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton shocked the world, his opposition and, according to some analysts, even himself, everyone should really have seen his second election win coming. The fact that the Democrats, and from what I’ve read the majority of the British media, seme to have underestimated Trump again speaks volumes of the systemic and seemingly terminal failings occurring on the left side of the global political spectrum.
Firstly though, a word on the election itself. Now, I am not American, and therefore wholly unqualified to dissect the intricacies of their electoral system, and it’s important to state that I am dead set against the UK system as well, so this is absolutely not a case of us ‘doing it better.’ However, having properly familiarised myself with the electoral college for the very first time with this election, I can only say that it is an objectively terrible mechanism for enabling and celebrating democracy. The fact that an entire country of 335 million people are now solely governed by a singular candidate that only just over a half of them voted for seems a ludicrous concept (and I would be saying the same if Harris had won too).
Worst still is that whole, country-sized states are reduced to great big slabs of red or blue, completely ignoring and negating the diversity and disparity in voting that occurs within their multiple respective areas. It’s a tough concept to explain, so let me give you an extreme example to illustrate the ridiculousness of it: If you were a resident of Hancock in Georgia in this latest election and you voted Democrat, your vote contributed to a comfortable 68% majority for Kamala Harris in your local area (or constituency to use the UK term). However, when accumulating the votes across the entire state, Trump edged the overall majority by the barest of bare margins (50.7%) and that meant that all Georgia’s electoral votes (irrelevant of how voting went in those individual areas) automatically turned red.
How can eleven million people, who all live under vastly different circumstances and with vastly different needs and priorities, be compressed and reduced into effectively having just one vote for one person? And at least Georgia is considered a swing state, which means that their allegiance could at least feasibly switch from one election to the next, unlike the vast majority who traditionally have voted the same way every single time. I repeat, it’s not my country and it’s not really my business, but from an outsider looking in, it seems to be a system where not every vote holds the same value, and is therefore fundamentally flawed.
Regardless, that is by no means an appeal against Trump’s victory. The American people have spoken, and those who don’t like the result still have to respect it. Failure to do so would make them no better than the horned-headdress-wearing loonies from the Capitol riots of 2020. And this victory for the Republicans is no fluke. They had a clearer message on the issues that people most cared about, they targeted the right key demographics, and consequently they once again highlighted the glaring deficiencies that exist within their left-leaning opposition.
America is probably the defining example of the success of a resurgent wave of Conservative populism in the last decade, but it is by no means the only one. Italy, Finland, Hungary and Czechia have recently elected right-wing governments in Europe, while South America is dominated by the right, and even in the UK parties like Reform are gaining in popularity and influence. And whilst this is for a multitude of reasons that are too nuanced for me to attempt to unravel here, one of the most important factors has been the lack of a credible left-wing alternative.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. The UK have only just elected a Labour government back into power for the first time in fourteen years, but they were elected very much on the basis of getting the Tories out of power at any cost, rather than the strength of their own manifesto. Similarly, when Joe Biden was elected in America in 2020, his biggest strength was simply in not being Trump, and the fact the man he replaced has now been reinstated at the first time of asking speaks volumes about how his term in office was received. Simply put, the left does still win, but when it does it is by default, not by design.
So, where are the left going wrong? The US exit poll sheds some light on this, as its analysis of how different demographics voted tells us that the groups who most strongly voted in favour of Trump were male (54%), 45-64 year olds (53%) and with no college degree (54%). Adding in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Trump supporters are white (though he did make important gains in other ethnic groups) and that gives us the kind of picture that you would imagine when describing your stereotypical Trump fanatic. And this is the group that he has mobilised to such success in recent years, a group that perhaps typically would either have voted Democrat back in the heavily Union-influenced days, or simply not voted at all.
And whatever assumptions you may make or aspersions you may cast about this particular demographic, the fact is that they are making their voices heard politically in a very significant way. And that is precisely because right-wing populists like Trump have indirectly given them a voice. His anti-establishment, anti-immigration, ‘America First’ rhetoric is exactly the messaging that connects with this previously disaffected group. And it’s a group that the left have repeatedly failed to engage with.
Perception is everything in modern politics. And however noble the intentions are or no matter what policies they champion, the left has an image problem. It has become intrinsically associated with two things: ‘The Establishment’ and ‘Wokeness’, and the combination of both is proving to be fatal to its chances of electoral success. Firstly, the rise in conspiracy theories and the general distrust of government has led to many dismissing the more liberal parties as the political ‘norm’ and has therefore given birth to the rise in popularity of deliberate ‘disruptors’ like Trump and Nigel Farage in recent years.
And secondly, the emergence of woke culture (which we shouldn’t forget actually started out as people quite rightly challenging systemic injustices and incidences of mass misconduct) has led to a reactionary counter-movement which now renders anything considered ‘too liberal’ a tainted and provocative argument. It has also come to be associated with a kind of weakness, which is a disastrous connotation for aspiring politicians and governments. I’m not suggesting for a second that any of these labels are fair reflections- in fact they’re almost certainly not- but equally the left hasn’t done enough to distance itself from them either.
Kamala Harris’s campaign has been criticised for being too ‘big picture.’ And it is systematic of the way that left-leaning parties have approached elections in recent years. It’s all very well talking about global conflicts or climate change, but your average working citizen will find it hard to relate to those issues in their everyday life. I can admit to personably being in that group; whilst I am of course interested and troubled by the atrocities in Gaza or the climate crisis, honestly neither keeps me awake at night. They’re just too distant to cause me immediate stress. Not knowing I could afford to eat the next day very much would keep me up however. And that’s ultimately what the issue will always come down to: translating complex economic policies so that people understand how it personally affects them. And the left, across the globe, are consistently doing this badly.
And so, my closing thought is this: There will inevitably be mass hysteria and disgust at the prospect of a second Trump presidency, and all the rambling speeches, controversy and, at its worst, dangerous divisiveness that will come with it. He will continue to be a figure of ridicule and hatred, and yet, the Democrats in America, and by extension the entirety of the political left across the world, should really be asking themselves this question instead: If that’s the guy they’re voting for, what the hell does that say about us?
George F Brown 