Stuttering. That’s what’s occurring right now on several American and international news networks, stumbling through speculation about Trump’s shocking return victory in the 2024 US presidential election. It is a jolt to the system for political hustlers, pollsters, the national US media, Washington insiders and closeted election junkies (yours truly raising my hand).
Not only did Trump win, but (as at the time of writing from an unhappy table of Americans in Kampala on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 6th) he seems to have won it outright by the popular vote, and by a decent margin too. This would make him the first Republican presidential candidate to have won the presidential election by carrying the popular vote as well as the electoral college vote since George W. Bush in 2004.
Not only this, but popular Democratic Senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Tammy Baldwin of my home state of Wisconsin look to be officially ousted within a matter of hours. The live stream of the Harris campaign party looks like a gloomier version of the 2016 Clinton party – not as much shock on the faces, just the cold dread of hardened cynics accepting that their worst instincts were right all along.
So what could have happened across the US? What could have spurred such a resurgence of right-wing upheaval and raised the devil Americans knew back from the political depths he was cast into four years ago?
Well, for starters, the man has a solid base. Those 35 per cent or so are dead set with him. They’re old, they trend white, they vote as a block. For his victory in 2016, it was a matter of convincing 12 per cent of American voters to back him (in the targeted electoral states to deliver victory); this time those closeted voters were much more loud and proud about casting their ballots.
For his infinite faults and incalculable political failings, Trump must be acknowledged as an incredibly savvy political opportunist. His marketing sought to capitalise on well-known tropes of fear, of economic despair, of immigrants climbing over fences and knocking at your door, of the “far-left maniacs” pushing through programmes to fund the dreams of transsexual prostitutes who want to be astronauts (or whatever right-wing false narrative tested the best among dull-eyed evangelical voters in Iowa). Truth is an irrelevance to Republican political possibility.
Trump has his strategy and it is effective – deny everything. He looks like a Teflon Mayweather, slipping off the punches. If everything misses, nothing sticks; create daily controversy, the left will surely get outraged and take the bait.
If you’re Trump, you can control the narrative around yourself by spiralling downwards, not attempting to clamber out. If there’s no bottom to hit, you’re never slamming the earth. For the Trump camp, he floated on, pushing money into socials, peddling false narratives, leaning into economic and fear-based messaging, not even bothering to turn out his base – for why bother?
If you’re a political celebrity akin to a Taylor Swift level of pop star, all you have to do is announce the shows and the diehard fanboys will always ensure you sell out. On top of this, the political pendulum of those “just wanting change” always sways to the one on the outside looking in, even if it’s a former president. Also, if you already have an “us against them” message and are shot in the ear on national television by a would-be assassin, it might help to strengthen that message.
There are two ugly truths to be faced. First, the cost of living crisis hasn’t just badly hit Kenyan supermarket shelves. In the US, the public have been feeling corporate price gouging post-COVID-19 for the entirety of the Biden administration. Prices are up and the people that are feeling it the most are the young, the unemployed, the minorities within America. It’s a reality that won’t be talked about on mainstream media but the reality remains – you’ll spend US$15.50 (KSh2000) on three basic items in a grocery store in the US.
Next, the darker truth. The public is gullible and quick to forget; they forget the weird darkness and anger of a mere four years ago incredibly quickly, and there are so, so many people who cling to their perpetual faith in strongman leaders. It is why Ruto still has strident defenders in Kenya, and why, after 38 years, Museveni still has core supporters across the economic spectrum in Uganda. There will always be voters who vote for the candidates’ interests, not their own. Why this is, I’ve never entirely been able to gauge, but there has been a marked knowledge gap within American politics for decades: we think we’re immune from such desperately obvious hucksters, but we’re not exceptional despite our jingoism. Americans are just as susceptible to duping as anyone in the world, and with a horrific diet of fear media, constant fear and terribly processed food that dulls the senses, we might be more prone to fall prey to Trump-like figures. He’s just the first to exploit it deftly.
As with all elections in democratic races, it takes two to tango. So, from the side of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, what the hell happened? If Hilary Clinton’s campaign miscalculated, the Harris campaign did the math in feet instead of meters, resulting in an absolute head-on crash.
First and foremost, the Democratic party. The most blame for whatever Democratic failings will come to light in the coming weeks should be placed squarely at the feet of the powers that be within the Democratic National Committee. Anyone still there in a managerial position deserves to be unceremoniously sacked for their handling of the entire electoral process for the entirety of 2024.
There first came the rumours circling around Biden, followed by a horrific debate performance and a nixing of the primary process of the Democratic party. After much delay, so, so much delay, Biden was dumped in July in favour of Vice President Kamala Harris, with approximately 100 days left to organise a campaign, shift messaging and find a stable base to build upon.
What looked like a wave of enthusiasm after Biden bowed out now looks more like some of the base breathing a sigh of relief that the candidate could maintain coherence for more than a sentence. The campaign made bizarre missteps, unforced Clintonesque errors (one of which was not embracing the Clintons much at all), and more recently, putting Jennifer Lopez on stage with Kamala Harris despite the ugly allegations about her association with Diddy.
As a US citizen who’s a Democrat and a bleeding heart liberal, I can go ahead and say it: there has been a culture of excuse-making within my party for decades now. In 2000, we blamed the independent Nader supporters who didn’t vote for Al Gore for the Republican presidential victory in Florida. (We also blamed ballots in the same state for confusing old voters.) In 2004, we blamed misplaced media coverage about Democratic candidate John Kerry’s military history as the propellant that sent W. Bush back into the White House. In 2020, we blamed Russian interference, social media, racism, misinformation, third-party candidates and questionable voting machines (my list of scapegoats is exhausted but I’m sure there are additional ones to be found within Democratic cohorts to excuse Trump’s victory).
What we didn’t do in any of those elections was to look inwards, to correct our mistakes and make them strengths. Now the Trump victory is undeniable, and we as Democrats must look inwards to recognise the sum of our party’s failures but we probably won’t. In four years, assuming Trump isn’t able to change the US Constitution and run again for president, the Democrats will most certainly trot out a party-selected tepidly popular candidate (probably a man this time, however). He will probably have been around for years, say the right things and be somewhat devoid of personality and atrocious in interviews.
He’ll tick a lot of boxes, will speak extensively about his identity growing up in battleground state X and will low-key give a lot of young voters the “ick”. His positions on the Gazan genocide and continued global warming will be unclear but non-controversial to the “traditional Republican voter” that Democrats continually try to woo. He will have a speaking tour with Liz Cheney and will most certainly pick a “woman of colour” as his running mate to bolster the vote, whether or not she’s from a safe Democratic state like California and whether or not voters actually can rally behind her.
There will be stumbling interviews and moments of realisation that all might not be well. The campaign will tread water, unable to capitalise on the momentum it claimed to have gained. On 7 November 2028, it will be way closer a campaign than it should be. The lesson for the Democratic party is one that Raila never learned, that the opponent will play as dirty as possible, and to win you might need to dirty your own tactics more.
I can say this confidently because that has been our recent history; there is a precedent of underachievement here from my own party. Now that the failure lies at our own feet, it’ll be intriguing to see who gets the lion’s share of the blame. My early guess is the voting block of “white women” who on stations like MSNBC are already being blamed for “not showing up enough” despite voting for Harris 55-44 per cent.
Upon waking up in a desperate cold sweat at 3 a.m. to the sound of thunder in Kampala, a bad feeling encroached when the early results from New Jersey showed Harris winning by 51-46 per cent among tallied votes. For context, Biden won by 57.3-41.3 per cent merely four years ago, so where did the other 6 per cent get shaved off from in the meantime?
Such is the pattern playing out across the United States right now. In states where Harris has claimed victory, she has done so by a smaller margin, and with what as of November 6th looks to be a significantly lower turn out than Biden managed in the 2020 election.
In the coming 12 weeks or so, there will be a scrambling by the Biden administration to stop the incoming madness, to put a finger in the dam and help delay the wave of weirdness from fully crashing down upon the world until the Democrats have a shot at regaining seats in the US Congress and Senate during the midterm elections of 2026.
For a man with a singular focus on what looks to be strangling the American public into some sort of autocratic rule with a capitalism chaser, there’s no time to waste for Trump. Gaza will suffer with immediacy, the global sphere of aid will crumble within days of his getting into office and slashing funding. Immigration will suffer horrifically, and loving married couples like my American friend and his Ugandan wife (also my friend) will be left scrambling to do newly imposed paperwork and jump through hoops of stupidity. There are real world consequences to this man; he is far from being a paper tiger and it’s a shame he gets another shot in power to shape his global view.
For the Democrats, the old adage remains true: when voters show up, the results swing blue (Democratic). The problem with that is, how do you get voters to turn out? As my home state of Wisconsin goes for Trump and pushes him over the electoral line to victory, there’s a need to address that key question. In the coming weeks, there will near-certainly be reports of a lack of outreach to the substantial Muslim community in Michigan (who are outraged at the Israeli actions in Gaza over the last 13 months), or that Harris didn’t visit certain states enough, didn’t outline exact policy messages, or, most glaringly, focused too much on Trump and not enough on herself. What a shame that catch-up is the only political game US Democrats have mastered.