Practically a month has passed by, and many individuals are nonetheless beside themselves to know how Donald Trump was elected president once more.
A good friend in England expresses “utter incredulity … bewilderment” that 77 million folks voted for him.
This torments the Democratic Get together. How did it occur? There’s a lengthy litany of “what ifs?” over which to agonize within the lengthy winter of their despair.
If solely Joe Biden hadn’t run. If solely he’d stop sooner. If solely there hadn’t been COVID-19 and inflation.
If solely Kamala Harris had chosen Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her operating mate. If solely she had taken correct alarm at Trump’s TV adverts. If solely she by no means stated on The View that she wouldn’t have carried out something in a different way than Biden.
A triumph of selling
All of it misses the purpose.
The underlying motive Trump received is that U.S. presidential elections have grow to be the apotheosis of mass advertising and marketing, and his aspect was merely higher at it.
He offered sufficient voters on the concept he cares extra about them than Democrats do. That was the theme of the highly effective transphobic advert that stated “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Even when Harris had marketed herself significantly better, she had too little time to do it.
Trump reduce so deeply into the important Democratic constituencies of Black, Hispanic, Asian American and younger voters that some say the get together has no future. That isn’t true, however Democrats desperately want a reset.
Trump didn’t do it alone. He had large assistance on social media from propaganda bots and from his immigrant insider, Elon Musk, whose false or deceptive claims have been seen an estimated 2 billion occasions.
A Billionaires’ Row
It’s a ghastly joke on the American folks that somebody who promised to “rescue the center class” is already outsourcing his administration, and particularly the financial system, to a brand new Billionaires’ Row. These he has already anointed are value a minimum of a collective $344 billion, in keeping with U.S. Information & World Report.
Trump’s recognized billionaires are Scott Bessent on the Treasury Division, Howard Lutnick at Commerce, Linda McMahon at Schooling, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum at Inside. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are in command of “effectivity.” A few of the wealthiest folks on this planet can be coming after your Social Safety.
The nice irony is that Trump capitalized on a notion that the Democrats are the get together of “elites.”
Democrats do, in actual fact, have extra attraction to varsity graduates and are recognized with minorities whom Republicans cynically goal. Democrats additionally let themselves be saddled with the insurance policies of globalization which have hollowed out U.S. factories, though each events supported it in equal measure.
And Biden’s insistence on debt forgiveness for scholar loans gave the GOP a goal of alternative as a result of the vast majority of Individuals by no means attended faculty.
But it’s financial elites, these whom the Republicans finest symbolize, who’re liable for the tax insurance policies behind the decline of the center class and a lot wealth amongst so few. Fewer than 800 folks in America now management extra wealth than the much less affluent 50%.
Deeper and deeper divisions
The election revealed a head-spinning paradox. Voters selected the candidate — and get together — much less fascinated with unshackling the financial system from the tyranny of some.
Trump will not be the primary populist to revenue from bigotry. The Know-Nothing motion of the 1840s and the brazenly racist post-World Struggle I quotas demonized immigrants. Southern populism, personified by George Wallace, brazenly focused Blacks within the Nineteen Sixties. Right now’s Republicans merely do it extra shrewdly, by their denunciation of variety, fairness and inclusion.
However one needn’t be a bigot to resent the open disregard for our immigration legal guidelines or to bemoan the numerous misplaced manufacturing facility jobs.
4 years in the past, when Trump was nonetheless president and COVID-19 was nonetheless an emergency, a Republican luminary, Condoleezza Rice, the previous secretary of state, sounded a warning that Democrats appeared to overlook.
The pandemic, she stated, “has tended to bolster, possibly even exacerbate, among the tendencies towards isolationism … The underlying development towards nativism, care for my very own, appears to be stronger than at different time in my reminiscence.”
And COVID-19 “has uncovered inequalities in ways in which I’m unsure we even understood how a lot they existed,” she stated.
In that interview, posted by the George W. Bush Presidential Middle, she expressed concern that our nation of immigrants was dividing itself “into ever smaller teams, every with its personal narrative, every with its personal grievance, every with its personal historical past … What has been sacrificed is the sense of a standard narrative that was not based mostly on our tribe, our ethnicity, our nationality.”
Trump has adroitly exploited that.
“We forgot that whereas globalization has super macro advantages, it left lots of people behind,” Rice stated. “They’re determined and really feel disrespected. It’s not stunning, then, {that a} populist can come alongside and say, ‘These folks by no means had your curiosity at coronary heart.’ They usually imagine it.”
Rice was explaining how Trump received in 2016, however might simply as simply have been explaining how he would win once more.
The Solar Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. To contact us, e mail at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
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