US President elect Donald Trump makes a speech during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, United States, on November 06, 2024. (Photo by Brendan Gutenschwager/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Donald Trump has won the Electoral College and he has also picked up votes in almost every state. Clearly, what Trump stands for, his dark worldview, his grievances with politics and society, are not aberrations. Not only has he been able to hold on to the people who voted for him in 2020, he has also made inroads into the Democratic Party’s support base.
A national poll by The New York Times/ Siena College conducted on the eve of the election showed that only 40% of voters approved of Joe Biden’s performance and a meagre 28% said the country was heading in the right direction. The Democratic Party should take heed of this loss and realise how badly it has become disconnected from the people. The lead-up to these elections indicated that the American people want change, therefore, it can’t be business as usual for the Democrats going forward.
With the Democrats unwilling to be clear and unequivocal about the issues that its base cares about, an extremist, right-wing populist has been allowed to fill that gap and be given free rein for four years. Trump’s brand of politics has found fertile ground in the US with the country tearing itself apart and being more divided than at any other time since the Civil War.
Trump and his Make America Great Again movement have unleashed a darkness that had laid dormant for a very long time in that country’s political consciousness. Across Europe and South America, right-wing populists have come to power, tapping into the same elements of intolerance, anti-migrant rhetoric, machismo and racism that Trump has espoused since he first ran for president in 2016.
The issues that have turned almost half of the US against the political system need to be dealt with in that country and around the world. Similar issues exist in most countries and this is leading to democracy being questioned and seen as unpalatable.
This is mostly due to political elites forgetting that they are in positions of authority and power to serve the people. Many political elites around the world behave as if the people who put them in their positions are a nuisance to be thrown bones and to be remembered only at election time.
The Democrats talk a high, intellectual game trying to appeal to people’s ideals and futures. Trump has been talking to the now, the issues that are making people feel that they are not heard, issues that talk to their livelihoods and the erosion of their standard of living and way of life.
This loss by Harris is not one that can be attributed to her gender. Rather it is a repudiation of a Democratic Party that has become more interested in big business and its Zionist donors than its base. This is a repudiation of a Democratic Party that wasted precious time during the election cycle trying to foist an unpopular, aged president on its supporters. This is a repudiation of a Democratic Party that unleashed violence on college campuses in an attempt to stifle protests on its support for a genocidal state. It is a repudiation of a Democratic Party that has become a war hawk instead of fighting for peace.
Young people, like my 17-year-old daughter, are worried about the world that we will bequeath to them. They are worried about the climate, about peace, about being able to exercise their reproductive rights and freedom of speech. If these young people are to participate in democracy, and the institutions that are supposed to make the world better, parties such as the Democratic Party need to wake up and realise that the people matter. Their concerns matter.
It is safe to assume that Africa will continue to be a footnote in the new Trump presidency and will once again be relegated to the bin of “shithole” nations. South Africa’s access to the African Growth and Opportunity Act is in question, although the issue that drew the ire of US congressmen was Pretoria’s non-aligned position on the Russia-Ukraine war, which Trump is not bound to have a problem with.
Trump does not care for multilateralism, alliances or about the US being seen as the greatest democracy in the world. Trump is transactional. He cares about power — having it, holding it and wielding it for his own ends. He cares about what he gets and if what he gets can be good for the US.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine is sure to lose in the new Trump administration as Trump’s worldview is that Zelenskiy is in the situation that he is in because he is weak and a loser.
Trump has an affinity for men like President Vladimir Putin of Russia; he previously declared that the war between Russia and Ukraine would not have broken out if he had been in the White House. It seems likely, therefore, that on this particular matter, Trump will be true to his word and end the war in Ukraine.
On the other hot spot in the world, the expanding war in Gaza, it is not clear that Trump will rein in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; it’s more likely he will continue giving Israel weapons and diplomatic licence to carry on bombing and killing people in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran.
The trade wars with China can be expected to resume, with Trump unlikely to want to find a middle ground on this issue. But, being a transactional person, he is likely to compromise if these wars have a detrimental effect on the US economy and, by extension, his support base of working-class, white men.
Let the people of the US have what they want. Sometimes it is only when we have lost what we had that we learn to appreciate it. The world is on a precipice with wars raging, tyranny on the rise, parochialism and intolerance unleashed. With the career civil servants that were around Trump in his first time in office gone, the need to behave in order to win a re-election a non-issue, and the Republicans in control of Congress, there are very few guardrails in place to prevent Trump from doing exactly what he has been saying he wants to do.
Let Trump help the US reach rock bottom and destroy the institutions that have made the US what it has been for the last 250 years. Let the insidious infection that is everything that Trump stands for be given free rein, then perhaps the disease will run its course and the cloud will lift.
Nontobeko Hlela is a research fellow with the Institute for Pan African Thought & Conversation in Johannesburg.