Trump, Harris, Biden and America

Trump wins it - who's to blame?

Back in July, I wrote that “no one in America could beat Trump.” 

But when Kamala Harris came onto the scene, my optimism got the better of me. She was a solid media performer, seemed capable of energising her base, and made for a crystal clear contrast with Trump. 

Over the course of the campaign, momentum seemed to rock between the two. For much of the campaign, Trump seemed lacklustre and like he was losing interest: but the assassination attempt against him seemed to give him back some oomph and earned him a chunky dose of public love. 

In the end, it wasn’t even close. There were seven swing states that were set to determine the result of the election: Trump looks set to win them all. 

And despite her campaign focusing so heavily on women’s rights, Harris lost ground with women voters in America. 

The trouble with Trump

I recently read Boris Johnson’s memoir. The funny thing about Boris is that, on policy, he’s more liberal and probably a bit more lefty than the rest of his party. He loves the environment, he loves spending lots of money: he’s even been historically ahead of the game on equal rights. The trouble with Boris is his character. He was unfit to be Prime Minister because he is impulsive, obsessed with loyalty, a wind-up merchant, lacks focus and has an absolute inability to take responsibility. 

It is very much the same with Trump. It’s less about his policies, and more about him. He’s a serial abuser, a serial liar, his entire strategy is one of division. He spent the pandemic playing down the danger of COVID-19 and, most bizarrely, playing down the danger of injecting bleach. 

That’s not to say that his policies are exactly brilliant. He’ll be a disaster for progress on net-zero, he’ll probably hang Ukraine out to dry, and his tariff policies will be a nightmare for just about everyone. Elon Musk has been posturing that he can find $2 trillion in government savings: but that ignores the fact that running the government is not quite the same as running the 15th biggest social network. 

The trouble with Kamala

So if Trump is so bad, how on earth did Kamala lose? 

While she has many strengths, it’s worth saying that her main strength was that she wasn’t Trump. I’m not sure I could name a single landmark Kamala policy, and I follow politics. She tried to fight the election on abortion and women’s rights, but didn’t seem to have the conviction to go all in on it. 

(Just to briefly come back to Boris, one thing he did do well was win elections. And if 2019 taught us anything, it’s that you can turn an election into a one-issue vote. He made it all about Brexit, and he won. Kamala might’ve had better luck if she made this election a referendum on abortion rights, but her attempt was half-hearted).

The Democrats got complacent with their demographics. One in five Black men in America voted for Trump, and the Democrats left it far too late to begin courting their vote. They deployed Obama in a last-ditch attempt to win back African-Americans, but it’s proof that they took their base for granted. They depended heavily on young voters, but young voters are fiddly and unreliable. 

Kamala Harris deserved to win. She had the right qualities of a President, she could’ve made a decent go of bringing the country back together after years of intense - and increasingly dangerous - division. But she struggled to stand for anything aside from not being Trump. 

But there was one even bigger factor that held her party back. 

The trouble with Biden

Biden remains the biggest bungle of the election. It was so obvious, from months into his term, that he was too senile to be the President. He should never, ever have considered running for a second term. 

Frankly, I think it was borne of either complete cognitive decline, or narcissism. He either failed to see that he was completely incapable of the job, or narcissistically convinced himself he was capable, or didn’t care either way and wanted to remain in the job. 

Biden stepped down far too late. His debate performance did untold damage to the Democrats, who now seemed to have initiated a cover-up against the American people as to their president’s state. Despite it being inevitable he would not win, and should not run, against Trump - he gave his replacement just 107 days to make a move.

Having dedicated a career to politics and being a man that, in general, seems to care about the American people, Biden will likely be remembered for the selfishness of that final decision to try to cling on - a decision that in all likelihood handed Trump the keys to the White House.

The trouble with America

I suspect America will survive a second Trump term and it should be his last. 

But centrists and liberals need to learn from his victory. Sensible moderates cannot take any demographic for granted, they must put forward a positive policy position, and they must find the right people to take on the hard-right. 

It’s also important to acknowledge that the obsession with wokeness in some American left-wing circles is damaging the liberal brand. When there is unfairness and injustices in society, it is right for the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction. But it is now time for the pendulum to settle. 

Some of the wokeness is outright dangerous: like the rampant anti-semitism and bold-faced support for Hamas we see in some sections of the left; or the insistence that very young children should be entitled to life-changing puberty blockers; or support for affirmative action schemes that pit racial groups against one another; or banning and rewriting old books for modern sensitivities. 

This stuff is divisive, dangerous and wrong, and the centre-left needs to be braver in disavowing it. It’s turning the average American sharply against the Democrats. 

When there is so much work to do in creating an equal society, protecting the most vulnerable citizens and making America a safer, kinder, fairer place to live - America desperately needs a capable, sensible President. It won’t have one for the next four years, but there’s hope yet that one will emerge.