Straight Talk: How Trump Pulled Off Historic Comeback, Reshaped US Politics – News18

Last Updated:November 13, 2024, 06:00 IST

Donald Trump has survived political vendetta, assassination attempts, a hostile mainstream media and a lot more

Donald Trump is back, and how. In what will go down as the greatest political comeback in American history, Trump has become only the second President after Grover Cleveland to clinch two non-consecutive presidential terms. Trump did not have it easy.

In 2020, he left Washington as a disgraced politician in the eyes of the American mainstream media and the Left-Liberal apparatus. The 45th President made his peace with the fact that politics was over for him. He went into retirement at his luxurious estate – Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Then, in what will now be remembered as an act of extreme political myopia, the Democrats chose to drag Trump to the courts for a variety of cases. The full might of the Department of Justice was unleashed on Trump.

If there is one thing Trump craves, it is a good fight. The man has survived political vendetta, assassination attempts, a hostile mainstream media and a lot more. The net result of it all, you may ask?

He has now been elected by the people of America as their 47th president, in a staggering mandate which gave Republicans trifecta control over the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Add to that, Trump has won the popular vote – a first for a Republican candidate since 2004. With a 6-3 conservative-leaning Supreme Court, team Trump will exercise full and complete control over Washington. Trump’s second term in office, therefore, will be dramatically different from his first. He will now be armed with a staggering mandate to fulfil his agenda – which is just as dramatic as him.

THE DEMOGRAPHICS SPEAK: WHY 2024 IS A WATERSHED YEAR FOR AMERICA

The Democratic party has long prided itself for being the party of the American “working class”. What this year’s election has revealed though is that the working class has pretty much abandoned the Democrats. Having sided with Trump and the Republican party instead, a majority of Americans have sent a resounding message of disapproval to the Democrats.

This becomes evident from the fact that it is not the Democrats, but the Republicans who have emerged as the working class’s choice. A majority of white voters cast their ballot for Trump, unchanged from the 2020 election that he narrowly lost. Essentially, Trump held on to the support he had amassed in 2016, which continued well into 2020. However, conventional political wisdom would suggest that eight years later, in 2024, Trump would have a much more difficult task of convincing his core voters to stick around. As it turns out, not only did he maintain his hold over traditional voters, but also got a big chunk of the Latino and minority votes.

Besides, Trump gave the Democrats a run for their money even in what are considered “liberal” urban centres. Take for instance New York City, where his roughly 30% vote share topped every Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan, 40 years ago.

Trump nearly doubled his vote share among young Black men. About 3 in 10 Black men under the age of 45 went for Trump, roughly double the number he got in 2020. A majority of Latino men – about 55% – voted for Donald Trump. In 2020, Trump won men by about 49%, but in 2024, his support from men grew to 55%. Even among women, despite all the clamour around abortion rights and the Democrats having a woman on the ticket, Trump increased his support from 43% in 2020 to over 45% now.

What this suggests is a tectonic shift in American politics. If Trump is the man the working class now trusts, that represents nothing short of an existential crisis for the Democrats – who have spent a bulk of the last eight years convincing voters how Trump is an anti-democratic, fascist and racist megalomaniac. As is evident, ordinary Americans were simply not convinced of any of these labels being assigned to him.

WHAT THE DEMOCRATS MISSED: REAL ISSUES, CORRECT MESSAGING AND A MASSIVE RED WAVE

In 2022, when the US midterm polls were held, it was widely believed that a red wave would sweep through the Congress. That proved to be a dud. In fact, Joe Biden based his decision of running for White House again on the Democratic party’s strong performance during the midterms, despite promising only two years ago that he would be a “transitional” and “stopgap” president.

The unexpected overperformance of Democrats during the midterms was all that it took for the party to start believing their own lies on the economy, immigration and several other bread-and-butter issues that have been piling upon ordinary Americans for four years now. Democrats, deluded by their performance in 2022, went up against Trump thinking of him as a clown who Americans would never vote back into the White House.

However, Trump did exactly what Americans wanted him to do — speak about the real issues, and speak without any filters. Americans wanted the unvarnished truth, and Trump gave it to them. He successfully projected himself as a “fix” to all their problems – ranging from inflation and price rises to the influx of millions of illegal immigrants to the country. While Democrats were tying themselves in knots and becoming increasingly alien to ordinary Americans over the language they used and the condescension that came riddled with it, Trump spoke what came to his mind.

Mainstream media in the US is not willing to admit this, but Trump’s promise of dismantling the deep state, weeding out compromised bureaucrats and reining in the ‘woke’ agenda struck a chord with Americans who still believe in common sense rather than radical ideas propounded by the Left. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Trump campaign’s most successful advertisement this time was one which said: “Kamala is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you.”

The impact of Trump’s victory will be far-reaching and very difficult for the Democrats to overcome as a new era of personality politics is heralded across the country. Democrats must also reckon with the reality that Americans do not seem to share their apprehensions of Trump, and have grown rather fond of him since 2016. Essentially, that means Democrats have to completely reimagine the way they oppose and fight Trump, because what has been done so far by them to rein in Trump has only been perceived by Americans as political vendetta.