He's back. (Credit: by Jim Watson / AFP)
“He watched the play with great intensity,” wrote Cormac McCarthy in All the Pretty Horses. “He’d the notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all.”
This captures so much of today’s strangeness. A great jolting reality check has once again been delivered to all those who convinced themselves that something else was in store because their gut — or their centrist prophets — had told them so.
Many of us have spent the past few months watching the great American drama play out on our screens, wondering what it was that we were missing in this supposedly transformative figure of Kamala Harris, destined to prosecute Donald Trump out of history — even potentially with a “blowout” victory for the ages.
Harris was deeply impressive, we were told. She spoke to the soccer moms of America. The suburbs were rallying behind her. Her choice of Tim Walz was inspired. She was brat. The Republicans were weird. Nancy Pelosi was a genius for getting rid of Joe Biden. Biden was a giant who had saved American democracy. Abortion was the issue which would crush Trump. And yet, here we are. Fox has called the election. Donald Trump will be president again — only this time with a new electoral coalition behind him that has the potential to transform American politics not just for a term, but for a generation.
And here’s where I depart from McCarthy. While there certainly seems to have been very little to the story of Kamala Harris, the climax of the Trump show does tell us something about what the world is becoming.
This is not 2016, it is something more seismic. That first Trump election was but a tremor it seems, the disaffected white working class merely the first group to break from the old order before the stampede to come. This time, Latinos, African Americans and the young appear to have followed suit, with as many as one in three minority voters backing Trump. For so long we have been told that demography is destiny and that the Democratic Party was en route to an unbeatable rainbow coalition, as if the policies they were offering did not matter. That narrative should now be put out of its misery, Canadian style.
Harris was a poor candidate with almost no discernable message, parachuted in to save an unpopular administration on the unbelievable basis that she did not offer continuity but, apparently, change. It was a fundamentally bogus offer.
“The climax of the Trump show does tell us something about what the world is becoming.”
It seems remarkable to say it, but Trump was the substantive candidate in this election offering a critique of the incumbent’s record. What was the Harris message of this election? What was the substance of her trade, immigration or foreign policy? What was it that she offered other than the fact she was not Donald Trump? She was an actor, a cypher. By the end, her offer amounted to a single issue: abortion. It wasn’t enough.
For much of the past decade, Trump stalked his former party with messages about the border, trade and “woke”. The Democrats knew the threat and nominated Joe Biden as a holding figure in 2020 who would see off Trump before passing on the baton to the next generation. And then, it turned out, there was not a new Biden able to assemble the old Democratic coalition. Now an entirely new one needs to be assembled.
Trump is currently on course not just to win the electoral college (a plus 95% chance according to The New York Times) but the popular vote itself, a scenario deemed implausible only yesterday. It looks like he will sweep all the battleground states and more besides. Though this is no Reagan landslide, Trump is making inroads far beyond his 2016 base. He is winning in the New York suburbs and among conservative immigrants.
Ultimately, Joe Biden was right that his vice president was a weaker candidate than he had been and Obama was before him. Harris was weaker than Hillary Clinton, too. The Democratic Party’s presidential nominees are getting progressively worse. Some Democratic analysts were arguing overnight that Harrris had been denied the time to introduce herself to the American public. But this only reveals the depth of their denial. Biden was no longer fit for the presidency and would surely have lost by an even greater margin, yes. But Harris was only as plausible as she was because she was parachuted in at the last moment. It is surely the case that the emptiness of the drama she offered could only be sustained for the mini-series we got.
Trump on the other hand seems to have improved as a candidate. He has honed his message without abandoning its essential themes. He was no longer promising to ban all Muslims arriving in the US or promising to get Mexico to pay for a border wall. Yet everyone knew that voting Trump meant tighter immigration restrictions, protectionism, anti-wokery and opposition to foreign entanglements: a potent combination in any democracy. It may not be true, but that was the message.
This is important because America means something in the world beyond its borders — and not just because of its power. It acts as a great distorting mirror, offering an image of humanity that can appear grotesque in its violence and inequality and churning, revolutionary individualism. But like any good caricature, it captures something about humanity in its endless, anarchic strife. Trump horrifies many outside the United States, but like Tony Soprano or Walter White, all the more so because they see something in him that they recognise. He is a portent. Harris is little more than her caricature on SNL.
For years, it has been the European Left which has been taking its politics from America, adopting the manners and assumptions of the imperial hegemon, seeking its respect. Now, surely, it will be the Right which is empowered, much as happened in the Eighties. The European Union is already following Trump’s protectionism and immigration instincts. With Giorgia Meloni in power in Italy and Kemi Badenoch stalking Keir Starmer in Britain, expect a coalescing of Western conservatism.
What now for the homeless centrists? What of the podcast kings for the liberal left-behinds who were predicting a Harris sweep — or even for the polling chiefs running 80,000 simulations showing Harris marginally winning in some implausibly precise number? My prediction: they will remain and they will continue to herd.
Even before the results started coming in, Nate Silver was accusing pollsters of “backfitting their data to match the polling averages, regardless of what the survey actually said”. And yet, this is what we all pored over before the election, instead of concentrating on the policies of each candidate and how they will affect the lives of those inside and outside the United States. For the false prophets, there is, of course, the consolation of decline, the idea of history still moving in an ordered direction — with them being on the right side, of course.
For the next four years, though, the great American drama is back with a dark new series. A new story is unfolding. We are back in Trump’s world and we don’t yet know what he is going to do with it.
Main Edition
US
FR
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI have difficulty saying I am happy Trump won, I have mixed feelings about it.
But I am happy that Kamala and the Dems lost. She was “competent” and “impressive” in the same way that I am going to fly off today to live happily ever after on Pluto. A more inane, incompetent and inept candidate I never did see.
It would have an a tragedy of epic proportions for her to be the first female POTUS and a setback for women, as she was grist to the mill of all those who say women can’t lead. So bye-bye Kamala, we are happy to be unburdened by what has been with your useless contributions to the world.
Now, Tulsi Gabbard…that’s a woman who’s capable of it! Smart, articulate, courageous, tough, relatable – I think she’s amazing. I think she is going to have a stellar career.
The Dems need to be put through the wash. I won’t go into the reasons why I think this, I think we all know them. Whether they’ll be smart enough to finally go through the phase of introspection they should have begun in 2016 when Trump won the first time remains to be seen. The signs are, they’re reaching for the same old responses and the same old tired insults. Well that’s their problem – if you don’t want to understand something, you won’t.
[Random bit of US political trivia for y’all, seeing as I’ve been inhaling American history this year: Trump is only the 2nd POTUS in history to serve non-consecutive terms. The 1st to do so was Grover Cleveland. If you win a pub quiz with that, you owe me one, OK?]
Superb Katharine.
The article itself is also a fine analysis by the best political journalist in the UK, or perhaps anywhere.
I agree with all of your comments (as usual). The main reason that I’m comfortable with the result is because – like Brexit – it will “p*ss off “all of the right people :).
Spot on. I’ve just been watching a CNN segment in which some bloke was going on about “it’s all down to sexism and racism.”
They are just never going to get it that people are worried about real problems not invented ones
I don’t owe you one — I knew that Grover Cleveland was, until now, the only president elected to non-consecutive terms. Did you also know that he won his first term after surviving a scandal that many thought had killed his chances? That gave rise to the fun chant, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” during the race, and after his election to the rejoinder, “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.”
Grover Cleveland entered the White House as a bachelor who had (though he denied it) fathered a child out of wedlock, and his former lover entered an asylum. As president he married at age 49 a 21-year-old woman who was his ward, being the only president to get married while president. His personal life may seem a little rascally, but he was actually known for honesty and integrity during a period of political corruption.
Here’s a harder trivia question than yours — what other presidents ran for another non-consecutive term, but lost?
John Tyler and Woodrow Wilson also married while president, though both were widowers not bachelors.
As to former presidents running unsuccessfully for a non-consecutive term, Millard Fillmore and Theodore Roosevelt come to mind. Are there any others?
I like Tulsi Gabbard too, but I think she has probably peaked in her career. She is one of those people who sound good but don’t know how to get things done. Bobby Kennedy is another. And of course, as you note, Kamala Harris is the queen of non-accomplishment.
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
I’m going to enjoy a Trump win for purely selfish reasons. I’m going to enjoy it watching Hollywood’s liberal elite lose their freakin minds over it!
The idea that those people, Hollywood people, should recommend who the nation votes for is so absurd, so utterly ridiculous, it takes my breath away.
To Donald I say welcome back. You have a better supporting cast this time around. Now you need to deliver.
My enjoyment comes from seeing Liz Cheney lose. I can’t stand her, or Adam Kinzinger. They turned into two of the most repulsive, self-righteous people in politics.
“What now for the homeless centrists?”
The centrists voted for Trump. The ‘woke’, people who do not want moderate policy on things like immigration, didn’t.
Stop pretending.
Defeated by their own snobbery, just like the remainers. Hilarious.
It has been obvious to me for some time that if the Democrats were deliberately trying to hand the election to Trump then they couldn’t have done a better job.
In their zeal to promote the most extreme elements of the progressive agenda they have tacked so far left on keystone issues like immigration, drug policy, crime, Title IX etc that they have repulsed even many of their own former natural constituencies.
To add to which Harris was a hopeless candidate parachuted in when the lie about Biden’s competence could no longer be sustained. Her refusal to engage on any policy issues or the Biden-Harris administration’s record was a tactic which backfired spectacularly, not least because mainstream news outlets don’t have a monopoly any more.
Tina Fey used to do a funny bit as Sarah Palin playing a flute because she is so vacuous she mistook an election debate for a high school talent contest. Harris has basically been the progressive equivalent of Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin.
It’s pretty clear what Donald Trump is going to do when he’s in office, or even before. One big thing he will do is talk to Volodymyr Zelensky and to Vladimir Putin and make an effort to stop the war in Ukraine. Another is that he will talk to Benjamin Netanyahu and make an effort to bring peace to the Middle East. For the past four years the American president was missing in action. Not anymore, starting now.
A night of the long knives for the dems.
JD Vance as the new VP.
These’s a bonus which bodes well for the future (as well as RFK and Tulsi Gabbard on board)