Triumph and Dismantlement

So the American pre-polls were totally wrong. The race didn’t turn out to be “too close to call”. Instead, as Andrew Sullivan wrote:

“It’s not just a Trump victory. It’s a Trump triumph.”

How does he come to that conclusion?

“There is, yes, a mandate. When one party wins the presidency, Senate, and probably the House, that’s usually the case.”

Mandate for what? This one is easy to answer because Trump had easy to understand policy goals, unlike his opponent who seemed to have none.

“Americans have voted for much tighter control of immigration, fewer wars, more protectionism, lower taxes, and an emphatic repudiation of identity politics.”

 

Wait, surely that last point (“an emphatic repudiation of identity politics”) can’t be true? Wasn’t Trump “whiteness personified”, as one political commentator said? Well, that’s not what the data says. Sullivan pulls up some of the relevant stats: (1) Trump won more non-white votes than any Republican since Nixon; (2) He gained massively among Spanish-speaking constituencies and legal immigrants; (3) He made huge gains in big, non-white cities; (4) His vote share increased among both Jews and Muslims.

“A Republican whom the left and the legacy media called a “white supremacist” won about 24 percent of the black male vote and 47 percent of the Latino male vote.”

 

All of which is why Sullivan says:

“An entire left-liberal worldview (was) comprehensibly dismantled by reality.”

But the American left doesn’t seem capable of accepting that reality, and instead talks of “doubling down of “resistance”… (though they will hand over power peacefully).

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Raghu S Jaitley wrote this piece a day before the US election, i.e., before the outcome was known. Like most non-Americans, he was derisive of this “how to survive another Trump presidency or the call for building ‘Resistance’ like we are in WW2 France” talk that was doing the rounds even before the results.

 

Jaitley may well be right when he says:

“(Trump) will eventually be in the top tier of American presidents in terms of the lasting impact he’s had.”

In what ways, you ask. First, the ‘Trump doctrine’ has become mainstream. Anti-globalization sentiment. The view that trade is a zero-sum game. Trade tariffs. Economic nationalism. Trade isolationism. This is now across the world.

 

Second, historically the Republicans tried to keep government deficits (debt) low (compared to Democrats). Not since Trump. He has changed the party’s course so much that deficit levels and (national) debt is not a political issue. If both American parties take this view, their national debt will keep increasing. In the medium to long term, it is inevitable that such high debt levels will play a role in whether or not the US dollar can stay as the sole global currency.

 

Third, Trump doesn’t care for America’s role as “global policeman”. Only intervene when America’s direct interests are at stake. Ensure the allies contribute enough. Why should the US pay for others? These views have major geopolitical implications – as America steps back, others will fill the vacuum.

 

Fourth, in his first term, Trump initiated a clear “throttle China economically” policy. Biden didn’t just continue it, he tightened the screws further. That’s a sharp change from the relationship just 15 years back that said America and China were tied at the hip (economically) – there was even a term: China + America = Chimerica. You don’t hear that term anymore.

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I’ll end with something that Sullivan wrote:

“In the immortal words of Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” We’ll soon see how that pans out.”