US elections: The winner drowns it all!

Why has Donald Trump been elected the US President for a second time?

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IMMIGRANTS eat pets and practice voodoo, Joe Biden is the representative of Satan, the Earth is flat, homosexuality is against the Bible and anti-life, women should have no control over their reproductive cycle, other countries are 'floating islands of trash', the US is better off as a dictatorship, these are some of the vilest vignettes that I have virtually observed amongst what Terry Bolea aka Hulk Hogan calls 'Trumpamaniacs'.

They seem to have run wild. Donald Trump has become the President of the US for the second time. After running a high-pitched campaign that stoked raw and the basest of human impulses, Trump has managed to win.

US citizens, on their part, have missed the historic opportunity to elect the first female President, who would also be non-White. Although a change of sex and gender at the top has seldom changed the course of world politics, it has gone a long way in instilling confidence amongst those who had been denied the top job by forces of history.

For all the wrongs of Barack Obama's foreign policy, his election as the US President was a cause of joy for those elderly Blacks who lived through the pre-civil rights movement era in US society.

So, what made Trump win? I have two answers to this question.

Bill Clinton had once quipped: "It's the economy stupid!" In a post-pandemic US, it was the stupid management of the economy that brought about the disastrous result. The US stock market is booming, and the dollar is riding high in currency markets.

The real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is around 2.5 percent and unemployment is just at 4.1 percent. The average US citizen hardly felt the cushiness of the aforementioned data. Incomes stagnated when adjusted to inflation. Those with enough financial stocks to gamble were winners in the economy.

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All the brouhaha about growth in jobs had no impact on the common people's perception of real-life situations. Most jobs created were part-time at both the state and federal levels. Full-time employment in productive sectors was lagging. A third of US workers had to take a second job to pay the bills. And they had no reason to feel 'bullish' about the US economy.

Speaking of inequality, the top 1 percent of US citizens take almost 21 percent of all personal incomes, more than double the share of the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent of US citizens own 35 percent of all personal wealth, while 10 percent of US citizens own 70 percent of all personal wealth; yet the bottom 50 percent own just 1 percent of all personal wealth.

Source: Michael Roberts: thenextrecession.wordpress.com

When Kamala Harris decided to cultivate the middle classes by promising to roll out a series of policy plans to tackle grocery prices, housing costs, childcare and elder care, it was too late. Trump had already harvested them. He did not allow Kamala to sow her welfarist oats.

He had convinced the white middle and working classes that she worked for the Washington 'cabal', the elites, the master puppeteers, the unpatriotic financiers. In the future, when the history of the period is written, the progeny will laughingly ask: How did a super-rich billionaire become the leader and saviour of toiling US citizens?

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The answer to this question lies in the second reason that made Trump's victory possible— racism. Akin to the demagogues of both past and present, Trump had publicly identified that the 'enemy lies within'. As Mark Twain had written, "Give a man the reputation of an early riser and he can sleep till noon." Trump gave 'the enemy within' the reputation of a real criminal.

This made US citizens go off to sleep on other important issues plaguing the country. Immigrants account for nearly 14 percent of the US population. The economist Michael Roberts has estimated that US GDP grew at a rate of 2.5 percent because of a sharp rise in net immigration. More workers generated more goods and services.

Concomitantly, a larger number of people earning paycheques meant more consumer spending. The prime-age workforce participation rate (between 25 to 54 year-olds) reached 83.5 percent in February 2023, matching highs that had not been seen since the early 2000s. Much of this was due to immigration.

Cognisance of all such economic benefits of immigration was not taken. Instead, a rabid rhetoric against immigrants was fomented and it paid off.

Percy Ernst Schramm, in his remarkable book Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader, has shown how the Führer saw the Jew behind all wrongs. It is pertinent to quote Schramm at length: ''Behind Stalin, he (Hitler) felt, stood the Jew … behind the Roosevelt regime stood a Jewish organisation …  no matter what happened in the world, and no matter in what country it happened, Hitler saw the Jew behind it, and especially was this the case if the event involved something unfavourable for Germany.''

Trump, a little unlike Hitler, did not specify who the real 'ethnic' enemy within was but he and his acolytes made it indirectly ostensible that it was one versus all. Trump also had other tricks up his sleeves to assuage the large non-White ethnic groups such as the Latinos.

A promise of a strong economy and weaponising the fear of Kamala Harris-led socialism (ridiculous to say the least) brought in the Latino votes despite Tony Hinchcliffe's racist ridicule of Puerto Rico.

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Paola Ramos, in her latest book Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What it Means for America, has shown how famous Latino influencers like Alexis Otaola have internalised the imaginary threat of communism and socialism posed by the Democrats.

Ramos writes, ''Otaola says Black Lives Matter has a Marxist agenda. He says Vice President Kamala Harris is actively plotting with the Cuban government and suggests she is a lying communist herself.'' Such forces chimed well with a similar rhetoric raised by the Republicans against the Democrats.

Many had hoped that sections of the Republican party would show strong internal resentment toward Trump. Many Republican voters were expected to cross the line and vote for Kamala Harris to stop Trump and Vance.

This did not happen. This is the thing about strongman-led authoritarian politics: they succeed in making the party toe their line so much so that in the long run their persona becomes the party and vice versa. Trump has succeeded in doing this to the Republican party.

Now that the election has concluded, pundits will sit cross-legged in front of the statistical fire and will generate loads of micro and macro data. The exercise will be fun to watch. But what Trump and his acolytes will do to the US and the world at large will not be funny. God (if only he exists) save the US and the world.