I’M NOT going to pretend I thought a Trump victory likely – I did not – but travelling across the US these past six weeks was an eye opener. Even in solidly blue States and liberal cities, encountering Trump supporters was not difficult.
And while a few could easily be dismissed as cranks – those who informed me that President Obama was a “secret Muslim” or that the “mainstream media” were going to “rig” the election (they didn’t do a very good job) – the majority were rational human beings who, on being presented with a choice between two candidates, had thought things through and opted with Trump.
They didn’t think he was a saint – how could they? – but they preferred him to the alternative; they chose the anti-politician over the professional politician par excellence.
Such people, however, appear invisible to New Yorkers or Californians, who inhabit a different world in which legitimate frustrations about low pay or job insecurity are not only alien but viewed with something bordering on contempt. You have HRC’s American and DJT’s America, and never the twain shall meet.
But as with Brexit, it’s easy to generalise where each insurgency derived its support. Sure, there were the expected post-industrial workers in places like Michigan and Ohio – the US equivalents of northern England – but Trump attracted votes beyond those constituencies too. To repeat, this outcome cannot easily be explained away.
Its roots can be traced back to the financial crisis that rocked the US and UK, the subsequent loss of trust in various “elites”, and the understandable feeling among voters in both countries that they’ve been left behind, that “the system” is geared towards a chumocracy of financiers, politicians and journalists who all play daily in an exclusive arena which they are welcome to observe but rarely join. People are angry, and angry voters do unpredictable things.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that Donald Trump – any more than Nigel Farage – will alter that unfair reality. Many of the president-elect’s policies (such as they are) are geared towards his own class, the one per cent, the financial elite of Wall Street rather than the dispossessed of the Rust Belt or inner cities.
If a lot of Americans genuinely don’t know what to expect from the next few months that’s because Team Trump doesn’t either.
Over the past eight years, and to some extent since the early 1990s, American constitutional safeguards have tended to check and balance proactive governance, particularly that of a progressive bent, to the point of destruction. The president-elect, however, will be in a more powerful position, his own mandate bolstered by a majority in both legislative branches of government and a soon-to-be conservative balance in the Supreme Court.
Of course more moderate Republicans in the House and Senate might find some of what the new commander in chief proposes unpalatable, but it seems unlikely they’ll seriously obstruct him to the same degree they have Obama. Who knows? We’re now in uncharted territory.
Bleating on social media, as many Democrats will surely do, won’t help, and nor will futile gatherings to wave placards and chant reassuring slogans. As with Brexit, the sky won’t fall in, at least not immediately, and American democracy is not so dysfunctional that it won’t be able to adapt to this new normal, however unlikely it was believed to be.
“He’s hopelessly unprepared to take over the White House,” another New Yorker told me. “And everyone will very soon see that.” Perhaps, but then the US Constitution makes little provision for unprepared presidents, only criminal ones, and even if Trump were to fall on his sword the alternative is vice president-elect Mike Pence, who might be more articulate than his running mate but arguably even more extreme.
In her speech, as graceful in defeat as Trump was in victory, Hillary Clinton spoke of more “seasons” to come. Her long career is of course over, having ended in failure rather than departing the political stage at a happy juncture, but the season to come undeniably belongs to her opponent. Against considerable odds, it’s soon to be Donald J. Trump’s world, the rest of us can only watch and wait.
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