TMID Editorial: America has spoken

The people of the United States of America have wielded their vote and they have spoken. Their message has sent shockwaves around the world.After a shock electoral win in 2016, Donald Trump will return to the White House come next January as Presiden

By: independent.com.mt

Nov 08 2024
27
4271 Views

TMID Editorial: America has sp

The people of the United States of America have wielded their vote and they have spoken. Their message has sent shockwaves around the world.

After a shock electoral win in 2016, Donald Trump will return to the White House come next January as President of the United States of America for the second time.

Talk of an election which would go down to the wire proved off the mark: by Thursday, the Republican candidate had won five out of the seven battleground states with handy vote majorities. Votes in the remaining two battleground states - Arizona and Nevada - were both still being counted at the time of writing, but Trump had a comfortable lead in both.

Democrat nominee Kamala Harris, who is the current Vice President and who was parachuted into the election race only a few months before after the current President Joe Biden withdrew, underperformed, and underperformed drastically.

Besides losing every battleground state, Harris underperformed drastically in Democrat heartlands such as California, New York, Illinois, and New Mexico.

All of this meant that Trump is nailed on to win the popular vote as well. The last time a Republican nominee won the popular vote was in 2004 when George W. Bush was elected President. Trump, at the time of writing, has a lead of over 4.5 million votes.

The result has startled many. How can the people support a convicted felon, a sexual abuser, and a man who many blame as having incited an armed insurrection after losing a presidential election, many have asked. They're right to ask that question as well.

But more than trying to understand the psyche of the American voter, more are now trying to understand the consequences that their actions in this election will bring.

Starting with the consequences of America - they may be significant. The Republican Party now has control of not just the White House, but also the Senate and - quite possibly - the House. It's a clean sweep of the USA's political institutions which will now be in Trump's hands, and it gives him a free-hand to effectively do as he pleases.

Then there's the Supreme Court. Donald Trump has already appointed three Supreme Court justices. In his second term, he could well have a chance to name two more, creating a high court with a Trump-appointed majority that could serve for decades. This sets the scene of a court-backed mass roll-back of many civil rights and liberties.

But there are consequences on a global level. Trump has called climate change "a big hoax", scorned wind energy and electric cars (although that changed after Tesla CEO Elon Musk put his weight behind Trump), and vowed to gut environmental rules and the "green new scam" of the Inflation Reduction Act, a major bill passed by Democrats to support clean energy projects.

He pledged that the US' new energy policy under his leadership would be to "drill, baby, drill" and also said that he would withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement (which he had already done in his first term as President). Trump's energy agenda risks adding several billion tonnes of extra heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, and will further endanger already faltering global efforts to reduce emissions.

In the midst of all this, the question comes up again: how did he win?

There is no doubt a list of answers, but chief among them is the ineptitude of the Democrat Party itself. Biden stubbornly deciding to re-contest for election, despite his advancing years, and continuing to insist on this even as it became clear that his mental capacity was not what it used to be was the first grave mistake.

His vice-president, Harris, was drafted in his stead. Yet she made no effort to distance herself from the administration she was a part of. For many Americans, she was part of the current problems that they were facing. Further, the campaign she ran did not focus on bread and butter issues, such as the economy and inflation.

There's a parallel here to draw with Maltese elections: while the Nationalist Party has consistently campaigned on issues such as corruption and rule of law, the Labour Party has focused on bread and butter issues, like the economy, and has won every election in the last decade.

As Jim Carville, an advisor to Bill Clinton, quipped in the run-up to the 1992 presidential elections: "It's the economy, stupid."

And indeed, it was the economy. It almost always is.