Whatever you think of Donald Trump, watching the mood change in the BBC’s election studio has been delicious. It was like a New Orleans funeral in reverse – a carnival turning a corner and transforming into a wake. This was supposed to be a historic night. But then it wasn’t just the BBC. The liberal media have been at it for days. There was supposed to be a last-minute surge in support for Kamala Harris, driven by record turnout of women coming out to fight for their rights.
The idea that American voters would be steered by anything other than their own personal economic circumstances was foolish
This was pure hubris. To think that the US election was going to turn on the touchstone liberal issue of abortion (sorry, ‘reproductive rights’) was nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the many commentators and academics wheeled out to make that point. Listening to them, you would never think that a third of US women consider themselves to be pro-life, or that only 42 per cent of them believe in abortion on demand in all circumstances. Yet Kamala Harris’s campaign worked on the presumption that abortion was pretty much the most important, unifying issue for all decent Americans; the cancellation of Roe v. Wade a national calamity. Actually, Donald Trump is not trying to ban abortion anyway – only to devolve the issue to individual states.
It will be sobering for Democrats to remember that it was one of their campaigns (that of Bill Clinton in 1992) which came up with the slogan ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. The idea that American voters would be steered by anything other than their own personal economic circumstances was foolish. The US is not in recession and has, in fact, recovered more strongly than Britain or the Eurozone since the pandemic. Yet that has not protected Americans from the beast of inflation – an issue which helped win the 1980 election for Ronald Reagan after he called it ‘as deadly as a sniper’. Yet again, the liberal-left has underestimated the size and feeling of America’s working class. If you are a low-income worker, illegal immigration is a very, very big issue. It helps undercut your wages and undermines your livelihood. You are going to punish any administration which has shown weakness on this issue.
Joe Biden didn’t win four years ago because Americans suddenly decided that they shared the liberal values of the Democratic elite. On that occasion, too, the US public were punishing an administration which they felt had injured their personal finances – thanks to the economic collapse which accompanied Covid. In 2024, it is a case of ‘come back Trump, all has been forgiven’ – or at least he is now trusted to make a better fist of handling the economy and controlling migration than is Biden’s vice president.
Are there some voters who are appalled by Trump’s offensive manner? Of course. If he could stop himself insulting everyone who crosses his path, he might be enjoying a more emphatic victory. Did Kamala Harris win over any voters through her stances on liberal issues? Of course. But the real America is a different place than the imagined America of the liberal-left. That was obvious in 2016, yet it was quickly and sadly forgotten by Democrats.
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