This has been the year of ejection elections. Across the democratic world, incumbents have been thrown out and insurgents have triumphed. And nowhere has the establishment been so humbled, the insurgency so resurgent, as in the US – still the world’s greatest democracy.
For Democrats, it is mourning again in America. Just as in 2016, it is not just their candidate who has been defeated but their beliefs about their country. There are lessons for them, and for all political actors across the West, in Donald Trump’s victory.
The failure of the Democrat campaign shows the folly of telling voters what they should think
The Democrat campaign was premised on a series of assumptions: that you could win an economic argument if you had the better statistics; that concerns about migration were misplaced at best and fascist at worst; that abortion was the most important issue for female voters; and that wayward rednecks would repent of their darker prejudices when educated out of them by the enlightened.
On economics, the Democrat campaign had no effective answer to Trump’s insistent questioning of voters: were they better off now than they were four years ago? Kamala Harris and Joe Biden could point out that on their watch America’s growth figures had outpaced other countries. But for voters, the valid comparison was not with the OECD’s basket of nations but with their own experience under the Trump administration. Economists might say that GDP was increasing, but the experience of citizens was that store prices were the only things going up.
The Democrats’ conviction that the principal motivating issue for female voters would be ‘reproductive rights’ was another mistake. Upholding feminist principles might be number one in the court of Queen Kamala, but for most Americans, male or female, Bill Clinton’s rule still held – it’s the economy, stupid. In any case, it was cultural condescension of the highest order to assume that those voters who did care about abortion were automatically in favour of extending access to the termination of unborn children.
The Harris campaign believed they were engaged in a war against prejudice, but as the abortion question, and so many others, showed, they were the ones blinded by their own biases. They clearly thought the endorsements of celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez and the rapper Cardi B, as well as the support of old establishment Republicans such as Liz Cheney, were signs of a tent drawn widely. But voters saw a gilded elite behind the VIP barrier congratulating each other on their own moral superiority. In contrast, Trump’s stint at a McDonald’s drive-thru, his turn behind the wheel of a garbage truck and even his golf swings on stage all strengthened a sense of the opposite – a candidate at home in the territory where mainstream Americans work and live.
Trump had an instinctive understanding of the insecurities and concerns that voters felt the Biden/Harris administration failed to address. His relentless focus on migration, far from alienating voters from minority ethnic groups, won them over. He appreciated that for many of them, illegal migration drove down their wages and increased their fear of crime. On foreign policy, he recognised that in a world which has grown more dangerous, Americans wanted fewer conflicts, cheaper energy and a focus on their own nation’s security. When he gave voice to these instincts and the Democrats decried them as fascist, that only reinforced the sense among voters that it was the Democrats who were out of touch – and if Trump’s opponents at home feared him so much, then America’s foes abroad would fear him even more.
There will still be a tendency among many people, especially outside America, to depict Trump’s victory as the heralding of a return to a darker age. But the failure of the Democrat campaign shows the danger in demonisation and the folly of telling voters what they should think rather than listening carefully to what they have to say.
Since the 2008 financial crash there has been a growing divide across the West. On the one side are those with capital, credentials and connections, those who in David Goodhart’s words can operate successfully anywhere. On the other side are those who work with their hands, who build, manufacture and care, who are rooted somewhere special to them and whose attachments are to family, community and nation rather than status. This divide is both cultural and economic. The people keenest on the idea of net zero are both those who can absorb higher fuel bills and those less likely to work in energy intensive industries. The strongest supporters of more migration are both those whose social circles would applaud such a stance and those who benefit from cheaper wages for cooks and cleaners.
It may seem curious that a victory for Trump should be an invitation to greater humility. But for those in positions of power across the West, including in Britain, a period of contemplation rather than a chorus of condemnation would be the right response.
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