2024 has been a year of elections where people of all great and old democracies voted to choose their leaders. The US elections were one of them. The result has come, and Trump secured a historic win by becoming the 47th President of one of the oldest democracies in the world and a declining superpower. The win was historic as Trump not only secured 270+ electoral votes but also won all the seven swing states of the US. It is also important to note that Trump became the first republican candidate to win the popular vote in more than two decades.
Despite all negative speculation from media in the US and around the world, which was showing a clear majority to Indian-origin democrat candidate Kamala Haris, Trump comfortably won. The US election results pose some curious questions, such as how these media houses failed to predict the Trump return and what went wrong from the Democrats’ side, which made them even lose their strongholds. The article will try to outline the possible reasons behind this record-shattering comeback of Donald Trump after all the backlash from the judiciary, liberals, and media.
The world is witnessing a clear decline of liberal parties and voters from leadership positions and an unprecedented surge in right-wing political parties at the helm of affairs. The presence of a superiority complex is only driving out the liberals from power in India to Europe to America. The introspection seems absent in liberal parties and voters, and they always put the blame for wrongdoing on the system or the people. This is also the case with the US’s Democrat party. They are putting the blame on the American common people for Trump’s historic win and spreading misinformation to bring panic among them by saying Trump’s rule will be a fascist rule and will bring the US out of many regional and international conventions.
Ordinary people of any country do not think of this so-called superior and moral ideology, grand lectures, and hypocrisy of liberals. They are more concerned about their personal day-to-day life, where they have to deal with basic necessities such as education and inflation. The Biden administration (Kamala Haris is part of that) has failed to bring down the cost of living, which affected ordinary people greatly, and they voted for Trump. They did not fall into the grand ideology trap of democracy.
During the election campaign, Kamala Haris looked like a hypocrite candidate to the people. In rallies, she gave contradictory statements on the Gaza war in front of Jews and the Arab American population. Lack of clarity on the issues and authenticity in her statement created a sense of mistrust not only in swing voters but also in Democrat voters who did not even turn up to vote. Where Trump looked very clear in his issues, such as illegal migration, identity crisis, and mismanagement of the economy during the Biden term. The Democrats had no signature issues or slogan to counter Trump’s famous slogan “Make America Great Again”, which forced American ordinary voters to vote for Trump’s clarity.
Due to social media, the horrors of the Gaza war were reaching young Americans, and they wanted the Biden Administration to bring a ceasefire. This was the same case with Arab Americans. These two groups of voters have been traditional supporters of Democrats. However, due to the mismanagement of the war in West Asia, these two groups defected from the Democrats, and Trump’s election campaigners and strategists succeeded in tapping the votes of these two groups through social media and podcasts. Early reports from the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) suggest that less than 50 percent of Muslim voters voted for Kamala which is significantly low as compared to 65 to 70 percent that voted for President Biden in 2020.
Instead of appearing on TV media, Trump participated in several podcasts where he successfully popularised issues such as illegal migration and America First, which attracted young Americans to vote for him. Trump’s trump card, Elon Musk, also helped in reducing the fake information against Trump on his social media X and promoted Trump’s election promises every minute. The use of new media in place of traditional media (TV interviews and Print) by the Trump team has given special leverage to Trump over Kamala. The Arab and Muslim American dissatisfaction with the Biden Administration also played a crucial role in the US election result. The dissatisfaction was due to the strong emotional connection to the “Palestinian cause”. This dissatisfaction caused a heavy blow to Kamala.
At last, democrats did not exhibit acceptance of some of the pressing issues in American society and did not give any sustainable solution for them. The problem of illegal migration is a hot and crucial issue in US politics, and Kamala was not clear on what she would do to eliminate or reduce the problem. Where Trump gave the solution and hope to the Americans, which helped him to gain the popular vote along with an electoral win in the election. On the issue of abortion, Trump cleverly diverted the burden on the state and said whatever state will decide, I will go by that. Hence, Trump diverted the pressing issues brought by the Democrats simultaneously, pushing his agenda intensively where Kamala had no answer to it.
The liberal cry over the results and baseless blame of ordinary people over Trump’s win are immoral and unethical. The liberal all over the world should watch their own mistakes rather than blaming the system. The democrats should keep the day-to-day problems of the commoner in mind and should avoid discussing heavy and crooked ideas like wokeism in their political campaign, which has almost no meaning in ordinary people’s lives or adversely affects/destroys their culture. The US election result is also a lesson for liberal media, which predicts elections without having a clear ground idea of the voters of a country.
PS: The author Mr Anmol Kumar is a Research Assistant at Pondicherry University. His interests lie in geopolitics, power politics, and foreign policy in West Asia. His writings have appeared in Firstpost, News18, the Quint, and ABP News.