Nearly four years ago, as the recount of the 2020 presidential election was wrapping up, many analysts were warning that the Republican Party needed to move away from Trump as quickly as possible. They warned that their extremism and theatrics posed a heavy burden on a political organization that should aspire to represent the diversity of the United States. When his most loyal supporters, encouraged by their leader, attempted to storm Congress, the same observers reiterated that Trumpism was a thing of the past and warned that Republicans would end up committing suicide if they did not turn the page sooner rather than later. quickly.
Yet here we are, four years later, contemplating the possibility of Donald Trump once again residing in the White House. A detailed analysis of why this can happen would require much more space, but here we dare to briefly highlight a few.
In the United States, there are two completely different realities. On the one hand, there are the big cities. On the other, large rural areas and medium-sized towns. In The new class warMichael Lind explains how the largest cities were filled with highly educated middle classes, who embraced progressive values, while huge agrarian regions emptied and many industrial areas became impoverished, as businesses relocated to other countries. These urban middle classes managed to put their concerns (such as climate change or promoting the benefits of globalization) on the political agenda, but both rural residents and less-skilled workers felt that theirs were ignored, even marginalized. for the benefit of the “dominant urban ideology”. Trump takes advantage of this feeling of abandonment and the resentment it arouses. The electoral maps of the most contested states generally show huge red zones (the color of the Republican Party), among which small islands of blue stand out (the big cities, where the Democrats obtain high levels of votes).
Additionally, the largest urban centers are not as homogeneous as we think. There are degraded neighborhoods, with high percentages of immigrant populations, which constitute optimal breeding ground for Donald Trump’s proposals, which ends up eroding the electoral base of his rivals in territories which should be more favorable to them. Among ethnic minorities, there is also enormous diversity: in some segments, reluctance towards the arrival of new immigrants is increasing, notably among Latinos; In others, as is the case among Muslims, Democrats’ stance on Israel or their defense of feminism distances them from Kamala Harris, who may struggle to maintain Joe Biden’s percentages among the African-American electorate, because inflation has been devastating among them. the most humble families.
Today, the United States is a mosaic of contradictions, and no one like Trump exploits them, taking advantage of the complexity of the world we live in to send simplistic messages and propose solutions that are as easy as they are useless, but which fit very well with the opinions, almost always ill-founded, of a relevant part of the electorate.
Attention must also be drawn to the role of social networks, through which false messages and half-truths spread extremely quickly. Some studies (for example the one published by Vosoughi, Roy and Aral in the journal Science in 2018) have shown that, in these, lies spread more and more quickly than truthful information. Their operation, through algorithms that provide access to content similar to that already viewed and create a barrier against dissenting voices, reinforces polarization and facilitates the dissemination of these simple messages. Argument, contrasting opinions, rigorous debate, in a constructive spirit, have little place on social networks, fertile ground for Trumpism. When we try to fight it with the same weapons, we often forget that neither the medium nor its rules are neutral. It’s an unequal battle.
With the support of social networks, but with the complicity of certain major traditional media (almost all of them quite critical of Trump), the Republican candidate managed to impose his themes during the campaign. With delusional messages, such as those relating to Haitians who ate pets, he managed to bring immigration and insecurity to the forefront, and many political debate spaces devoted hours and hours to talk about his statements instead of addressing other issues, such as health. care or the lack of social services, for which the former president does not have much credit with the electorate. His exaggerations, outbursts and insults have become the focus of the campaign, and Democrats, in trying to combat them, have often amplified their impact, uniting Trump voters, who constitute a much more compact bloc than Harris’s. , which brings together Trump voters. very different opinions on issues such as the invasion of Ukraine, the trade war with China or the Palestinian conflict, to name just three examples.
Perhaps the vice president wasn’t the best Democratic option for this election showdown (she was by no means the worst), although we don’t think her choice was as decisive for the final outcome as the factors we have just mentioned. mentioned and which, in our opinion, have not deserved sufficient attention. If Trump becomes president again, it won’t be a surprise.
