The United States is elusive. Donald Trump, no. But no matter how ethically compromised he is, the 78-year-old tycoon is the one most voters wanted to find. It was after two in the morning on Thursday, November 6, when the latter took the stage at the campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach (Florida) to sing his victory in the presidential elections. With his voice a little hoarse, the billionaire launched into a long, disjointed statement. Just like himself, all improvisation. Donald Trump thanked voters for this “extraordinary honor” AND “a powerful and unprecedented mandate”, promising “a new golden age of America”. Although his victory has not yet been confirmed, particularly by the Associated Press agency, he has already announced his conquest, still hypothetical at this point, of 315 voters, well above the fateful mark of 270.
After Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in 2016, a kind of trauma accompanied Democrats for a long time. Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 made them believe that the danger had passed. On Tuesday, the memory of 2016 hit the Democratic field. Donald Trump found himself one step away from crossing the threshold of 270 electors on Wednesday morning and from obtaining, four years after his departure from the White House, a second presidential term, a result unprecedented since the end of the 19th century.my century, with Senator JD Vance as his running mate.
To do this, he defied predictions, expanded his base, conquered North Carolina and Georgia, the first two key states counted, and then Pennsylvania, around 2 in the morning. He also led in the other key states with pending recounts, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, envisioning a grand slam that no one had dared to predict. It was a collective disaster for Democrats, a terrible legacy for Joe Biden and a humiliation for Kamala Harris. The United States’ shift to the right is brutal, unexpected in its scale, and worrying for its democracy and its traditional allies in the world. Europeans risk being abandoned to their fate, Russia has every reason to rejoice and China to foresee a new phase of trade tensions with its only systemic rival.
As the hours passed, the indicators turned green for Donald Trump, although the majority in the House of Representatives was still pending, unlike the Senate. In the popular vote, Donald Trump was – for the first time – almost five million votes ahead of his opponent when he took the floor. An incredible reward for a campaign marked by xenophobia, which denies climate change, drawing with caricatures an America in free fall. But it is also the consecration of the issues retained by Donald Trump: inflation, the immigration crisis. The first may have been contained, but it has wreaked havoc on low-income households. Joe Biden took too long to respond to the second, with decrees. A detailed analysis of voters could confirm that the workers, the precarious employees, now live in the Republican Party.
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