I really don’t know if I’m going to be saying anything new here. But I’ll give it a shot.
Because you may already have access to a television or the internet, and may already have heard that Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency again, despite the collective rationale of many millions all over the world that this reality TV star, sexual assaulter, felon, impeached political moron, liar, bumbler and character assassin should never not only have won it in the first place, but been paraded out and brought to the auction block a second time. Four years after he lost the spot by the will of an indubitable majority of American voters.
But here we are.
It shouldn’t have come as that much of a surprise. Poll after poll over the last six months had been showing as many Americans wanted him back as wanted Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, oftentimes more. Polymarket and Las Vegas were predicting his victory, too. It really shouldn’t have come as that much of a surprise.
But now what I’m seeing a lot of is…I don’t know, one of the five stages of dying, maybe? I’d call it anger, but it seems more like ‘We have to blame someone for this, let’s blame everyone who ever took a prominent or influential part in the path that led us to this point!’ Joe Biden, Tim Walz, politically independent social media influencers, third-party voters, non-voters, Democrat apostates, supporters of Palestine, random people on social media who obviously never chose a side—anyone who may possibly have contributed to Donald J. Trump becoming president of the United States again seems to be getting fingers pointed at them.
Mainly, though, the outraged are going after Joe Biden. Politico, The Atlantic, the AP, Newsweek and The Daily Beast are just the first few sources I’ve seen running stories about it; I’m sure there are a dozen or more. ‘The arrogance! The nerve! If he had just dropped out sooner, Kamala Harris would have won! If only Kamala Harris hadn’t picked Tim Walz as her running mate, she would have won! If only people hadn’t voted for Jill Stein, Kamala Harris would have won! If only ______________, KAMALA HARRIS WOULD HAVE WON!!’
Trump won the election this time handily. A popular vote tally of around two and a half million was the difference between him and his opponent. Remember, he’d lost the popular vote by more than three million in 2016, and more than seven million in 2020. If you want to look at any reason why Kamala Harris lost, you should look to that.
So, I will. However, before I go on, I need to say an evidence pinboard of the real, actual intertwining reasons will likely remain forever untenable. Meaning not only are there quite a few that may or may not appear in this instance or that, or this voter’s mind or that, but any combination of them could be just as much of a factor as any one standing alone. The conjecture and possible mathematical combinations make it all pointless.
Kamala Harris’ ethnicity and gender; “the immigration problem”; “the economy”; the culture wars; the war in Ukraine; Elon Musk; Russian internet trolls; social media influencers; the Dobbs v. Jackson decision—they all likely played a part, sure. But none are the culprit. None are perpetrators of the crime.
In my opinion, the biggest factor (but by no means the only) was the COVID-19 pandemic. It screwed up the global economy. The Biden administration’s (and Trump’s, too) attempts to help confused and hurting Americans by infusing their wallets with cash largely fueled the inflation that we’re only now seeing wind down. Ironically, many Americans don’t remember and, by now, don’t care how much they benefited in those difficult times. Pert shampoo still costs fifty cents a bottle more than it used to, or whatever. Gas prices (God help us) are still too high. People are dipping into retirements and savings accounts to pay for basic needs. We are a lot who seeks instant gratification. It doesn’t matter how much gratification we got then, or why. Paying the piper is never any fun, and if we can be convinced it’s someone else’s responsibility, we’ll elbow each other out of the way to board that ship and sail to the future shores of a promised prosperity and lack of accountability. And there’ll be no human-sized pillars of salt on board when it docks at its final destination.
Which brings me to the most important reason—the only one that needs discussing, really; everything else seems ancillary to it. And that is Trump himself.
Trump is the manifestation of everything wrong with the American political and economic system. And I don’t mean that in the way you may think I mean it. In the eyes of enough Americans—enough to put him back in power—Trump is still the outsider who’s going to change things. As ridiculous as it may seem to you or me, like watching a baby with a pencil trying to do linear algebra, it’s true. Though it spans vocational, religious and political divides, it’s the same thing. It’s America in 2024.
Bernie Sanders (and anyone else with a similar sentiment about Harris’ loss) will come close to hitting the nail on the head in saying, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
But he (or anyone) will still miss the mark. Trump is how bad things have gotten. Trump is how bad change needs to take effect. Trump is how bad the system needs overhauling, or at least some kind of modification.
Despite their ideological differences, Americans need to be taken care of, their needs heard. Real wages have been stagnating since the 1970s. Home and rent prices have been skyrocketing all over the country. Jobs keep disappearing, businesses outsourcing. Wall Street (and the global speculative market) continues to play with currency, influencing prices at home and abroad. Regulation of large-scale lending continues to remain significantly unenforced. High-risk, high-yield hedge funds remain a significant part of the finance industry. The wealth of the wealthy has been exponentially increasing for decades. People’s health, wellness and good fortune continue to take a backseat to it all.
Inflation taking too long to subside was just the match to the fuse.
And they see Trump as the one to fly down as some ridiculously dressed, high-BMI septuagenarian Superman to pick the massive stack of dynamite up over his head and fly it off to explode in some far-away land that isn’t right in their own backyard or living room.
That is how bad things have gotten for the average American. So bad that Donald J. Trump continues to be necessary to save them from their own country.
