Reflections on Donald Trump – Why Was He President?

As Donald Trump continues his seemingly futile contestation of the US Presidential Election results, I am still surprised by just how close he got in the popular vote.

Given the nature of the voting system in the US, Joe Biden has had a comfortable victory in Electoral College terms but Trump still garnered over 70 million votes in the ballot box.

In the lead up to the run-off, the polls predicted a crushing Biden victory, and a Democrat “Blue Wave” sweeping over the country.

Yet this translated only into overturning (“flipping”) 2016 Republican majorities in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.

That said, Georgia looms as particularly significant; as a “southern” state, in recent decades it has consistently delivered majorities for the Republicans, and openly voted for a white supremacist candidate in George Wallace back in 1968.

The last Democrat to win Georgia was Bill Clinton in 1992, and Georgia has delivered Republican majorities in eight of the last nine presidential run-offs

However, former Democrat state Governor candidate; Stacey Abrams has been instrumental in engaging the urban African-American vote in Georgia (and other key swing states).

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Given that Black/African Americans account for 31% of the population in Georgia (against 13% for the US in total) they are a significant voting block and their continued mobilisation will be critical to the slim Democrat hopes of winning the two Senate seat run-offs in Georgia in January.

Which leaves one wondering what the continued appeal of Donald Trump to over 70 million Americans actually is.

Trump’s current antics are all about maintaining a state of resentment that the election was somehow “stolen” from him and his supporters (disproportionately male/white/older/rural/conservative and libertarian).

His legal challenges thus far have been rejected, and it is notable that state Republican legislative leaders have thus far refused to entreaty his demands to overturn the popular vote in states with Republican-controlled legislatures that turned against him by reconfiguring their respective Electoral Colleges in his favour.

Indeed, as even for them this would be too much of an affront to democracy and set a dangerous precedent.

However, his refusal to concede is having a disruptive effect on a transition to a Biden presidency and continuing to hamper efforts to combat Covid-19.

Moreover, it highlights Trump’s own idiosyncrasies and the continued questions around his personal and professional conduct.

For this is an individual who has had multiple bankruptcies in his business empire (various hotels and casino businesses of his have declared bankruptcy a total of at least four times), is alleged to have failed to pay federal income tax (In 2016 and 2017 Donald Trump paid $750 each year in federal income taxes) and there is an ongoing legal battle over tax refund worth $72.9 million that he received from the federal government.

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To this can be added the toxic element of race, with Trump’s open courting of far-right white supremacist groups, for example, labelling white supremacists in the state of Virginia as “very fine people” and a barrage of documented offensive remarks over the years towards women, Latinos, migrants, African Americans, and Muslims.

One can only assume that for those who voted for Trump, nostrums around “freedom” or aversion to “Big Government” or “taxes” or regarding the Democrats as ravenous “socialists” were more important; and more than compensated for Trumps personal failings, and that for the more openly racist of his supporters, to be deemed meritorious.

In a similar fashion, his failure to live up to his 2016 campaign rhetoric on restoring US manufacturing, having secured only modest changes to NAFTA and seeing modest increases in manufacturing in the US in 2019 (and it is unclear how much of this was due to Trump) is overlooked by his supporters.

Similarly, his record in office on diluting environmental standards, attacking health insurance provisions for the poor (so-called “Obamacare”) and cutting taxes for the rich have all worked against the interests of the poor Americans who voted for him in 2016.

For he is seen by them as an outsider, an anti-politician; and against the East Coast/Capitol Hill Establishment.

For the Republican Party then, these are dangerous waters. In the short-term they have a chance to retain control of the Senate and thus be able to frustrate much of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.

However, a continued embrace of “Trumpism” long-term will be an electoral cul-de-sac of no return. Despite Trump’s improved performance with some minority ethnic groups (e.g., some Latino ethnic groups; albeit off a low base), it is still true that ethnic minorities overwhelmingly vote Democrat and this is even more so amongst the young.

As the US population demographic continues to shift towards an increasingly substantive non-white profile this will only become increasingly challenging for the Republicans to appeal to.