Tuesday is election day in the USA, and the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is extremely close. What seemed unthinkable four years ago now seems entirely possible.
Blue is the color of the Democrats, red that of the Republicans: Supporters of Kamala Harris at an event in Las Vegas (left), a supporter of Donald Trump at a rally in New York.
It has now been four years since Donald Trump tried to pressure a state representative to “find 11,780 votes” for him in Georgia and later had an angry mob march toward the Capitol to certify Joe Biden’s election victory to stop.
America and the world watched in horror in Washington on January 6, 2021, where angry citizens, thugs and armed militias invaded Parliament. And some people then thought: After all, Trump is politically finished after this open attack on US democracy.
Wrong thought. Trump is facing a possible election victory today. The race against Kamala Harris is extremely close; the ex-president is even ahead in many polls. How is it possible that the man who was the first president in recent history to not recognize his election defeat in 2020 and torpedo a peaceful transfer of power could become president again?
On the face of it, Joe Biden can be blamed if Trump wins. For too long he refused to accept that he was too frail for a second term. Big donors literally had to force him to resign. But there is a reason why the party’s grandees didn’t replace him much earlier and organize primaries: they knew that only Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump. He had done it once, he would do it again.
Because Biden was someone who appealed not only to left-wing circles, but also to ordinary people without a college degree, progressive ideas and politically correct speech. That is still the majority of the electorate.
Kamala Harris is struggling to reach these people. The fact that she brought Tim Walz, the former teacher and football coach from Minnesota, to her side didn’t help much. The fact is: The Democrats have lost their traditional voter base, even though Biden tried hard to attract them. Many still defected to Trump. That is the party’s big problem. African-American and Hispanic-American men from this class are also breaking away from the Democrats.
On the face of it, one could also blame the Republican Party if Trump wins. She has betrayed herself. Although there were Republican critics of Trump after January 6th, one after another repentantly returned to Trump and kissed his ring. As a sign of loyalty, they had to spread his lie about winning the election. Anyone who refused was threatened with political extinction.
Free of ideology or vision, concerned only with his ego, Trump has destroyed the Grand Old Party. With what appears to be tremendous ease.
The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, tried to sell himself as a “Trump with a brain” for a while, but he lacked the connection to the base and was too clumsy. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, also had no chance.
Trump beat all of his rivals within the party because he could always count on his voter base, which remains loyal to him to this day. And he was able to expand this voter base in the race against Harris.
It is those ordinary people who have suffered from inflation in recent years. Those people for whom it made a difference that bread no longer cost 99 cents but cost $2. Those people who don’t understand why more and more migrants are streaming into the country and making their precarious situation even more precarious. Those people who don’t want to invest billions in foreign wars that – once again – cannot be won. In their perception, there was no inflation under Trump, there was no war, and Trump protected the country with a wall.
However, many of his voters do not blindly applaud every nonsense that Trump says. Nor do they necessarily support any of his conspiracy theories, his fascist language, or his vulgarity. She simply doesn’t care what he says. The only thing that is relevant to them is that, in their experience, the economy under Trump ran excellently. That’s why they want him back. “Trump wants to fix it,” that’s what a neon sign recently said at a rally in New York. That’s exactly what they believe. Trump will fix it.
In these uncertain times, Americans seem to be longing for a man who can solve their problems. They trust Trump to do that. Everything else is secondary to them. Also democracy.
It is to be hoped that Trump does not destroy these too with tremendous ease.
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