The Point
(Gianluca Mercuri, from the Prima Ora newsletter) Donald Trump is one step away from returning to the White House. As we send you this newsletter, the Republican candidate is credited by the New York Times with 301 electors against Kamala Harris' 240: the necessary majority is 270. The “barometer” of the American newspaper that marked the nightly television marathons gives him a 90% chance of winning.
Not only that: the former president would also have surpassed his rival in the popular vote. A sensational fact, if you consider that even when he had batted Hillary Clintonin 2016, had received three million votes less than her.
Trump, according to AP data reported by the New York Times, is ahead in Pennsylvania (51%-48% with 72% of the count), Michigan (52-47 with 30% of the count), Wisconsin (51-48 with 63% of the count), Georgia (51-48 with 93% of the count), North Carolina (51-48 with 88% of the count) and Arizona (49.7-49.5 at 53% of the count). To overturn the outcome, Harris would need Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin: all three.
With the Republicans almost certain to conquer the majority in the Senatethe last bastion of democratic counterpower could remain the Chamber, where they have a slight advantage.
In short, we are moving towards a new Trumpian four-year periodwith the vice president next to the leader J.D. Vance who is already a candidate for his heir. The ideological imprint is very clear: economic protectionism, tariff war against friends (us) and enemies (the Chinese), cultural war on thought wokeadvance of anti-abortion prohibitionism, American disengagement in the world, «quick resolution» of ongoing conflicts which, according to the most worried analysts, could translate into a substantial green light for Putin in Ukraine (destined for a vast territorial amputation) and for Netanyahu in the Middle East (with the Palestinians at strong risk of definitive expulsion).
There is the risk of an authoritarian involution of the largest democracy in the world, of the very prototype of democracy? The right wing of Trumpism – expressed by the so-called Project 2025 – has an openly extremist program: replacement of 50 thousand managers of the federal administration with loyalists of the president, expulsion of millions of illegal immigrants, end of policies to combat climate change, control of schools and especially universities, considered the fortress of culture liberal.
Compared to this picture, however, Trump has already expressed reservations: his non-fanatical supporters assure that his pragmatic streak will keep ideological excesses at bay. Critics, however, fear a Trump thirsty for revenge – after the two impeachments and the judicial odyssey to which he was subjected – and intending not to take prisoners, that is, to conquer the capillary control of every lever of power.
Federico Rampini, however, is reassuring: «America doesn't elect a dictator for four years. The powers of the presidency are limited by checks and balances», the checks and balances. And in two years we will vote again for the midterm elections, which the Republicans usually suffer.
And the Democrats? They pay the price for high inflation, the wars that they have failed to stop, the perception of laxity on immigration, which obscures the brilliant performance of the economy, the efforts to support Ukraine and avoid escalation in the Middle East and a sealing of the Mexican border not dissimilar to that desired by Trump, but late in the eyes of voters. They also pay for their objective mistakes, such as having hidden it from themselves and from the Americans the drama of Joe Biden's cognitive state.
Or, on the contrary, they pay for not having believed the old president: that only he could beat Trump again. In reality he too would have been overwhelmed, but Biden's certainty was perhaps revealing a widespread prejudice about Kamala Harris. A prejudice with two faces.
The first: he couldn't do it because she wasn't a worthy candidatefor the tests given in previous competitions and as vice president. It is a prejudice which, in the eyes of many observers, the result of the vote merely transforms into a judgement.
It stays though the dramatic suspicion that America was simply not ready to rely on a woman, first and foremost because she was a woman.
But it's a suspicion destined to remain a minority in analyses. The feeling prevails that Trump and the Republicans have succeeded in building a new social coalitionwhich ranges from a middle class gloomy by the real or perceived economy – high prices – and not at all enchanted by the growing GDP, to minorities such as Latinos, or black males themselves, more interested in issues of public order than in civil rights. A coalition that includes very rich people interested in tax cuts and very poor people who are neglected and looking for redemption.
A worrying lessonif not disturbing, for all the leftists in the world. The rightinclined everywhere to strengthen executive power to the limit of plebiscitarism and to leverage widespread hostility to immigration, emerge encouraged and strengthened.
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