The victory of Donald Trump has been described in many ways by many pundits. Some say it is a triumph for the working class when others are saying it is the failure of the Harris campaign to make the case. Some are saying it is immigration while others are battening down the logic of hyper-inflation. Some highlight the moral anathema of the LGBTQ folks while the Christian evangelicals hail a born-again Jesus at the polls.
Of course, a loud voice hypes racism and gender bias while others are stoking the argument of Joe Biden’s fumbles as president. Before I went to bed on election night, it looked like a toss-up at about 4 am Nigerian time. By the time I woke up about three hours later, the battleground of all battleground states was smiling at Trump. Pennsylvania had broken for the con artist, lecher, liar, felon, fraud, racist, egotist, fear monger, impresario. The other battleground states, in the end, were an anticlimax.
For the evangelicals, they are right. For those who say it is Joe Biden’s stumbles, they are right. Who says it is working class rebellion? They are right. They are not wrong who stress race and gender. Anyone is right after an election victory. They were right the last time. They are right this time. What they have not said is what one of America’s iconic football coaches of all time said about competition: “Winning is everything.” What Vince Lombardi said about American football years ago was right for Donald Trump.
It may be simplistic to say it is racism. Not all simplistic facts are wrong, though. They just have to be proven. Trump knew his society, and he knew how to snatch power. He understood the zeitgeist of America. When he entered the race for 2016, he announced himself as the voice of the forgotten part of America and identified a bogeyman: the immigrant as a leech and moral scum. It flattered the hope of not just the forgotten part. He appealed to who Sarah Palin called “the real America” that had masked itself under the concept of neo-liberal accommodation.
That America prospered. Its workers, educated or not, enjoyed what we call the American dream: a living wage, a car, a house, medical care, a vacation, etc. Then came globalization. Some of the worker’s privileges were going abroad, the jobs atrophying and the wages dropping. As Harvard professor Michael Sandel argued over 26 years ago in his book, Democracy’s Discontent, now vindicated, globalization was undermining the majority of the American worker and society. One area stood out: education. Many have always equated democracy with enlightenment. But it is often not so. Almost 70 percent of Americans do not have university degrees. So, when the jobs were scaling down wages, it was an attack on the suffering majority. Nigeria and most of the world is no different.
These people loved their country, accepted immigrants, hugged the idea of tolerance. But standard of living was going to change all that. This is not just the story with the United States. It is the case with the United Kingdom, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, France, et al.
Rather than attack the pain, the liberal elite started urging the less educated to go to the university, and that was the story of the future. The Ideal will collapse in the face of realism any day. Meanwhile, the same jobs that paid their big mortgages was funding many people in India, Mexico, the Philippines for far lower wages and higher profits for the corporations. The result was a gaping inequality. This has been the worst chasm between the rich and poor in history as demonstrated by the French economist Thomas Piketty in his book, Capital in the 21st century.
This has generated resentment in the country for a long time, and a clever Trump saw this and exploited it. As I stated last week, Michael Wolff wrote in his book, Fire and Fury, that Trump said the “white trash” – that is the poor Caucasians – were like him except that he was a rich man and they were poor. There is a part of America that is called traditional red states. They are Republicans. They used to be Democrats until the 1960’s. Lyndon Johnson flipped their love when he signed the civil rights bill that allowed blacks to vote. After President Johnson signed the bill, he told many people, as recorded by historian Doris Kearn Godwin, that the Democrats may have lost the south forever. Republicans like Richard Nixon exploited the moment and they crafted a platform that would transform American politics: it is called the southern strategy which broadcasts, “God, guns and gays.” Guns for evangelicals. Guns for gun rights, a special part of the culture and hacks back to large American swath from south to west as delineated in the novel Lonesome Dove by Larry Mcmutry. Gays as a fight against LGBTQ. That was a cultural tour de force. They combined that with conservative view of economics centred on tax cuts.
After Nixon, the other man who exploited it was Ronald Reagan, and he had the Soviet Union and American power, prosperity and hubris to brandish. The difference between him and Trump was that America’s working class was still happy. The other was that while Reagan had the Soviet Union as the enemy, Trump had immigrants.
Over the decades, the state of the American middle class has worsened. The consequence of this decline is a sense of the besieged. The person who thought he loved immigrants started to see them as the problem. They are the ones taking the jobs, taking away their peace. They are the criminals. Is it not an irony that it takes a criminal to tell them that they have criminals in their midst? It is the paradox of human civilization. Even God chooses the sinner to evangelise the sinner, Paul of Tarsus to Apostle Paul. Trump the sinner became the preacher.
So, why did the evangelicals stand with him even though he lies and is convicted? Why do the workers cohabit with a crooked billionaire even though it is the people of his class that took away their jobs and prosperity? It is because he is the one who made the pitch and told the story, and flatter their secret hopes. The majority of blacks, men and women voted for Kamala, but they feel the economic crunch the most. Why? They say elections are about three Cs: condition, candidate and culture. Trump had all three working for him.
Hence, they voted for Trump. It is about race because they need someone to blame, and it is what Jean Paul Sartre described as “hell is other people.” If they say it is inflation, or the economy, at least, Trump would have made the case. How was a majority non-college educated class to understand the ins and outs of economics. Nobel Laureates said Harris plan was better. On the border, why did they not listen when Biden came with an immigration plan but Trump stopped it from passing the Congress so he could use it as a campaign ruse. Why did that not resonate?. It is not because Harris did not make the case. Sentiment, especially of race, had made the case for trump.
It is the unravelling of Jacob and Esau story in the Bible. The first time Jacob was asked who he was, it was the father who asked. He said he was Esau. That was not what he was. He grew rich but had to face the facts later when he wrestled with an angel. When the angel asked who he was, he confessed he was Jacob because he was desperate to live and escape the wrath of this brother who was coming after him. that was who he was.
Americans said who they are in the last election. When things are fine, they can abide the outsider. When it comes to the crunch, identity matters. Hell, as Sartre wrote, are the immigrants. What of the minorities who went for Trump? They are bonding with their oppressors, the so-called Stockholm syndrome. It is basically the Hispanic who have crossed over and deny that Trump called them murderers and rapists. Trump knew how to talk to them, He knew how to win, and he is a true follower of Lombardi.
Life is Hobbesian and Machiavellian. The end justifies the means. Jacob took Esau’s birthright. Yet, he got away with it and even was embraced by Esau, who forgave him. It is better, as Trump has shown, to be Jacob, steal, prosper and win, than Esau, who is cheated, spends all is life waiting to exhale and revenge but accepts the victory of the cheat. It is the perennial pattern of history. It belongs to the cynic.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation
