US elections 2024

Democrats’ failures allow far right Trump to win US presidential election

The Democrats' pro-genocide, pro-corporate and anti-migrant policies have laid the ground for Trump's return

Donald Trump, Republican candidate in the US election

 (Picture: Gage Skidmore)

By Tomáš Tengely-Evans
Tuesday 05 November 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2930

A racist, sexist far right figurehead is heading to the White House. Donald Trump declared an “incredible” victory in the United States presidential election on Wednesday morning.

He has won 51. percent of the vote and 279 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win. Several states are yet to declare.

He took Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina—four of the seven swing states that determine who wins the presidency.

Democratic candidate, vice president Kamala Harris, had already sent her supporters home from the watch party at her headquarters. She was on 47 percent with 223 electoral college votes.

Trump also looked on course to win a majority of the popular vote, increasing his share of the vote even in states that went to Harris. And the Republicans took control of the US Senate in elections that took place on the same night.

Trump’s victory will be a boost to every fascist, far right politician and racist thug. Nigel Farage, leader of the far right Reform UK party in Britain, was already celebrating at Trump’s watch party after Georgia was declared.

A torrent of resistance on the streets, campuses and workplaces is required in the United States, Britain and elsewhere. Hope lies with the mass movements that have rocked US society and the uptick in workers’ strikes—but on a much higher level.

A Trump victory is a damning indictment of the Democrats, whose pro-genocide, pro-corporate and anti-migrant policies have laid the ground for his return.

“Not to be too glib, but could it simply be that what Americans have in common is simply that they don’t like the Democratic Party?” says one liberal New York Times (NYT) writer.

Around two thirds of voters said economic conditions in the United States are bad, with only 35 percent saying they are good.

An AP poll showed that eight in ten voters wanted at least a “substantial change” in how the country is run—including one quarter who said they want “total upheaval”.

Harris’s support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians helped deny her victory in some key areas. In Dearborn in Michigan, a town with a Muslim and Arab majority population, Trump was on 47 percent of the vote. Harris was on 27.5 percent—while the Green Party’s Jill Stein, who ran on a pro-Palestine ticket, was on 22 percent.

Trump’s rise has been underpinned by the death of the “American Dream”. He fed off the accumulated anger and grievances at 30 years of neoliberalism, which depressed working class people’s wages, destroyed decent jobs and fueled inequalities.

He corralled a lot of that anger through whipping up racism, scapegoating migrants and deflecting anger onto “liberal elites” away from the real elite—billionaires, bosses and bankers—that he belongs to.

Trump’s infamous Madison Square Garden’s speech in New York dripped with racism and sexism—and revealed the far right play book.

He tapped into the social crisis facing millions of people, slamming Harris for “shattering our middle class” in “less than four years”.

He latched onto that deep pain and twisted it against migrants. “I will protect our workers. I will protect our jobs,” he said. And in the next breath—“I will protect our borders. I will protect our great families.”

Trump and the far right play on nostalgia for the “American Dream” in the decades that followed the Second World War. It was an era of full employment, rising living standards and economic boom and the apex of US power in the world.

But that American Dream is not coming back—and was always a nightmare for black people, women and LGBT+ people.

Trump, a billionaire backed by a substantial section of big business, offers nothing for working class people whether white, black or Latino.

But he injects racism and bigotry into people’s nostalgia for the American Dream and promises a return of US supremacy. “I will protect the birthright of our children to live in the richest and most powerful nation on the face of the earth,” he said in New York.

The Democrats’ lesson will be to move further to the right to match the Trump campaign’s politics and win over voters.

But this is precisely the strategy that Harris pursued—and it failed. As polls were neck and neck in the weeks running up to the election, she bent further to the right.

Harris pitched herself as a champion of abortion rights. She then campaigned alongside “moderate” Republican Liz Cheney—a well-known anti-choice bigot.

Harris celebrated the Democrats presiding over “lower undocumented immigrants and illegal immigration than Trump when he left office”. She criticised Trump for only building “about 2 percent” of the US-Mexico border wall.

It shows that lining up behind the mainstream “centre” does not stop the far right and racists. The mainstream politicians, with their pro-corporate and racist policies, fuel the far right.

The alternative lies with struggle on the streets against the far right and racism—and for a genuine alternative to 30 years of neoliberal attacks. We saw a glimpse of that with the recent Boeing and dockers’ strikes. And in the US, the movements must not fall in behind the Democrats.