VIEWS FROM THE UK LEFT
US Election Analysis: Inflation, Immigration and Identity – Michael Roberts
By Michael Roberts
As the FT put it: “In the end, it wasn’t even close. A presidential election long forecast to dance on a knife’s edge very quickly turned out to be a rout for Donald Trump.” Trump polled 74.6m votes or 50.5% of those who voted, while Harris polled 70.9m or 48% of the vote. Third party candidates mustered just 1.5%. Trump’s 3.7m lead in the overall vote was a significant swing from Biden’s 7.1m lead in 2020, or the lead that Hillary Clinton had over Trump in 2016. The Republicans took the Senate and also gained a majority in the lower House of Representatives – a clean sweep.
Trump’s vote did not rest on small margins in a handful of swing states, as was the case when he won in 2016. Instead, he gained support across the electoral map in states both red (Republican) and blue (Democrat). Even in his birthplace of New York state, one of the bluest strongholds in the country, Trump winnowed a 23-point gap down to 11.
The biggest caveat to Trump’s voting victory is that, contrary to the usual hype of a ‘massive voter turnout’, fewer Americans eligible to vote bothered to do so compared to 2020. Then over 158m voted, this time the vote was down to 153m. The voter turnout of those eligible fell to 62.2% from the high of 65.9% in 2020.
The total number of Americans of voting age in 2024 is 265m. But over 42% of Americans of voting age did not do so. Partly this was because the number of Americans who failed to register rose to 19m from 12m in 2020 (this includes the prison population who are disenfranchised and those who found it difficult to register or did not bother.) So although Trump got over 50% of those who voted, he actually got only 28% support of Americans of voting age. Nearly three out of four Americans did not vote for Trump. Harris polled under 27%. The real winner of the election was (yet again) the ‘no vote’ party. The ‘no voters’ were 38% of the eligible vote and 42% of those of voting age. The difference in the 2024 election was that while Trump got about the same number of votes in 2024 as he did in 2020, Harris lost over 10m votes compared to Biden in 2020.
In my analysis of the 2020 election, I concluded that “Biden won because America’s ethnic minorities overcame the white majority. Biden won because younger Americans voted for Biden sufficiently to overcome Trump majorities among older voters. Biden won because working class Americans voted for him in sufficient numbers to overcome the votes of the small town business-people and rural areas.”
This time none of those things happened. This time, the vote majorities that Biden got in 2020 among ethnic minority voters, women, young people, city dwellers and college graduates weakened sharply for Harris, while Trump’s support among white males (and females) without college degrees rose by more than enough. Indeed, in just about every demographic group, Trump gained from 2020.
The majority of America’s working class did not vote for Trump. For a start, a large percentage did not vote at all and these non-voters would mainly be those with lower incomes and education qualifications or unemployed.
According to exit polling in ten key states, Harris took 53% of the vote from voters with a household income of $30,000 or less (the poorest income earners) while Trump took 45%. While Harris had a majority among those earning more than $95,000 dollars a year (the college-educated ‘better off’), the vote was more or less split with those earning $50-95k.
As for the organised working class, Harris took 54% of the vote of trade unionists, while Trump still took 44% – but trade union membership is now quite small in the electorate. Young people made up 16% of the electorate, but many did not vote. Of those young people who did vote, Trump got a majority among young men (58%-38%) and Harris got it among young women.
But here is the rub. The Harris campaign was based primarily on what is called ‘identity politics’. She called for support from black voters against Trump’s open racism. She called for support among Hispanic voters against Trump’s attacks on immigrants; she called for support from women against Trump’s reduction of abortion rights. And she got majorities with these groups – but much less than in 2020. Harris lost support among women, her majority falling from 57 per cent in 2020 to 54 per cent. These majorities were overcome by the increased majority of male voters supporting Trump in this election.
Harris lost the election heavily because the Democrats campaigned on the identity issues that concerned voters much less, while Trump campaigned on what mattered most to Americans in 2024: inflation, the cost of living and what is perceived as uncontrolled immigration.
Three out of four Americans who said that inflation caused them and their family severe hardship in the last year voted for Trump. And as I have argued in previous posts, the perception that average American households have suffered a loss in living standards in the last four years is no myth, contrary to the views of mainstream economists.
Between 2020-2023, real pretax income growth for the bottom 50% of income earners in the US was basically zero. Prices of goods and services are up over 20% since the end of the pandemic and for basic foodstuffs and services it is even higher. Moreover, the huge hike in interest rates by the Federal Reserve to ‘control’ inflation drove up mortgage rates, insurance premiums, car lease payment and credit card bills.
Inflation and the drop in living standards for many Americans was blamed by sufficient numbers of voters on the Biden-Harris administration. As in many other countries, incumbent governments that presided over the post-pandemic period have been ousted. Indeed, it is the first time since the beginning of universal suffrage that all the incumbent parties in developed countries have lost vote share. The Democrats are the latest – Germany next.
In 2020, Trump was the incumbent and was blamed for his disastrous handling of the COVID pandemic. But in 2024, the Biden-Harris administration has been blamed for the failure to deal with inflation and for not stopping immigration. Many Americans saw ‘uncontrolled immigration’ as causing a loss of jobs and rising crime – against all the evidence. Nevertheless, this fear had traction, especially in small towns and rural areas.
Biden and Harris crowed about a vibrant, healthy, low unemployment US economy, better than anywhere else. But sufficient American voters were not convinced of this message coming from the so-called ‘liberal elite’, given their own experience. They reckoned they were losing out because of high prices and costs, precarious jobs and uncontrolled immigration that threatened their livelihoods, while the rich and educated in Wall Street and in the mega hi-tech companies made billions.
Of course, Trump won’t change any of that – on the contrary, his pals and financial backers are a bunch of rogue billionaires who look to gain yet more riches from cuts in taxes and deregulation of their activities.
But elections are just a snapshot of public opinion at one moment – nothing stands still.
Note: the voting figures have been corrected from the first draft of this post now that full voting data are available.
- Michael Roberts is an economist and author, you can follow Michael Roberts’ blog on Twitter/X, Facebook and YouTube. You can find out more about Michael Roberts here.
- This article was originally published by Michael Roberts’ blog The Next Recession on 9 November 2024.
‘Is it the economy, stupid? Why politicians need to create a human-felt economy’
For nearly the last half century, the top issue for US voters has been the economy. But as the dust starts to settle on the results of last week’s election, that decades-long trend of economic performance determining the next president is looking like a defunct litmus test.
Despite Biden and Harris overseeing an economy that has outperformed many others worldwide – recovering from a fifty-year high in inflation with 2.9% GDP growth – Trump’s sweeping victory might suggest that a stronger economy be damned.
But a different take is also possible. That the economy was, in fact, a crucial factor, just not by the indicators that economists and the media are used to reporting. Instead, what can be called the ‘human-felt’ economy was crucial. And this is something Labour should pay close attention to if the party wants to secure a second term.
Why did Trump win?
Trump increased his vote share across the board by almost every metric, from nearly every demographic to every state. He became the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote. The why behind this sweeping victory will take time to study and understand. Speaking to one voter in a state that voted 59% for Trump, the answer came back in large part to one thing – the economy.
But by most measures, the US economy is better off than almost any other global economy.
The Biden administration has been able to bring inflation down to 2.4% with only 4% unemployment, while real GDP has grown annually by nearly 3%. Compare that to the UK, which has barely seen any positive GDP growth over the same period.
READ MORE: ‘Five lessons for Starmer’s Labour government from Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris’
The person I spoke to said that while they didn’t know anything about how other countries were doing, what they did know was that, “The prices of groceries are still high even though we don’t have supply and demand issues. Housing is still high, no one can afford rent, but even with them raising wages – everything is still really expensive and no one‘s getting paid enough to afford it.”
This sentiment seems to go against what we see in the official statistics. Yet, this is at the heart of the idea of the human-felt economy.
I wrote previously that the way politicians speak about inflation is unhelpful. In the eyes of many UK voters, falling rates of inflation have been erroneously taken to mean prices are falling. Therefore, when voters go to the supermarket and do not see lower prices, they feel misled. This has led to high inflation playing a part in the downfall of nearly every government that had to preside over the 2021-2023 inflationary period and then go to the polls after, from Australia to Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan.
In people’s minds, Harris was strongly associated with what people thought of ‘Bidenomics’. What seems clear from the election results is that people were not happy about the economy, growth or no growth. Their economic experience told a different story. It seems that the fact that Biden and Harris were in charge during this period of inflation period was enough.
A human-felt economy
Rather than the economy not being a priority for voters; it seems it was as important as ever. But, instead of it being the economy of economists, it was the human-felt economy that likely swung it for US voters – “That’s your bloody GDP. Not ours”, to quote an infamous heckle during the Brexit referendum.
Or, in this case, ‘That’s your bloody falling inflation rate, not ours.’ The Democrats’ warning cries of a failing democracy and a stripping of women’s rights did not seem to permeate effectively enough against the cost of rent, gas and groceries. For more voters across nearly every state and demographic to vote for Trump this year than four years ago shows that for people it wasn’t about the threats of the future; it was about the economic present.
What can Labour learn from this? For one, Labour owes its recent rise to the same inflationary environment that may have helped to unseat an ideologically aligned US ally. But the lesson should be clear: growth alone isn’t enough if people aren’t feeling it.
READ MORE: ‘As Trump returns to the White House, the Western centre-left will need to do some soul searching’
The government has championed an agenda of growth while pledging not to raise taxes on ‘working people’. Over the next five years, though, the challenge will be: will voters reward a cautious approach if, even without higher taxes, everything else feels worse? Likely, not.
This US election may also have direct implications for the UK economy. If Trump goes ahead with a proposed 20% flat tariff, the UK economy could take a 0.7% GDP hit in the first year alone. Labour may also face pressure to increase defence spending while at the same time trying to generate growth that’s felt by the UK public. Keeping inflation low may be critical to achieving this.
There is still a lot to unpick from the US election. However, it seems clear that American voters did not see Harris’s economic track record as convincing, and were willing to put aside whatever reservations they had about Trump. Maybe not ‘it’s the economy, stupid’, but ‘it’s MY economy, stupid’.
Why Trump Won – Grace Blakeley
By Grace Blakeley
In the wake of Trump’s second victory, we could have expected the usual triumphalism from America’s growing contingent of right-wing extremists, and the usual handwringing from liberal commentators.
These two groups have set about attacking one another online, with American liberals lamenting the fact that half of their country is either evil or stupid, and the extreme right celebrating its fantasies of total domination over the people they perceive as weak – from women, to trans people, to migrants.
But these two groups each make up, at most, 20% of the American population. They are vocal, and they are loud, and they are much more likely to be amplified on both social and traditional forms of media. But they are far from being the majority.
Understanding what actually happened at this election requires understanding how everyone else voted, and why. And it’s more complicated than the simplistic explanation of ‘America just lurched to the right’.
It is, of course, concerning that so many people voted for Trump, given his increasingly virulent proto-fascist rhetoric. But that doesn’t mean that they voted for fascism.
Fascism doesn’t gain sway among the majority because their hatred of minorities overrides all other concerns. It gains sway among the majority because the fascists promise order, prosperity, and, as was said about Mussolini’s Italy, to make the trains run on time.
Fascists, in other words, promise to be effective managers, which is why they tend to do well during periods of political or economic crisis. The modern far-right, whether you see it as fascist or not, pledges to deliver on this promise by protecting and boosting ‘the economy’.
There is one statistic that captures these dynamics more effectively than any other. 73% of those who voted for Trump reported that inflation had caused their families ‘severe hardship’, next to 25% Harris voters. 78% Harris voters reported that inflation had caused their families ‘no hardship’, compared to 20% Trump voters.
It is hard to overemphasise the sense of decline experienced by working class Americans over the last several decades.
One 2018 study from the Pew Research Centre found that in real terms, the median wage in the US had barely changed since 1979. Wages have, however, increased substantially for those at the top.
When the pandemic hit, these issues became even more acute. Nearly 10 million US workers lost their jobs during the COVID 19 pandemic. Inflation outpaced wage growth between 2021 and 2024, meaning that those who did keep their jobs were worse off in real terms.
But the effects of these crises were not felt evenly, with working class households experiencing this economic decline much more acutely than those at the top, as the inflation statistic above indicates. There is a deep and pervasive sense among the American working class, reflected across the rich world, that things are getting worse.
Official poverty rates haven’t moved much in recent years, remaining at a fairly high rate of 11.5%, or about 38 million people – and Black folks, Latinos, and women are all more likely to live in poverty. But the majority of the support for right-wing populists does not generally come from the poor. It comes from working class voters anxious about becoming poor.
The high rates of poverty and inequality in the US actually strengthen the right wing populist message. Seeing the extent of poverty and homelessness reinforces the anxiety felt by working class households with falling living standards. Without a social safety net, they know that if they lose their jobs, or see a substantial fall in their earnings, there may be no coming back.
The competitive individualism evident in all rich societies, but particularly pervasive in the US, works to reinforce these feelings of isolation and fear. We are encouraged to believe that we have to compete with one another for resources – for jobs, for commodities, even romantic partners. And those who fail in those competitions are considered ‘losers’.
Seeing the success of those at the top – and all the glory and status that comes alongside this success – encourages working class men to fantasise about how much better life could be if they could just beat the competition and win for once. These fantasies are just as much about being treated with dignity and respect as they are about controlling resouces.
The economic anxiety being experienced throughout the American working class isn’t just about economics – it’s about identity.
These economic/identity anxieties explain the increase in support for Trump among the American working class. It’s not just that he’s promised to fix the economy – a promise that people are more likely to believe given that many of them would have felt better off when he was President. It’s that he speaks to the anxieties of working class Americans – particularly men – who feel like they’re fighting tooth and nail to keep their place in the social hierarchy.
Trump explains these feelings by telling the working class that the threat they face comes from migrants and welfare scroungers rather than greedy bosses. But more than that, he identifies himself as a ‘winner’. And they believe that, in Trump’s economy, they could be winners too.
Liberals love to castigate Trump voters for their stupidity and their racism. But this stance is intellectually lazy. Trump doubled his vote share among Black men, and secured nearly half of the Latino vote. Something else is clearly going on here.
Status-anxious working class men flocked to Trump because they felt that voting for him was the only way for them to stave off economic decline. For these men, economic decline doesn’t just mean poverty, it means becoming a ‘loser’. Trump played into these feelings of anxiety by stoking up hatred against ‘out’ groups, and encouraging young men to identify with his own power and success.
But this is not the only way to respond to people’s anxieties about economic decline. The other way would be to actually deal with the causes of this economic decline.
Trump’s presidency will not fix the challenges the average working class American is facing. His tax cuts may provide a boost to stock markets and growth over the short-term, but they will not increase the living standards of the majority.
The only way to improve people’s living standards is to invest in the everyday economy. This means investments in physical and social infrastructure – in the transport and energy networks, and the health and education systems, that people rely on to live decent lives. Conducting this investment in a way that supports decarbonization would actually create more jobs and improve health outcomes.
It also means supporting the labour movement, which not only improves living standards, but gives people a sense of belonging and community at work. Supporting workers and communities to organise themselves is the best way to counter the fear that spreads so easily in competitive individualistic societies.
Combatting the far right requires us to invest in the everyday economy. But it also requires us to replace societies in which people aren’t constantly living in fear of falling down the hierarchy with those in which they feel part of a community that will always have their back.
- Grace Blakeley is an Economist and Author, you can follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
- You can subscribe to Grace’s Substack to keep up to date with her work and writing.
- This article was originally published on Grace’s Substack on 8 November 2024.
What Does Trump’s Victory Mean for Rising Global Tensions and War – Stop the War
By Stop the War
What will Donald Trump’s election in the US mean for war and peace? What is behind Israel’s genocide in Gaza? And why does the media not tell the truth about wars and militarism? These are just some of the questions the Stop the War Coalition will be discussing at our Anti-War Convention on Sunday (17 November) as we work to deepen and strengthen our movement.
From the Middle East to Eastern Europe, we face permanent war. Great power conflict looms, risking global conflagration. The convention will bring together leading campaigners, commentators, experts, activists and trade unionists to assess the situation in the Middle East, Ukraine and the Asia Pacific and to discuss how to strengthen the resistance.
Speakers include the poet and presenter Michael Rosen; the British-Palestinian plastic surgeon and Rector of the University of Glasgow Ghassan Abu-Sittah; Fran Heathcote, General Secretary of the PCS trade union; the journalist Peter Oborne; and Jeremy Corbyn MP.
We will also hear from Stop the War convenor Lindsey German, TSSA general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust, journalist and activist Taj Ali, SOAS Palestine society president Haya Adam, Mohammed Kozbar of the Finsbury Park Mosque and Declassified co-founder Matt Kennard.
Other sessions include Imperialism, Islamophobia and the Far Right, Sudan and the crisis in Africa, and the policing and politics of protest.
Trump’s decisive victory in the US presidential election has undoubtedly put him in a strong position and poses new challenges for the anti-war movement in Britain and internationally. The timing of our convention could not be more critical.
Trump won for a range of reasons, perhaps most importantly economic discontent. But his victory also owes much to the refusal of traditionally Democrat voters to endorse Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and for extending the war on the Palestinians to Lebanon.
Clearly a Harris victory would not have stopped Israel’s drive to war across the Middle East. But Trump’s close relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies in the region could well enable it to pursue its ambitions, including full control of Gaza and the West Bank.
There has already been some discussion in some left and anti-war groups that appears to be taking heart from Trump’s ‘America First’ rhetoric about stopping wars. But no one should. He is a racist and Islamophobe, who engaged in warmongering in his previous term. His record speaks for itself. Far from delivering peace, he doubled down on US wars and proxy wars, in Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
He also ordered new nuclear missiles, ripped up nuclear treaties and demanded increased NATO military spending. America First does not mean an end to US imperialism abroad, but an advancement of its corporate interests, including militarily.
And when he talks of bringing peace to Ukraine, which he may be able to do if he can get support for halting military and economic aid, it will likely be to focus on his commitment to an increasingly hot war with China.
He has also demanded that Nato allies increase their defence spending at the expense of funding areas such as health or education. Our government already spends billions on weapons and war while poverty spreads and services crumble at home.
Stop the War’s deputy president Andrew Murray wrote of Trump’s return that in Britain the critical issue remains disengaging from the US war chariot. Starmer, he said, is entirely committed to the war alliance with the US and will seek to influence Trump to maintain the Ukraine conflict, even though both the UK and US election results demonstrate that “liberal” imperialism and endless war are not vote-winners.
With that objective in mind, we urge everyone who opposes war to join us on 17 November and to organise delegations from local anti-war groups, trade union branches, universities, churches, mosques and elsewhere.
We face an extremely dangerous situation worldwide, with a growing arms race. We in the anti-war movement must redouble our efforts to end the genocide and wars in the Middle East. We also need the West to stop arming Ukraine if there is to be any chance of peace there, and for an end to the escalation of militarism and conflict aimed at China in the Pacific.
- Anti-War Convention: Stop the Drive to War! Sunday 17 November, 12 to 5pm, The Atrium, London, E2 6E. Book your tickets here.
- You can follow Stop the War on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
Trump’s triumph over centrism’s corpse
NOVEMBER 12, 2024
George Binette explores why the Democrats lost and what a second Trump term threatens.
After billions of dollars spent on advertising blitzes and scores of flights criss-crossing swing states, the post-mortems and recriminations have begun with endless reams of newsprint, millions of social media posts and thousands of hours of commentary from podcasting pundits offering explanations for Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House.
For the first time since 1892 a former US president has secured victory after losing the office. At one level, of course, this is a remarkable turn of events – a 78-year-old man with a recent criminal record, who fomented a lethal riot at the US Capitol building and shamelessly spews racist and misogynist rhetoric at his rallies – has won not just by a substantial margin (312 to 226) in the Electoral College, but with an absolute majority of the popular vote. Trump is only the second Republican presidential candidate to win more than 50% at a General Election since 1988.
In the immediate run-up to 5th November, most opinion polls had pointed to a dead heat. There were even outliers suggesting that Kamala Harris was leading Trump in historically Republican Iowa, a state he went on to win by 14 percentage points. Once more the proliferation of polls has generated more heat than light. What few pollsters predicted was a slump in voter turnout from nearly two-thirds of the registered electorate in 2020, a slump that severely impacted the chances of the Harris-Walz ticket and several Democrats in ‘down ballot’ races.
Harris haemorrhages votes
In short, Trump’s triumph was much more a case of a collapse in support for Harris, when compared to Joe Biden four years before. The Republican tally actually fell in Ohio, but in a bad election cycle for incumbents internationally the absolute vote for Harris plunged far more. Trump’s most significant improvements came in the seven swing states, where the evidence points to notable gains compared to the last election. In contrast to the nation as a whole, most of those states seem to have witnessed an actual uptick in turnout to Trump’s benefit.
Tallies, especially in Pacific coast and southwestern states, are not yet complete, but it appears that Trump’s absolute vote will be around 75 million – barely higher than in 2020 – while Harris’ total fell by more than 10 million from the 81 million votes notched up by Biden’s previous campaign. Even my native state of Massachusetts, one of only three states where Harris topped 60% of the poll and so ‘blue’ that Republicans didn’t contest seven of its nine Congressional seats, saw a swing of just over four percentage points to Trump compared to 2020. Some 255,000 fewer voters cast ballots. All told, Harris’ share of the popular vote bettered Biden’s by slender margins in just three jurisdictions with electoral college votes: Washington, DC, Washington state and solidly Republican Utah.
Meanwhile, a second Trump administration looks likely to wield a stronger grip on political power than the first with Republicans having already secured a majority of at least six in the 100-seat Senate, with incumbent Democrats defeated in Ohio, Montana, and Pennsylvania (not yet officially declared). While final results for 20 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives have yet to emerge, Republicans are all but certain to retain control of the lower Congressional chamber. Trump’s first term empowered a hard right majority on the Supreme Court for a generation: a further four years will afford the opportunity to appoint many more social reactionaries to federal judgeships – in short a Trump trifecta.
Democrats: autopsy of defeat
Inevitably, for leading Democrats and their media outriders, the inquest – or rather the blame game – has begun, given the scale of Harris’ and her party’s defeat. The Democrats’ grande dame, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, spoke to the New York Times pinning blame on a lame duck Joe Biden, not least for his refusal to withdraw far sooner. The Biden camp’s insistence on pursuit of a second term for an octogenarian who had displayed physical frailty and signs of cognitive decline long before the humiliating ‘debate’ with Trump in June undoubtedly damaged the prospects for any potential Democratic successor.
After the initial burst of energy and enthusiasm around Harris’ candidacy in late July and August, it had become increasingly obvious that her campaign could not disassociate itself from the unpopular administration in which she had served. It had few, if any, policies that resonated, much less amounted to a coherent vision for inspiring sceptical voters.
In the campaign’s final weeks, the Democratic standard-bearer appeared as if she were trying to lead a curious ‘popular front’ against the supposedly fascist Trump. Those orchestrating the campaign seemed set on evoking memories of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 approach and, of course, the repetition contributed to an even more disastrous outcome. Harris travelled to the likes of Michigan with former Republican representative for Wyoming, Liz Cheney, and boasted of an endorsement from Cheney’s father, the former vice-president who was one of the principal architects of the Iraq war.
The Democratic machine also dispatched New York Representative Ritchie Torres, a darling of the vehemently pro-Israel AIPAC, to Michigan in what seemed a calculated snub to the nation’s largest Arab-American population, which had already shown its dismay with Joe Biden’s unstinting support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza in the state’s Democratic primary.
The campaign touted the endorsement of billionaire media mogul Mark Cuban, a self-professed fan of philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand, an ardent opponent of the welfare state and defender of laissez-faire capitalism. The Democrats even squandered resources on countering a largely imaginary threat from the Green Party’s Jill Stein, who some conveniently blamed for Clinton’s 2016 loss. In the end Stein’s vote was derisory on a national scale and while voters for her may have cost Harris a county or two in Michigan Stein was not really a factor in Harris’ loss of the state to Trump by 80,000 votes.
Harris did pose as a consistent champion of abortion/reproductive rights, yet she failed to persuade sufficient numbers to her camp around the issue. Instead, electorates in several states won by Trump supported ballot initiatives that at least partially enshrined women’s right to choose. Trump’s decision last spring to back away from a federally mandated abortion ban didn’t dent his support among evangelical Christians and may well have kept some voters in the Republican camp. Even in now solidly Republican Florida, 57% of voters backed a pro-choice referendum, albeit falling just short of the constitutionally mandated 60% required for passage.
Racism and misogyny unquestionably contributed to Trump’s victory, though it is impossible to quantify their significance. A Trump presidency will encourage a range of ultra-nationalists and fascists both domestically and internationally. But explanations for Harris’ defeat that rely on the uniquely reactionary attitudes of blue-collar workers or the machismo of Latino men somehow seduced by Trump’s vulgar bloviating ignore the billionaire’s capacity to tap into deep-rooted economic grievances. This year’s result should also put to rest the cynical and lazy assumption that ‘people of colour’ constitute an homogenous voting bloc even as Democratic fears about African-American men deserting the party in droves proved exaggerated.
Bernie Sanders, who easily won re-election to the Senate from Vermont, proffered a quite different explanation for Harris’ stinging defeat. In a lengthy press statement, Sanders accused the party of having “abandoned working-class voters.” Sanders’ own left credentials have suffered over the last year as he was slow to call for a Gaza ceasefire, refused to join the chorus calling for Biden’s withdrawal from the race and loyally campaigned for the Harris-Walz ticket, even though marginalised after the party’s Chicago convention.
Nonetheless, Sanders remains a significant national figure whose pronouncements generate mass media attention and many retweets. And his comments clearly struck a raw nerve with leading lights in the party’s leadership. Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison dismissed Sanders’ criticism as “straight up BS,” claiming that Biden had been “the most pro-worker president of [his] lifetime.” Harrison cited some genuine justification for his latter statement, but then again Harrison is just 48 and the bar was set exceptionally low.
The Democrats’ abandonment of wide swaths of the US working class long predates the Biden administration or even Bill Clinton’s first term of office. That said, Biden’s ineffectual response to the sharpest spike in inflation in nearly two generations contributed substantially to his unpopularity. Headline inflation peaked at a little over 9% in mid-2022, but food prices rose far more sharply by 35% during Biden’s term. Attempts to assert that the economy was, in fact, booming and ‘you’ve rarely had it so good’ cut no ice with much of the electorate, though the majority of ‘union households’ did vote for the Democratic ticket, according to the Washington Post.
Harris’ brother-in-law, Tony West, appeared to assume a role as the campaign’s chief economic adviser. West, a former Obama administration official, took leave from his day job as the top lawyer for Uber and his name repeatedly crops up in media reports as central to pulling Harris rightwards on issues like the rate of capital gains tax where she positioned herself to the right of Biden. She swiftly beat a retreat from an admittedly vague proposal to curb corporate price gouging, which fuelled the inflationary surge in both Britain and the US. The remaining slivers of progressive economic policies never featured prominently. A post-election New York Times article featured the headline: “Harris Had A Wall Street-Approved Economic Pitch.” This sentence doesn’t explain Trump’s success, but it encapsulates much of what lay behind Harris’ failure.
The immigration men
The Trump-Vance campaign and Republicans more generally succeeded in weaponising immigration whether at the southern border with Mexico or in states far beyond it. Most of the electorate may not have believed Trump’s September rant about (perfectly legal) Haitian migrants eating domestic pets in Springfield, Ohio, but the campaign struck a chord with all too many in attributing blame to immigration for a litany of domestic woes from crime to waiting times for medical care.
I watched much of the televised debate between the now Vice-President elect JD Vance and Harris’ running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz on 1st October. Vance, a first-term Senator from Ohio and author of the best-selling and highly polemical memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, proved a quite polished media performer, far more articulate and coherent than Trump, and much cagier in promoting straightforward fabrications. But like Trump he kept returning to the question of the border and the damaging impact of immigration on the nation’s social fabric. The genial, if slightly oafish, Walz was caught flat-footed and struggled to rebut Vance’s argument before generously suggesting that Vance – in contrast to Trump – might like to work on a “bipartisan solution.”
Of course, the polite exchange between Vance and Walz, always of marginal relevance to this year’s race, is now of purely academic interest. Trump’s ‘beautiful wall’ (paid for by Mexico) never became a reality in his first term, but there is every reason to take Trump at his word when he pledges to pursue ‘mass deportations’ from day one, partly because he would be building on existing practice. The United States ‘repatriated’ some 1.1 million people (most ‘voluntarily’) in 2023, though that was a slight drop from the previous year’s figure. To forcibly remove literally millions, as Trump has repeatedly suggested, would require a systematic redirection of resources, which looks altogether possible given the significance of immigration for much of the Republican base.
A future article will consider in detail the implications of a second Trump presidency and the prospects for resistance in the US itself. In the meantime, Trump’s victory is also one for the most reactionary elements in the US capitalist class from the bosses of extractive industries and enormous hedge funds through to the ‘world’s richest man,’ Elon Musk. Whether the new Republican administration will seek to implement the Heritage Foundation’s notorious ‘Project 2025’ in full remains to be seen, but Trump’s second term has a much clearer ideological blueprint than the first.
A glimmer of hope arises from the modest resurgence of union activism across multiple sectors. There were partial breakthroughs at the likes of Starbucks and Amazon, workers at Boeing struck for seven weeks to win a 38% rise over four years and hotel workers in several cities have mounted successful action in recent months. The United Auto Workers finally succeeded in winning recognition at a large Volkswagen plant in the historically anti-union South. A second Trump term will undoubtedly create a more hostile environment for workplace recruitment and organisation, creating a crucial flashpoint for effective resistance.
George Binette is a Massachusetts native, who has previously been a UNISON branch secretary and the Trade Union Liaison Officer for Hackney North & Stoke Newington Labour Party.
Image: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2024/02/10/trump-vows-to-undo-bidens-gun-restrictions-if-re-elected/ Creator: Matt Rourke | Credit: AP Copyright: Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Licence: Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0
Paul Le Blanc: ‘The key is struggle
US historian Paul Le Blanc
Monday 11 November 2024
Were you surprised by the election result?
It wasn’t clear to me who was going to win. I was hoping for a decisive defeat of Donald Trump. The only way to do that, is if there had been a fighting revolutionary policy to defeat Trump. It would have been a great idea, if only there had been an organisation that could have initiated such a struggle.
The standard criticisms of the Democratic Party hold true. It’s a pro-capitalist, imperialist party—and Kamala Harris made it clear that she stood on that terrain. Her rhetoric was pro-working class and against the billionaires on the one hand, but there wasn’t anything clear that differentiated her from the Democratic party.
According to the numbers I’ve seen, you know the Democratic Party lost over 10 million votes and one set of figures I saw indicated Trump lost 3 million. But a lot of people who would have made a difference didn’t vote.
In some areas, yes of course, Palestine played a big role. Overall, I think the biggest role was played in terms of the economic realities.
The working class has been betrayed by the Democratic Party over and over and over—that was a decisive factor.
I think race and gender to some extent was a factor. That could have been overcome, I think, if Harris had been seen by the working class majority as their candidate. But she wasn’t—and couldn’t be given the nature of the Democratic party.
I think that we are in for hard times with Trump. At the same time, I think it might have a radicalising impact among some people.
The key is the struggle against the bad things that are coming down. And ultimately, we need a movement but also an organisation—a revolutionary organisation. We do not have one and we need that badly.
We have had Trump before in 2016, we’ve seen what kind of policies he put forward then and we’ve seen what kind of protests took place in response to it. Do you think it will be the same again repeated in 2024 or if not, what is different?
The second term will not be a simple repeat of the first—it’s a much more dangerous time now.
In my article on the logic of Trump, which is in Links and Tempest magazines, one of the things I talk about is Trumpism.
Trump is a jerk—but Trumpism is much bigger than just Trump. You’ve got a mobilisation of a military wing—the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and so on.
You have got a number of people who are ready to be Trump’s advisors and policymakers who are not your standard bureaucrats and standard Republicans. They are going to be Trump loyalists. So, it will be easier for him, and for the Trump movement, to carry out things that are horrible.
There absolutely will be protests. But Trump wants to use the army to repress them and maybe people will be shot down this time. I think that we’ve had a foretaste, but it’s going to be worse this time.
You mentioned a revolutionary strategy to beat Trump. What would that look like?
What I’d like to see, is an organisation like People Before Profit in Ireland. It is engaged in serious electoral activity, but also in social movements and puts forward a socialist vision.
We need to use Marxism to figure out what’s what and what is to be done. And, we need to express that in a way that working class people can understand and respond to.
That’s missing but that’s what’s needed. And then, the specific tactics that would have to be worked out by such a party.
Isn’t it really hard to break through electorally in the US, compared to Ireland?
Absolutely, it is hard. In Allegheny County, where I’m active in Pittsburgh, we have been able to form some working relationship with socialists and radicals who are in the Democratic Party not sucked into the apparatus. Their instincts are good. There is some stuff that could be done there—and, ultimately, we are going to have to run independent of the Democratic Party.
What Harris and Nancy Pelosi emphasises, is that it is a capitalist party. When push comes to shove, it is not our party. It’s not on our side, it’s on the side of the capitalists, the billionaires and the corporations.
I think that it would be difficult to make that breakthrough that you are talking about. But on a local level, there are actual struggles on the ground and some electoral work we could do. It will take a while to accomplish that.
My concern is we may not have all the time we need. It’s not only with the catastrophe of Trump, but also the climate catastrophe that’s continuing to unfold. My book on Vladimir Lenin factors in the notion of responding to catastrophe and forging revolution—that’s what he did and it’s what we must do. But how much time do we have? That is the question in my mind.
How can the US left beat Trump? Interviews with activists
After the Democrats’ failures paved the way for Trump’s return to the White House, activists in the United States spoke to Thomas Foster about what the left needs to do to resist the far right president
Renee, Sandy, Eric, Annon, Virginia, Nathaniel (clockwise from top)
SOCIALIST WORKER
The vile possibilities of a Trump presidency are starting to become clear. This week the president‑elect appointed Tom Homan, the hated former head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice), to be in charge of all US borders.
Homan helped formulate the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. That move separated over 5,000 migrant children from their parents, with no tracking process or records that would allow them to be reunited.
Now Trump wants Homan to head up his plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants within his first year in office.
Fascist Steve Bannon, a strategist in the last Trump administration, says, “The first 100 days of Trump’s second term are going to be pretty incredible. We have 15 million illegal aliens that we are going to remove… Is it going to be rough? Of course it’s going to be rough.”
Such a plan would entail workplace raids on thousands of farms, building sites and factories. It will mean building hundreds of deportation camps. And it would require a huge expansion of the state.
There will be other frontlines. A Trump programme of tax cuts will hand even more to the wealthy. His tax laws already mean those in the top 1 percent of incomes save an average of more than £50,000 a year.
Now, Trump wants to go further and slash what remains of the US’s limited public services. Trump’s war for the rich has started. Socialist Worker spoke to the people determined to stop him.
Sandy Hudson, anti-racist activist
The election shows that the Democrats can’t out Republican the Republicans. Instead of opposing racism, they capitulated and that helped to justify what the far right is saying.
I think people will fight back against Trump’s mass deportation plan. People’s families would be ripped apart and it would be a scale of nightmare that’s unimaginable.
There’s only one thing to do now which is strengthen organising. But when we do anti-racist organising, it has to be organising that has to be attuned to clear cut policy demands. After 2020 when the Black Lives Matter movement became popular, it attached itself to the idea of opposing racism but the policy part was missed.
We need to end the prison industrial complex, defund the police and find a different way of creating safety in communities.
We have to be ready to protect those threatened. But we need to attack the system as well, building political movements that look at structure and material conditions.
People need an actual choice in terms of political parties as currently we aren’t getting that.
Virginia who works for a trade union
There is an urgency in resurrecting anti-racist and anti‑fascist networks.
We need to argue that our organising can’t just flare up for a couple of weeks every four years—it has to be sustained.
It’s a long-term struggle against systemic issues that we know are rooted in an unjust and undemocratic system of profit.
We have to relate to trade union members who voted for Trump with a radical analysis—not a liberal analysis that says vote Democrat because they aren’t Republican.
How did Trump win? Full coverage of the US presidential election
Many workers see through the rhetoric from the union bureaucracy. They see that Democratic politicians have failed us as workers.
We need to focus on workers who are organising, going on strike and making significant gains.
And we need to highlight how Trump will carry through attacks on unions and the ability to form unions.
We shouldn’t dismiss or feel disdain towards union members who voted Trump.
Instead, union leaders need to see that telling people to vote for a Democratic candidate who doesn’t have workers’ best interests at heart is not working.
Mike, a teacher from Michigan
We need to get organised. It’s not about midterm elections in two years’ time—it’s about fighting now.
The political establishment argues that institutions will save us through checks and balances, but I wouldn’t trust institutions.
Look at the Supreme Court—it’s carried out reactionary measures all the way back to the 1850s when it defended slavery.
And the institutions are being taken over by Trump.
We can’t leave it to the Democrats or electoral politics, we have to get stuck into social movements and trade unions. In the long-run it’s about rebuilding our structures as a left and unions, ensuring a more grassroots union structure and creating a credible left.
It’s going to be a difficult few years. But it’s four years where Trump won’t win every battle—and whether he loses depends on us.
Renee Bracey Sherman, author of Liberating Abortion
Trump’s victory is not unexpected because the US is a racist country and racism is something that sells.
When it comes to abortion, it is very popular and people do want abortion access.
But Republicans are clear that they are going to bring additional surveillance and criminalise the use of abortion pills. And we fully expect Trump to criminalise abortion nationwide.
Activists have to double down on what we have been doing—strengthening community networks to ensure abortion is available whenever possible and enabling people to travel to wherever they need.
We need to make sure people are aware of self-managed abortion protocols and make sure abortion pills get into the hands of people who need them.
People forget that people are dying because of abortion bans. The Harris campaign tried to tie Trump to these abortion bans but Roe v Wade fell under Biden.
Harris couldn’t win on abortion alone, but the Democrats moved towards the centre and that was disappointing for those on the left who believe in reproductive justice. It made it difficult to show up.
Palestine activist Nathaniel
We will see Trump give unwavering support to Israel. The Palestine movement must organise a huge fightback. We saw it with the encampments and that’s the level of struggle we need.
And we need to connect the Palestine movement with the labour movement.
You can point to the huge money that the US is giving to Israel while many here can’t afford a roof over their head.
And we need unity between different workers’ organisations against fascist groups that are emerging and using Trump as an ideologue for their ideas. The Proud Boys, the 3 Percenters, the Patriotic Front—these are threatening groups that need to be challenged.
There has to be unity in action. But that doesn’t mean uniting with the Democrats—a capitalist party that is at the root of the far right’s growth and the decaying system.
Compromising with the Democrats would stop any movement from being radicalised.
Annon from Portland, Oregon
In 2016, Trump didn’t have the resources or a plan—but he does now. I’m definitely starting to worry.
The only way we can stop his plans is by shutting things down. But the socialist left is so disorganised and scattered after being attacked for decades.
The Democrats won’t go anywhere to the left—look at how they teamed up with war criminal Dick Cheney.
Hopefully there’s an opening for the left with the Democrats in disarray.
So many people are living pay cheque to pay cheque and don’t have savings. We don’t have a welfare system that’s working.
The anger at the system could be harnessed by the left—the mood is there.
Eric, a socialist based in New York
Kamala Harris said things aren’t so bad. The Democrats didn’t point to inequality and the profits the rich and corporations are raking in, attack their influence and argue that migrants aren’t the problem.
Instead, it was Trump who was saying things are wrong, blaming liberal elites for bringing in migrants to take people’s jobs.
There was a Jacobin magazine article that said focus groups showed that the Democrats pushing a populist economic message would have resonated with working class people.
But the Democrats couldn’t have put that message because they are structurally tied to big business. And the issue with the Democrats saying Trump is a threat to democracy is that their idea of it is the status quo.
It’s saying he is a threat to the existing order but people don’t like the existing order.
