Version imprimableTrump won not only the electoral college vote 312 to 226, but on this third election bid also for the first time won the popular vote, more than 74.6 million votes to 70.9 million. The Republicans gained three seats in the U.S. Senate—West Virginia, Ohio and Montana—giving them a majority and ending four years of Democratic Party control. Votes for the House are still being counted, but the Republicans appear likely to win there too.
Trump’s overall vote total was not crushing, but he had the continuing support from his base of older, better-off white voters, from suburban and rural voters, and also found new support among working class, Back, Latino, and women voters. He won the votes of 56% of those without a college education, won 13% of Black voters, and won 46% of Latino votes. He received 45% of the votes of those from union households.
Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris won fewer votes than President Joe Biden won in the 2020 election, including fewer votes from women and Black voters. Many people felt housing and food prices were too high, while others were motivated by Trump’s racist, sexist, and xenophobic message. Hundreds of thousand Democratic Party voters simply didn’t show up in several states, such as Ohio. Trump received greater support in 9 out of 10 counties throughout the country. While there was no general realignment, there was a rightward shift throughout the country.
As pundits noted, Trump has now created a multiracial working-class base for the Republican Party. For decades the Democrats claimed to be the party of the working class, now Republicans have taken that title from them.
Why did the Democrats lose? As Bernie Sanders wrote immediately after the election, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
Having lost the election, the Democrats face a crisis of identity and ideology. Bernie Sanders asked, “Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Probably not.”
The party leadership remains centrist, but many want the party to turn left, toward the working class.
Most progressives voted for Democrats, to their disappointment. Others voted for left parties, to no avail. Physician Jill Stein, presidential candidate of the Green Party won only 685,149 votes (0.5%), while the Black theologian Cornel West received even fewer. The left too will have to reevaluate its electoral strategy.
Trump Takes Command—and the Resistance Has Begun
President-elect Donald J. Trump claimed in his victory speech, “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” While this is not true—Obama had a much bigger victory with 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes in 2008—nevertheless Trump will attempt to rule as an autocrat, imposing his will on the nation. Whether his authoritarian plans will lead to fascism remains to be seen, but the broad left is beginning to resist.
We can expect him to begin by carrying out his promises both to his working-class and middle-class base and to his billionaire partners such as tech mogul Elon Musk and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos.
He has promised working people that he will close the border and carry out a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants who he claimed are taking Americans’ jobs and bringing violence to their communities. There are now 22,000 Border Patrol officers. Sealing the U.S.-Mexico border—which is 1,954-miles (3,145-kilometre) long—will require more the current 22,000 BP agents. Trump says he will mobilize the National Guard to supplement the BP, but he would need the state governors’ permission and not all would give it.
Trump promised to deport the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, but rounding them up and deporting them would be an enormous job costing millions and requiring many more than the existing 21,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Families will be uprooted and broken up and there will be resistance. These policies would have an enormous and disastrous impact on the U.S. economy, since many immigrants work in construction, hotels and restaurants, elder care and childcare, cleaning, gardening, agriculture and other industries.
Trump plans to take greater control over the U.S. government, beginning by ending civil service protections for hundreds of thousands of federal employees who would become at-will employees, subject to firing at any time. He says he will revamp the Justice Department and use it to go after his political enemies.
On the economic front, Trump has promised new tax cuts and undoubtedly, they will be greatest for the rich, as he did in 2017. If he does this it would cost the government $4 trillion in revenues over the next decade. He has also said he would cut taxes on social security (retirement) payments of working people and taxes for tipped workers.
Trump proposes tariffs of 10% on most goods but of up to 60% on Chinese products and even 200% on Chinese cars. Such tariffs would increase prices for Americans and would also disrupt global trade and investment.
Trump will reverse President Joe Biden’s climate policies reducing subsidies to green energy and providing inducement to petroleum companies to drill for oil. And he will undo Biden’s pro-labor policies.
The resistance to Trump that first appeared with the Women’s March at his inauguration in 2016 has revived. Leftist-led demonstrations of hundreds took place after his election in Seattle, Portland, Berkeley, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Philadelphia. On November 9 more than a thousand union, environmental, feminist, and immigrant organizations marched in New York City.
A new national coalition of over 200 organizations has formed led by the Working Families Party, Seed the Vote, Movement for Black Lives, and Showing up for Racial Justice. The group held a mass call/livestream titled “Making Meaning in the Moment” attended and viewed by 140,000 people.
As one participant wrote, ‘The dominant politics were for all-out resistance to a Trump administration and re-centering progressives in the multiracial, gender-inclusive working class.”
If the protest movement becomes massive in the streets, Trump has said he is prepared to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1792, that authorizes the president to use the U.S. military within the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence.
Trump is an authoritarian. Will he create a fascist party and state? We will be watching developments.
