Why Donald Trump won

Joe Biden depressed Americans; Kamala Harris patronised them. So they decided to get Trump back

Trump has done it again. Graciously accepting victory on stage at Mar-a-Lago – “everybody up here is great” – Trump claimed to head “the greatest political movement of all time”, and JD Vance heralded “the greatest political comeback in the history of America.” It seems America has made Trump great again.
The polls were right: Trump v Harris was close with a slight Trump advantage, sweeping the sun-belt and edging the rustier states in the north. A repeat of 2016, possibly more decisive. Even as the winner rambled into his mic – “we all think our children are amazing” – the pundits didn’t want to believe their ears. The mood on my TV right now is funereal, which is most amusing.
How could crazy old Trump – on trial for countless crimes – win a second term? Because to millions of Americans, he’s not so crazy. As the results trickled in, a friend sent me a photo of a frozen chicken. He said: “This cost $10-11” a couple of years ago. Today it’s $20. That’s why his partner had voted Republican for the first time in her life. She can’t afford the Democrats.
Exit polling highlighted three major issues: abortion, democracy, the economy. The first two played to Harris’ strengths, the last to Trump’s – to memories of his term, pre-Covid, when the stock market soared and unemployment fell to historic lows. Under Joe Biden, Americans endured soaring inflation. This, coupled with Biden’s physical decline, set the country on an emotional downward spiral. The Democrats looked incompetent, distracted by woke. Unable to bring peace in Ukraine or Israel; humiliated in Afghanistan.
In other words, the conditions for a Trump victory were set long before Biden pulled out of the race, a few weeks of melodrama that perhaps distracted us from the essential dynamic of the race: incumbents don’t win when voters are miserable.
Harris stepped into Biden’s shoes and deserves credit for a bounce in Democrat support. But she failed to follow through with a clear agenda or transformative policies. With supreme arrogance, she attempted to waltz into the White House on vibes alone – a pledge to “end the dramala”, delivered with the sentimentality of Sesame Street and the voice of nails on a blackboard.
And the US media made things worse. It confused its own affection for a lame liberal for national enthusiasm – hyping Harris so gratuitously that it might have contributed to her defeat. People don’t like being told what they like. “Mamala”? No thanks-ala.
Meanwhile, Trump ran a reasonably disciplined campaign. There were his usual outrages: “Eating the pets”. And self-inflicted wounds: he might never step foot in Puerto Rico again. But Trump stuck to his simple themes of Democratic malaise and Republican renewal, and none of it seemed as scary as it did in 2016 – because the big change between then and now is that now he’s normal. Even the endless court appearances felt banal over time; the presence of TV cameras, tedious.
Voters have learnt to distinguish between jokes and serious comment, between Trump running his mouth and what Trump will actually do. It feels bizarre to write that he’s an “elder statesman”, but by sheer passage of time, that’s what he’s become. And his personal coalition, which once looked lucky and tenuous, appears to have solidified into something like the New Deal or Reagan realignments.
The old Republican middle-class vote – no longer enough for John McCain or Mitt Romney – has evolved into a coalition of rural, low educated, blue-collar voters with substantial pockets of Hispanic, possibly even black support (we’ve yet to crunch the numbers). Trumpism has a big base.
Assuming there are no last minute shocks, Trump is on course to become the only president bar Grover Cleveland to win two non-consecutive terms. In hindsight historians will call the miraculous, obvious. Americans thought Trump was an okay president. Biden depressed them; Kamala patronised them. So they decided to get Trump back.