The campaign strategy of the Democrats was based largely on creating fear amongst the electorate about the consequences of a Trump comeback, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat
Donald Trump was brought back into the political centre stage not by his supporters but by his foes. The relentless manner in which he was charge-sheeted and prosecuted by agencies directly linked to the Biden administration or leaning towards the Democrats ensured that he would remain the most talked about, the most reported about, political leader in the US. Some in the Democratic Party say that it was Hillary Clinton, still smarting over her 2016 defeat by Trump, who convinced Biden that making him a felon would render him unelectable.
If so, she shares with Biden the credit for creating circumstances which boosted rather than ended the electability of Donald Trump. With each prosecution, he came closer and closer to locking up the Republican nomination and subsequently the Presidency. The key drivers of his rising popularity, besides the countless cases slapped against him, were illegal immigration and inflation caused by the way in which President Biden assisted President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his futile efforts at forcing the Russian Federation to cede control over territories.
Land that had been under the control of Russian-speaking Ukrainians since 2014. When President Vladimir Putin was given what he believed to be credible intel that the NATO-assisted military under Zelenskyy was in February 2022 on the cusp of entering Donetsk, Lugansk and the Crimea, he decided to attack first. The White House considered Ukraine another Afghanistan, where in the 1980s US assistance to those fighting Soviet occupation ensured the defeat of the Soviet military and hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Instead, it is Ukraine which has become a quagmire for the US and its Atlanticist allies, trapping them into massively assisting Zelenskyy in his futile war since 2022. The Ukraine war has become unpopular with much of the population of the countries on either side of the northern part of the Atlantic. Every booster of Zelenskyy’s effort against the Russian side, whether it be Biden, Sunak, Macron, Scholz or others, lost their jobs or are on the path towards doing so. Unlike Trump and Vance, Kamala Harris made the mistake of backing Biden in his war on Russia even after she was made the Democratic Party nominee for the Presidential elections in July.
Much of the inflation being endured by citizens of the US is linked to the supply disruptions and the financial sanctions which came about after Russian armies entered Ukraine on 26 February 2022. And it is that inflation, coupled with unprecedented numbers of illegal migrants (including from hostile countries) entering the US through the southern border, which caused the defeat of Harris on 5 November. In contrast, Trump promised to end the Ukraine war within a day of entering the White House on 20 January, 2025, a pledge that resonated with voters.
Why Biden and his European allies embarked on their Ukrainian adventure so soon after the world had endured the havoc wrought in their economies during 2020 and 2021 is a textbook example of folly. An investigation is likely into the way in which the Covid-19 pandemic caused Covid-19 vaccines to be turned out at warp speed. How effective these vaccines were or what their long-term impact on health would be needs to be given more attention. Trump and the 2025-27 US Congress are expected to undertake a serious investigation of the entire episode once the new administration and Congress is sworn in. R.F. Kennedy Jr may be a key driver of such a process, given his controversial views on the pandemic.
At the same time, J.D. Vance is expected to be very different from Vice-President Harris, who was content to remain in the shadows into which the White House had pushed her from the start. Trump is no Biden. He understands that an active VP of the calibre of Vance would be an asset to him during his term, just as he was during the campaign. He would also likely to have an interest in seeing that a friendly Vance succeeds him in the White House when his term ends. Hence, as President, he is likely to give Vance much more policy space than almost all past US Vice-Presidents had.
Just as it was some of the policies of President Biden that ensured Trump would be elected as the 47th US President, it was the unwillingness or inability of Kamala Harris to create a perception wall between herself and the unpopular policies of President Biden which led to her defeat. Added to that was complacency about the campaign strategy being followed by the Democrats, which was based in large part by seeking to create fear amongst the electorate about the possible consequences of a Trump comeback.
Given the awesome power of government, added to the high costs of litigation both in human as well as in financial terms, several of those responding to exit polls adopt what in their view is the safe option of claiming that they voted for the ruling party. At the same time, given the increasing polarisation within so many democracies, in an age of smartphones and the ease of concealing its camera and audio devices, respondents to exit polls may believe that they are at risk of identification and retribution, should they reveal their preference for anti-government political formations to the pollster.
Such a fear has a valid basis, if anecdotal evidence is to be accepted, in parts of India such as Bengal. Only when there is a palpable wave against a ruling party and hence towards its rivals do many responders feel confident enough to reveal their actual preferences. All of which is probably why exit polls in many democracies have proven to be inaccurate predictors of the actual results, and why basing analyses on voting behaviour on such polls may not infrequently prove an exercise treacherous to the credibility of the analyst.
Humourists in the US have been busy trashing those exit polls shown on domestic television channels which predicted a close contest in what were regarded as “battleground states”, or states that were neither safely Blue (Democratic) nor safely Red (Republican). Actual voting showed that in several of these states, the only battle was not on whether Trump would win, but about how high his margin of victory would be.
So polarised has political discourse been in the US, so widespread its effect on societal relationships, that for many, it was impossible within some groups to openly admit support for Harris or Trump, for immediate ostracisation from the group would follow such an admission. Instead, they expressed their preferences through voting. Or in the case of many who were unhappy with Harris but did not support Trump, by not voting. Kamala Harris called for change to a new generation of leaders, standing by helplessly as US voters plumped for far more changes than the age of a candidate. Instead, the majority of voters in the US chose a change far more radical than the age of a candidate, by choosing Trump over Harris.
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