Liberal communities around the world including India are shocked by Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the US elections. If we keep in mind his way of looking at politics, it would be called a natural reaction. One characteristic of this community is that it never introspects itself. Therefore, till date, no serious attempt has been made to understand why “far-right”, “fascist” or “hateful” politics is succeeding in almost every electoral democracy today?
By the way, if we try to understand America’s election results closely, the answer to the question can be found to some extent. Consider some statistics:
Donald Trump got approximately 7 crore 42 lakh votes in the 2020 elections.
Counting of votes has not been completed yet in some American states, but this time it is unlikely that Trump will be able to cross that figure. Till the time of writing these lines, he has received a little more than seven crore 33 lakh votes.
In 2020, Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden received more than 8 crore 12 lakh votes.
This time Kamala Harris has received 6 crore 90 lakh votes so far. In this form, she will be left behind by at least one crore votes compared to then.
Obviously, there has been a huge decline in the number of voters voting for the Democratic Party in four years. This is the real reason for the landslide in Trump’s favor. This collapse resulted in his victories in all seven battleground states. Also, his Republican Party won in both the houses of Congress (Parliament). It has got majority in the Senate, while it is moving in this direction in the House of Representatives.
Why did this happen?
If a party is unable to retain its supporters or encourage them to vote in its favor, then who will be responsible for it?
News agency Associated Press was doing live webcast (online broadcast) during the counting of votes. Many such voters participated in it, who changed their stance this time. One of them made this important comment – “I have been a Democrat all my life. But now I don’t see any benefit in it. The Democrats are spending all the money on war and immigrants. They are not helping struggling Americans. I am sure Trump will keep us at the top of his priorities.”
Now consider some more facts:
– Think tank Edison Research studied the data obtained from exit polls. Out of the 15 that were included in these surveys, there were only two groups in which the votes of Democrats have increased. This group is: white men over the age of 65 and white women with college education.
– In 13 groups, including Black, Asian, Hispanic (Latino), white women who did not reach college, the votes of Democrats decreased, while those of Republicans increased. It must be kept in mind that earlier all these groups were special voters of the Democratic Party.
– Among Latino voters, 54 percent voters voted for Trump and 44 percent voted for Harris. (https://www.ft.com/content/392e1e79-a8c1-4473-ab51-3267c415b078)
If you look at the preferences of voters according to income group, your eyes may open further. Among the lower income groups, support for Trump has increased compared to 2020. Whereas in Harris’s case the opposite happened.
– In the category with annual income of more than one lakh dollars, in 2020, Trump got 54 percent votes and Joe Biden got 52 percent votes.
– In 2024, Harris got the support of 54 percent of this class and Trump got the support of 45 percent of the voters.
In 2020, Democrats got 55 percent votes and Trump got 45 percent votes among the groups with income less than 50 thousand dollars.
– In 2024, 49 percent of voters in this income group voted for Trump and 48 percent for Harris.
(https://x।com/JStein_WaPo/status/1854168624119877887?t=SS2U8a-aHj-LTipGD9pgTw&s=03)
Isn’t the important question why the struggles of the low-income, working class and large sections of the minority communities left the Democratic Party?
The answer to this why is not difficult to find. Bernie Sanders suddenly rose like a meteor in 2016. Adopting a radical left stance, he became a phenomenon. By 2020, he appeared to be a pivot in American politics, just as the command of the far-right pivot had passed into the hands of Trump. But after Biden became President, he disappointed his supporters. There was a perception about him that he had become a compromiser. He supported every action of the Biden administration, due to which the Democratic Party moved away from the people. Now after the party’s crushing defeat, he has tried to wear the radical garb again. He said in a statement,
“It should surprise no one that the Democratic Party, which had abandoned the working class, has now found that the working class has abandoned it. First abandoned by the white working class, now Latino and black workers have also abandoned him. The Democratic Party stands for the status quo, which makes the American people angry and want change. This attitude of the people is right.”
(https://x।com/JStein_WaPo/status/1854168624119877887?t=SS2U8a-aHj-LTipGD9pgTw&s=03)
Claudia de la Cruz has emerged as a young socialist leader in America. In this election, she was also the presidential candidate from the Socialist Party. After the results came he said-
“This result shows how Democrats failed to fight for and protect people…. If this party wants to hold someone responsible for the defeat, then it should blame the economic and political power centres. But the Democratic Party did nothing. He is active in providing financial and other support to genocide, during his rule abortion and LGBTQ rights have been withdrawn, the party ran an election campaign to show itself as more Trump than Trump, so as to get votes from conservative groups. But this party will not accept its responsibility and will keep blaming others.”
Famous economist Isabella M Weber supported Harris in this election. Obviously, he took this decision with the intention of stopping Trump. But now he has said-
“Democracy cannot be protected just by talking about saving democracy. For this, it will have to be made clear what your policies are to improve the lives of the majority community. “This requires corporates to be prevented from earning record profits in disastrous situations.”
French radical left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has said-
“America could not choose the left because this option did not exist there. Where there is no left, there is no limit to the right. When there is no fight on the basis of any program, then elections become just an act of casting votes. “Trump’s victory is a consequence of this situation that could not have been prevented.”
Here it should be remembered that in the same year, the far right had a big victory in the European Parliament elections in France. After that, President Emmanuel Macron announced mid-term parliamentary elections in the country, and during the parliamentary elections, the hastily formed radical left front led by Mélenchon challenged the far right. Surprising the whole world, this front emerged as the largest group in Parliament. The Morcha presented a concrete program to improve the lives of the common people, which created new enthusiasm and attraction among the working class.
Isabella M Weber said in another comment-
“A big lesson learned is that when economists tell you the economy is in great shape, but people say that in their experience the current policies are not working, people have to be listened to. “The Democrats didn’t do that, instead they kept saying that people don’t understand.”
In this context, Weber has raised an important question. He has asked-
“Finally, are we now ready to have a serious discussion about an anti-fascist economics?”
This is a fundamental question. The rise of the far right is a phenomenon in all countries with electoral democracies. The reason for this is the same as mentioned above by Sanders, Claudia de la Cruz and Melenshaw. The solution is one that was experimented with in France by a coalition led by Mélenchon and currently in Germany by a coalition led by Sarah Wagenknecht. But this experiment requires a clear economics, in which there are plans for development and progress and the common working people are at the center of them.
Whether this is a new thing – it is not. The history of the 20th century is full of experiments conducted keeping the working class at the center. In order to ensure that the working class gets its fair share in the process of production and distribution, the emergence and development of holistic economics had started from the middle of the 19th century. Its experiments were carried out then and in the 20th century. But amid the events of the last decade of the same century, the ruling classes got an opportunity to discredit the experience and economics of all these experiments and put them in the background. But now history is changing again.
The ruling class itself has been marginalizing the efforts made to obscure the above experiments under the guise of centrist economic policies and politics. To facilitate this process, they have made identity-based hate politics a tool. But such politics does not have a long term future. The history of the 20th century itself is a witness to the fact that when the people’s groups, by whom this politics is being misled, are facing serious issues, they look for a way out of it. Then there is a need for politics that shows a new path.
Signs of this phenomenon starting to appear in Europe and to some extent in America. In India itself, signs of this process can be found in the way the limits of Hindutva politics were revealed in the Lok Sabha elections this year. It is unfortunate that no serious effort has been made in India to understand this process. If such an effort is made, it will become clear that the middle path has no future. It is noteworthy that in recent decades, the middle path in India has been based on identity politics, but the limitations of this politics are becoming clear.
The way the Democratic Party in America invited its defeat has also made it clear that even if centrist parties increase their vote base by making some promises, it is no longer in their power to retain those voters. In such a situation, it is futile to mourn the defeat of centrist parties. America’s election results have not created any new situation. Rather, the circumstances that exist have moved in a logical direction.
So the meaningful lesson of the American elections is that we should now work diligently on an alternative to replace the current politics. After all, the contest going forward will be between the far right and that new, alternative politics. The long-term future belongs to that politics, because the far right has no answer to the livelihood issues of the common people.