Editorial
The
Guardian view on President-elect Donald Trump: a dark day for the
world
This
is a political and cultural cataclysm that few believed would really
happen. It’s a bleak day for
Wednesday 9 November
2016 14.20 GMT
America, and for the
pluralism and diversity the country has come to stand for
The unthinkable is
only unthinkable until it happens. Then, like the sack of Rome, it
can seem historically inevitable. So it is with the global political
earthquake that is the election of Donald Trump as the next president
of the United States. If he is true to his campaign pledges, which
were many and reckless, Mr Trump’s win will herald America’s most
stunning reversal of political and economic orthodoxy since the New
Deal in the 1930s, but with the opposite intention and effect. It
halts the ailing progressive narrative about modern America and the
21st-century world in its tracks. It signals a seismic rupture in the
American-dominated global liberal economic and political order that
had seemed to command the 21st century after communism collapsed and
China’s economy soared.
In that sense, the
Trump triumph has echoes of the increasingly alarming general
rightward shift in the politics of other post-industrial western
democracies, to which progressives have again produced inadequate
responses. The parallel with Britain’s Brexit vote is obvious and
real. So, perhaps, is the further boost that the Trump triumph may
hand to nationalists in many parts of Europe – Marine Le Pen jumped
quickly on that bandwagon. The result will be lamented by liberals
across America and beyond. But it will be cheered in Moscow and
Damascus, which will feel emboldened. This is not a good week to be a
Latvian or a Ukrainian, and another dire one to be a Syrian
oppositionist. The result is also a generational challenge to
progressive politics to find the radical and credible message that
eludes them in so many countries, not just in America.
Not taken seriously
But this is
primarily an American catastrophe that America has brought upon
itself. When it came to it, the US was unable to find a credible way
of rallying against Mr Trump and what he represents. Hillary Clinton
failed that crucial test both in herself and in what she offered; for
her this is the end. But she was the symptom, not the cause. Mr Trump
was not taken seriously and was widely not expected to beat Mrs
Clinton throughout the long, bitter campaign. At each stage, his
candidacy was deemed certain to crash and burn. The opinion polls and
the vaunted probability calculus rarely trended in his direction;
both are now discredited. Only after the FBI director’s
intervention, less than two weeks before the election, was it widely
imagined that the tables might turn in Mr Trump’s favour.
Nevertheless by the eve of poll Mr Trump was again the outsider.
Yet Mr Trump won big
in an election where, if the exit polls were right, most people made
up their minds long before the James Comey furore. Mr Trump’s
victory was total. It was built, more than anything else, on the
white vote; irrespective of gender, age or education, white people
mostly voted for him. It was the most stunning upset in modern US
history; not even a squeaker. He won most of the battleground states
into which the Clinton campaign had poured money – Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin – en route to a
decisive Republican electoral college total exceeding 300. That
majority is centred on the so-called flyover states, which
inhabitants of the big Democratic bastions on the coasts often only
see from 35,000 feet. But the red tide pushed north too, deep into
the rustbelt, and consolidated in the south – although the
electoral college system amplified Mr Trump’s victory: Mrs Clinton
is set to win the popular vote, as Democrats have in every election
bar one since 1988.
Democrats shattered
Meanwhile,
Republican congressional candidates who had scrabbled to put distance
between themselves and their nominee after the ugly TV debates found
themselves riding to victory on Mr Trump’s coattails. Republicans
held most of their seats in the Senate races, and will be savouring
the chance to extend their majority in 2018, when the beneficiaries
of the Obama re-election wave of 2012 face the voters. More
predictably, the House remained firmly in Republican hands too;
Speaker Paul Ryan and his lieutenants have more to fear from their
own party grassroots and from a perhaps vengeful new man in the White
House than they do from the shattered Democrats, for whom this
outcome is the sum of all fears.
President Trump is
the shock heard round the world. Now that he has won, the instant
explanations have already started to flood in: that the mobilisation
(or not) of this or that demographic was decisive; that he tapped the
angry anti-establishment mood; that he spoke for millions who felt
abandoned by the prosperous and progressive; that American nativism
was always far stronger than liberals wanted to think; that he was a
celebrity candidate for the celebrity-obsessed age; that he rode the
tiger of post-truth politics; that making America great again was a
cut-through message in a militaristic and imperial nation; that white
men (and many white women) had had it with political correctness;
that misogyny swung it; that the mainstream media failed to call him
out; that it is a verdict on the Barack Obama years; that Mrs Clinton
was always the wrong candidate; that there was racist dirty work in
the voting system; that it was the Russians who won it for him.
None of these
explanations are irrelevant. All of them have something to say. But
beware of instant certainties. As with Brexit, in the immediate
aftermath of a huge upset, a period of careful evidence-gathering and
reflection is in order. This is not to diminish the immense
seriousness of what happened on Tuesday. Nor is it to understate the
anxieties about what lies ahead as Mr Obama steps back and Mr Trump
takes over.
Four particular
fears now stand out. The first is the unleashing of an unbridled
conservative agenda in Washington, now that the Republicans control
the White House and Capitol Hill together, a rare thing in the past
hundred years. In her dignified concession speech Mrs Clinton rightly
emphasised the need to defend democratic values; she might have drawn
attention to President Obama’s legacy on healthcare and climate
change too. Mr Trump and the congressional Republicans have
differences; he is more prepared to use the power of government than
many of them are. But they have a clear path now towards reshaping
the supreme court and dozens of lower-tier judicial benches in their
own image. The effect on race, gender and sexual-equality issues is
likely to outlast Mr Trump’s period in office. The culture wars
will reopen. Abortion rights are threatened.
Racial impact
The second is the
impact of this result on race in America more widely. Mr Trump
campaigned against migrants and against Muslims, insulted black and
Latino Americans, launched ads that some saw as covertly antisemitic,
and was cheered to victory by every white racist in the land. His
voters – a Brexit echo again – will want him to deliver. Every
action he takes in this area threatens to divide and inflame. After a
half-century of uneven but undeniable racial progress in America, the
consequences of every attempt to turn back the clock could be dire.
The third fear is
whether Mr Trump has any economic plan that will deliver for some of
the poor communities that gave him their votes so solidly. Mr Trump
connected with the anger that many poor and white voters feel. But
what can he really do about it? What do most congressional
Republicans care about it? He can try to put up all the protectionist
walls he likes. That will please his supporters. But it is difficult
to see how he can bring old mines, mills and factories back to life.
A lot of Americans feel left behind and let down. However, Mr Trump
is playing with fire if, in the end, it becomes clear that he has
used their anxieties to again advance himself and the urban rich
class to which he belongs.
The final and
overarching fear, though, is for the world. Mr Trump’s win means
uncertainty about America’s future strategy in a world that has
long relied on the United States for stability. But Mr Trump’s
capacity to destabilise is almost limitless. His military,
diplomatic, security, environmental and trade policies all have the
capacity to change the world for the worse. Americans have done a
very dangerous thing this week. Because of what they have done we all
face dark, uncertain and fearful times.
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