One way or the other – whether for good or ill – the American election was always going to be of great significance. Trump’s close-call triumph represents a real victory for conservatism. I say ‘real’ because other, recent successes of the Right have not translated into actual power and the ability to determine policy. Forget the blips of popular right-wing electoral accomplishments in Europe this year, with seemingly impressive displays at the polls. These are ever thus: ephemeral and ultimately dispiriting. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, the Alternative for Deutschland in Germany, the Freedom Party in Austria: all have met with substantial electoral success in 2024; all have been kept from power by the Establishment in unholy alliance with ‘anyone but the Right’. With 29% of the vote, the Freedom Party came first in the recent elections, but on no account will it be allowed to form a government. This is the fate of populist movements just about everywhere these days. But not, thankfully, in America.
If Trump had lost it would have been a case of ‘That’s all Folks!’ for conservative government in a leading state. For decades from the 1930s, America’s Looney Tunes cartoon franchise ended their episodes of animated revelries with that refrain. How relevant it remains to our insane political climate. But for Trump, there would have been an ultimate clean sweep of triumph for the authoritarian soi-disant ‘liberal progressives’. Conservatism, already beleaguered, had been fighting a rearguard action, winning battles but losing the war to all-conquering wokery. Trump’s return is a remarkable reminder that the political contest is not quite over yet.
Has Trump finally turned that tide? He is the last redoubt of conservative hope. Can that be built upon? Or, as in his previous presidency but this time even more overtly, will the liberal dominated Establishment refuse to let him rule? James Pierson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has recently drawn attention to the 2016 book What Washington Gets Wrong: The Unelected Officials Who Run the Government, and Their Misconceptions about the American People, written by the political scientists Jennifer Bachner and Benjamin Ginsburg at John Hopkins University. The book analyses the results of their survey of civil servants and the political classes in Washington. These occupants of the Washington Beltway are far removed from ‘ordinary’ people in terms of education, background and economic security. Hubristic as only hypocritical liberal progressives can be, they reveal themselves to be indifferent to democratic voting and intentions of the great unwashed: at least 80% of civil servants do not deem it necessary, or even advisable, to take public opinion into consideration when it comes to imposing policies on the populace at large. They know best, of course. Many of these favoured policies severely inhibit personal freedoms. Over 70% are Democrats. Some 40% of these ruling classes believe it acceptable to cheat in an election in order to win it. Or perhaps that’s just the per centage of those willing to admit it. In this election, Washington DC voted 93% for the Democrats.
If Trump is to get anywhere, he will need to be better prepared this time for the inevitable obstructionism of the Washington swamp. Is America to be ruled by an elected president, or an unelected bureaucracy?
Nonetheless, a remarkable victory.
One Response
Donald Trumps election called out the unreliability of opinion pollsters, most of whom got it very wrong, much like the Brexit outcome. Such polls may provide discusson but nothing beats the privacy of the polling booth.