November 29 , 2024
NBC
Trump’s Victory
In one of the closest elections of the last 50 years, Trump defeated Harris by about 1.5% in the popular vote, 49.8% to 48.3% when all the ballots will be counted. In comparison, Biden beat Trump in 2020 by 4.5%. In the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the margins were less than 1% to about 1.9%. If 1 in a hundred voters in each of those three states had changed their minds, Harris would have won.
Trump won despite having lost a civil trial in which he was found liable for sexual assault, a civil trial in which he was found guilty of massive business fraud resulting in a fine of over 400 million dollars, and a criminal trial where he was found guilty of 34 felony counts regarding falsified business records in an attempt to subvert the 2016 election in which he barely beat Hillary Clinton.
Harris seemed to have several advantages beyond the legal issues. She had enthusiastic large crowds. She raised a huge amount of money, much larger than Trump, and she ran an excellent campaign with no major missteps. Still, she lost.
The causes of that loss are multiple. First was Biden’s decision in early 2023 to run for reelection instead of stepping down and allowing a legitimate Democratic primary process to put up the best possible candidate. Harris is an average candidate, and several Democrats would have had good chances of winning the nomination that might have done better against Trump, especially because they could have distanced themselves from the Biden record on two key issues.
Those two issues were inflation and immigration. Inflation surged for two years after COVID wound down in 2021 with vaccinations. This inflation surge was worldwide, and while US inflation was in line with other countries, the massive spending of the COVID relief package Biden passed in early 2021 ensured that the country rapidly returned to full employment along with rapid GDP growth. Overall GDP has grown 11.5% since just before the pandemic. But inflation raised prices by about 20% on average, and the cost of everyday items like fast food surged sharply. As the COVID disruptions unwound, and the Federal Reserve drastically raised interest rates from zero to over 5%, inflation has fallen back to about 2% per year, but that just means that further price rises have slowed. Exit polls showed that voters who were not affected by inflation voted for Harris, but those who felt inflation did hurt them, voted for Trump. Incomes on average have risen faster than inflation, but that just means some people got ahead fast enough while others didn’t. Harris never suggested that Biden had made mistakes in handling inflation. Unemployment affects a small number of people, but inflation affects everyone, which is why inflation of the two is more politically toxic.
Immigration was another sore point. Trump had placed a number of restrictions on asylum seekers and others trying to enter illegally. Biden initially undid many of those by executive action. This led to a massive surge of border crossings in Biden’s first three years. Biden then went to the Republicans in Congress to pass legislation that would have sharply curtailed illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. Congress obliged initially, but Trump then told Republicans to vote no so he could still run on the issue, and the bill died. Biden then put back the Trump restrictions by executive action, which worked to sharply curtail immigration along the Mexican border, but the political damage had been done.
Harris ran on three legs. The first was abortion. This seemed like a strong issue that would get educated Republican women to vote Democrat. But this turned out to have limits. First, voters did not believe that Trump would actually try to get a national ban on abortion. Second, most states still have legal abortion, and ballot initiatives in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, and Missouri all passed. Even in Florida abortion rights got 57% of the vote but fell short of the 60% needed to pass. The reality is that most states still allow abortion, and that if you live in states that do not it is fairly easy to travel to a state that has legal abortion. Only a small number of women are truly forced to carry unwanted pregnancies.
Harris also wanted to make an issue of democracy. The implication was that Trump was a threat to democracy and that he would rule as an autocrat. This did not sway voters. Voters know the President is not a king, and in fact, has limited power, especially in domestic policy. Trump is limited to four years, and after the midterms in just two years, he will be a lame duck.
Finally, Harris raised the issue of Trump’s unfitness to serve. She leaned heavily on Republicans who were anti-Trump to carry this message, like Liz Cheney. This tactic also did not land with voters.
The next four years of Trump will not be very eventful. He is too scattered and unfocused to actually achieve much in terms of policy. Domestically, the only thing he will try to do is another round of tax cutting. This will be constrained by the fact that the budget deficit of over 1.5 trillion dollars is already massive. To seriously cut taxes and make any progress on the deficit would require massive cuts in domestic programs that people depend on, namely Medicaid and Medicare, perhaps even Social Security. Such cuts will be profoundly unpopular.
In foreign affairs, he will resume his unquestioned support of Israel, particularly Israel’s right-wing government. Trump will probably take a hard line with China, but it is unlikely that he will impose massive tariffs as these will be inflationary and unpopular with the business community. It is an open question if he will go through with a ban on TikTok that will probably result in the sale of the company to someone not affiliated with the Chinese government.
How Trump will handle Ukraine and Putin is an open question. He may go so far as to cut off further US assistance. That would be terrible for Ukraine, but Europe could step up and provide much of the assistance that the US will withhold. Russia is nearing the end of its endurance of fighting this war, and even its railway system is at risk of collapse as it cannot replace the precision ball bearings that its railways run on and are only produced by Western companies that have been banned from selling them to Russia. Trump might pressure Ukraine to accept the current front lines as final borders, meaning that Ukraine accedes to Russia taking legal control of Crimea, Donbas, and a stretch of territory connecting the two. But in return, Ukraine may demand credible security guarantees, meaning Ukraine would join both the EU and NATO.
The US will survive four more years of Trump. In fact, it is highly likely that the Democrats will do well in the 2026 midterms and take back the House. With the filibuster in the Senate already giving the Democrats essentially a veto over any major domestic policy legislation, gridlock will be the order of the day.
