Overnight Donald Trump claimed 51% of the vote in the Iowa caucus, the biggest win for a race of its kind in American history.
Some very brief thoughts:
We're now watching a battle for the survival of American democracy. This was a fair conclusion in the run-up to the 2016 election, if you’d spent any amount of time thinking about Trump's personality and the way someone like that might behave in office. It is now undeniably the case. He tried to steal an election. And it's not just about the insurrection itself. It's about the months beforehand, in which he attempted to bed down a narrative about the conspiracy. It failed, but even in its failure he has shattered American democracy, because he has taken one of the two main parties and turned it against democratic results. We really do need to be clear about what this election is and talk about it in the terms which it deserves.
The question in the UK is predominantly about tone. British political coverage values a detached, disinterested, isn't-it-all-a-game-really manner. It is highly suspicious of alarm, eagerness, or enthusiasm, which it interprets as hysteria. That makes it difficult to talk about the US elections in an objective way. The temptation for broadcasters and leader writers is to raise the eyebrow and suggest that it constitutes hyperventilating over-excitability. It's precisely what happened when Trump first won - lots of sage old voices saying 'oh it won't be that bad, you'll see', or talking about 'Trump derangement syndrome'. And then he tried to steal an election. This detached approach is obviously wrong morally, but it is also wrong analytically. You simply cannot understand what is happening if it is the posture you adopt.
Europe is not ready. This is almost as depressing as what's happening in the US. In 2016, it was blindsided. We've relied on American leadership for so long that we cannot acclimatise ourselves to life without it. And yet, for all the talk back then, we're in the precise same situation eight years later. Europe is not insulated against a rogue US, nor is it equipped to stand up for its values without American money or military prowess. If Trump gets in, hope for Ukraine is lost. This is happening in our backyard and yet Europe is in no position to respond. Emmanuel Macron is the only person who seems capable of thinking on a large enough scale. And yet, without Angela Merkel, he's just this big-ideas guy without the backroom ingenuity to deliver it. It's at moments like this that you see the weakness of Europe as fundamentally a trading entity. It needs to ask itself deep searching questions: Does Europe have values? And if the answer to that is yes, how does it fight for them?
The vacuity of the far-left is on full display at moments like these. Plenty of messages online, particularly against the background of Israel's bombing of Gaza, question why anyone on the left would vote for Joe Biden or or they paint US elections as some kind of corporate false choice. It's privilege, all the way down. The people saying it won't be the Guatemalans herded into camps at the border, or separated from their children. They won't be the Muslims prevented from seeing their families. There is a difference between the two main parties, even if you disagree with both of them on a particular issue. Failing to recognise that plays into the game of discrediting democracy, and thereby serves Trump.
Trump represents a movement. There's a limit to the utility of focusing on him as an individual, or the Republicans as a party. It is a movement, which trades in adulation of the leader as an expression of the people's will. That's what you're seeing when Trump says things like: "I am your justice, I am your retribution." There is, of course, space to look at the economic struggles of many Americans, who will be having a rough time even though they did not experience the same degree of inflation or economic suffocation we've seen in the UK. But the movement behind Trump is composed of culture warriors, drunk on the toxic nature of America's discourse on race and religion. It is one which engages in the same old story, of your group being the victim of a conspiracy by fiendish elite forces to undermine it. And it is now clearly an anti-democratic movement. It needs to be defeated, not sympathised with.
there is something quite dark here, Trump's idea basically that freedom belongs really only to a subset of the nation, and that everyone else should be deprived of it, or purged, or made to suffer.
I take comfort that he's an incompetent, but he must have learned something from last time about wielding power in office, and it can't be denied he inspires some kind of devotion, and that he means to do harm
I think, if he wins (and for some awful reason I think it likely), the UK will find itself turning again to Europe. and among the things we can agitate for in the coming years is ror, as you say, the EU to grow to its full height and perhaps rediscover its purpose.
great summary, cheers
Thanks for this pithy summary, Ian. The inertia of big, established systems of governance when attacks from outside the existing framework arrive - the charismatic, fascistic, race-baiting, wanna-be dictator, sidestepping norms accepted and followed by the current system - is nothing new. Sadly, nor is our current way of trying to deal with it.
The kind of radicalism that Trump embodies can only be countered with an equally radical approach by the liberal establishment, which is what it is most ill-equipped to provide. The right has become increasingly extreme over the course of my adult life, and it seems to be accelerating, but the left and the centre are unable to alter their normal behaviour to respond adequately. Change at that level is uncomfortable and requires both risk-taking and an acceptance of the seriousness of the situation. In itself, this acceptance will undermine our trust in the assumptions from which we’ve worked, making it a harder sell again and thus more likely to be fought against. So, instead, the radical right is met with all sorts of accommodations, excuses, and pointless negotiations from our own side. an endless series of “maybe this time ...“ that almost guarantees that when our counterattack finally comes it will be disordered, and we’ll be grabbing what we can and running from the house as the flames take hold.
Trump, Farage, Orban and the rest are nothing new, and our concerted response will be nothing new either. Unless we accept where we are, have the difficult conversations now, and allow our own radical pushback to be organised and empowered, the result is also sadly inevitable.