November 6 was a day of reckoning for the United States. It was the day the American people delivered a regime change by electing Donald J Trump as their 47th president.
In what has been described as the greatest political comeback of all times, the 78-year-old went through hell to achieve his historic victory.
This week’s NZCPR guest commentator, US journalist David Samuels, sums up the challenges the president faced as he battled the American establishment:
Since his loss, in 2020, when he claimed that the election was stolen from him – and his opponents claimed that he tried to seize power through illegal means – Donald Trump had been subjected to a whole-of-society assault by the American elite that would have killed most men 20 years younger, including those who don’t eat cheeseburgers most days for lunch. After 116 indictments, an armed raid on his home, the jailing of his business associates, and the looming threat of bankruptcy, followed by two and even three in-person rallies a day for the better part of a year, which led to him being shot in the head by a would-be assassin, the fact that Trump is still standing upright, let alone greeting a crowd as President-elect, is clearly a miracle…
David explains what motivated Americans to vote for Donald Trump:
Five years of Covid laws, a stagnant economy, direct and indirect government censorship of social media, official lying and gaslighting on every subject from trans surgeries to the efficacy of masking to the startling numbers of illegal immigrants entering the country to the spectacle of a dottering Joe Biden being barely able to remember his own name, had left most of the country dispirited and ready for change.
And change they delivered.
In what is the largest Republican presidential victory since George W Bush in 2004, President-elect Trump decisively won the White House by 312 Electoral College votes to 226, the popular vote by 75,575,715 votes or 50.2 per cent to 72,414,922 votes or 48.1 per cent, and the Senate by 53 seats to 45. The House of Representatives still hangs in the balance.
Donald Trump increased his vote share in every state apart from Washington, not only significantly bolstering his support amongst the working class, but amongst almost all other constituency groups – even those the Democrats thought they had sewn up: African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities, women, young people, first-time voters…
It’s indeed ironic that a billionaire born into wealth has greater empathy with grassroots America than the Democratic Party who delude themselves into thinking they serve the common man.
There’s no doubt that Donald Trump’s attraction was in no small part due to his resolute stand against the political establishment. The fact that they had set out to destroy him only strengthened his appeal to disillusioned voters.
Four years of being led by an aging president, who left everyone wondering who was actually pulling the strings, had taken a toll. The cost-of-living crisis, the struggle to make ends meet, the escalation of illegal migration, rising crime, an on-going assault on American values, and the sneering disdain and contempt of the woke establishment – epitomised by President Biden describing Trump supporters as “garbage” – had left voters seeking change.
But in the end, the Democrats were routed because in answer to arguably the most important campaign questions of all time: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” – the majority of voters answered “No”.
CNN’s Scott Jennings hit the nail on the head with his election night analysis:
I’m interpreting the results tonight as revenge of the regular working-class American, the anonymous American who has been crushed, insulted, condescended to. They’re not garbage, they’re not Nazis. They’re just regular people who get up and go to work every day and are trying to make a better life for their kids, and they feel like they have been told to just shut up when they have complained about the things that are hurting them in their own lives.
He questioned the role of the mainstream media:
I also feel this election is an indictment on the political information complex. The story that was portrayed was not true. Night after night after night… we were ignoring the fundamentals: inflation, people feeling like they were barely able to tread water at best. For all of us who cover elections, we have to figure out how to understand, talk to and listen to the half of the country that rose up tonight and said: ‘We’ve had enough’.
The independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was scathing about the Democrats:
It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is the Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.
So, what changes will President Trump introduce?
Tax cuts are a priority including expanding the low tax regime he introduced in 2017, abolishing tax on overtime hours worked, and lowering corporate taxes from 21 per cent to 15 per cent.
New tariffs are proposed to create jobs and reduce the trade deficit – 10 per cent on most foreign goods and 60 per cent on imports from China.
A key to bringing inflation under control and making America affordable again is a rejection of the left’s radical climate change agenda. He will again withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and lower power prices by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands for exploration: “We will drill, baby, drill.”
He plans to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats across the economy, unleashing housing construction by cutting regulations and ending “frivolous litigation from environmental extremists”.
And to avoid a repeat of his first term experience of a federal “deep state” undermining his administration and driving impeachment efforts, he will make it easier to fire government employees who are disloyal.
He has pledged to complete the border wall with Mexico and undertake the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history.
In an initiative that has the potential to trigger a chain reaction around the Western world he plans to defund diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government institutions – a sentiment captured brilliantly in campaign ads: “Kamala is for they/them – President Trump is for you”!
In particular, he wants to scrap diversity programs at all levels of education, calling for federal funding to be pulled from “any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children”.
And in higher education, he intends to take over accreditation processes in a move that he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” that control higher education.
President Trump’s plan highlighted the growing divide between ordinary Americans wanting a better life, and the obsession over “diversity” and “identity” by the left-wing elite.
Back in 2016, after Hillary Clinton described Trump voters as “deplorables” and lost the election, Professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University warned against the Democrat’s focus on diversity:
Hillary Clinton tended to slip into the rhetoric of diversity. This was a strategic mistake. National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference’, it is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny… Identity politics, by contrast… never wins elections – but can lose them.
At the time New Zealand journalist John Moore, described identity politics as an “elitist scam” that allowed state largesse to flow into the hands of the elites running the groups that claimed to be marginalised – instead of helping those in need:
Modern social-liberalism – in the form of identity politics – has been exposed as an elitist scam. Gender politics, LGBTQI+ movements, and tino rangatiratanga struggles were all presented as a way to alleviate the poverty, oppression and discrimination of those at the bottom of society. Instead these ideologies have only acted to elevate… an elite of those from subjugated sectors of society.
He was right: the push for power by the tribal elite has enabled them to establish multi-billion-dollar business empires with fat salaries and flash cars – while continuing to claim ‘their people’ are disadvantaged and in need of taxpayer handouts.
There are many lessons for New Zealand in the US election outcome.
Firstly, it’s very clear that politicians who lose touch with the sentiment of ordinary folk do so at their peril. The reality is that most people have simple needs and modest expectations about what they expect from political leaders. But overwhelmingly, they do not want to be taken for granted nor treated with contempt.
Secondly, just as Americans rejected the politics of diversity, so have New Zealanders. Identity politics, which undermines equality by dividing everyone according to race, gender and sexual preferences, was weaponised by former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to marginalise men, indoctrinate children, and undermine our Kiwi values and culture.
While the Coalition is making progress in repairing the damage, they have not gone far enough – nor are they moving fast enough.
In fact, President Trump is showing politicians around the world what’s needed to reverse left-wing ideology – and National should take note.
Putting some of his relevant policies into a New Zealand context, his pledge to defund radical diversity programmes that are corrupting State institutions, including universities and schools, should be adopted here.
A similar strategy should also be applied to Labour’s radicalised “Treaty partnership” programmes, which undermine democracy by empowering unaccountable tribal leaders to control government decision-making – instead of elected representatives who are accountable to voters.
The coalition should not only remove all references to these Treaty partnerships from statutes and the official documentation of organisations regulated or funded by the New Zealand Government – including state media – but all such programmes should be defunded.
The coalition also needs to urgently reconsider climate policy.
The US will pull out of the Paris Agreement. This means that none of the world’s major emitters will be bound by the UN’s climate accord. Given the shift in voter sentiment away from climate alarmism around the world, other nations are likely to follow the US and abandon their climate pledges as well.
This raises the very real possibility that Net Zero will end up collapsing like a house of cards.
That means our government should now be asking why they are persisting with climate policies that are endangering our country’s economic wellbeing when all of the world’s major emitters are ignoring net zero constraints in order to fuel economic growth and raise the living standards of their citizens.
Do our politicians still think we need to retain the most punitive self-imposed climate restrictions in the world to enhance our international image when our largest trading partners have rejected such policies?
The coalition needs to wake up – especially now their Climate Commission is proactively recommending the mass slaughter of millions of cows and sheep so New Zealand can meet its crippling commitments.
As for America, last week’s election signals the beginning of a new era.
For New Zealand, our new era began in October last year, when we too overwhelmingly voted for change.
But while immigration was the undercurrent issue of the US election, which the Republicans pledged to fix, in New Zealand, only ACT and New Zealand First campaigned against our undercurrent issue – the tribal power-grab. National largely turned a blind eye.
While the three coalition parties agreed on a plan to fix the problem there’s a growing perception that National has become ‘woke’ and is only half hearted in its commitment.
Yet in politics, as the US election has shown, being perceived as woke can cost politicians dearly. National ignores the rising groundswell of public concern over the escalating demands for power by tribal leaders at its peril.
This article was originally published by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research.
