At last, ‘muricans, at last

Ben Wildsmith

The fallacious fool, the oaf, may still be occupying the White House, but his mouth has been stuffed with decency by an American electorate that would have been forgiven for exercising its Second Amendment rights long before now.

Still, they got there in the end, but it’s important to examine the dynamics at play as we try to see through the smoke towards what the future might look like.

Prices at the pump undoubtedly played a part. I’m perfectly comfortable with voters prioritising their own financial wellbeing. If they could be persuaded to do that here, perhaps we’d see fewer worthless toffs elected on the promise to preserve a financial status quo that disadvantages all save the very rich. At least in America, impoverishing the middle class carries genuine political peril.

What certainly has changed, however, is the target of the electorate’s anger.

On the morning of the election, Trump announced that he would be ending financial support for Israel. Whatever doubts remained that the Republicans were in for a shellacking evaporated as a president elected on a sea of Israeli lobbyists’ cash cut them loose as a last-ditch appeal to his core vote.

The USA’s relationship with Israel has long been a problem for sections of the left. Liberal opposition has been supercharged by the genocide in Gaza and, latterly, the war on Iran. Until now, however, that acted as a galvanising force for Israeli advocates on the right.

The Palestinian cause could be bundled up with a host of ‘woke’ concerns like trans rights, affirmative action, reproductive rights and gun control, and presented as part of something that is alien to Middle America.

Compromised

As the Iranian war has rumbled on, however, with no clear path to victory and inflation eating into household budgets, a new narrative has emerged on the right. Previously Trump-friendly commentators like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have framed the war as evidence that Trump has been compromised by Israel. His ‘America First’ slogan, they opine, has been corrupted into an ‘Israel First’ agenda at the expense of American consumers. It was to this constituency that Trump’s last-minute announcement was pitched. MAGAland has turned on Israel.

The implications of this for Israel itself are ominous. Without credible political cover in Washington, the nation’s vulnerability ceases to be an abstract justification for belligerence and becomes something that’s real, and possibly urgent. Of all Netanyahu’s mistakes and crimes in office, losing American backing would be the one that sealed his legacy.

We might just, but whisper it so as not to provoke geriatric tantrums, finally be witnessing the death of Boomer politics. Joe Biden’s doddering descent saw off civil rights-era liberalism, and Trump’s delusions of grandeur, casual racism, sexual untidiness and loudmouthed braggadocio will never command majority affection among generations to come.

The younger Democrats that he’s insulted as Communists and Islamists sound too inconveniently rational and connected to reality for his accusations to land. Old men shouting at clouds will be winning no elections from here on. JD Vance’s immediate pivot away from condemnation towards reasoned analysis demonstrates that Republicans know that too.

Losing ground

A new generation of politicians, however, is obliged to address the world as it is now, and that is going to be a challenge in all Western democracies. Our ways of working, doing business and organising society are losing ground to Asian models, and it is not because of mismanagement but fundamental design.

If we reduce the competition to the USA versus China, we are seeing violent swings in electoral outcomes as voters reject each incumbent in search of someone to fix an unbalanced economy.

Each presidential term consists of two years in which to do something and two spent fighting the next election. Each new administration attempts to prosecute members of the last and campaigns to overturn all its predecessor’s initiatives.

Meanwhile, China can invest in thirty-year projects, knowing that if living standards continue their trajectory, no counter-revolution is on the way. We believe in democracy as the foundation of our way of life, but unless it is nurtured more carefully, both could collapse under the weight of our complacency.