Mr Donald Trump made what some are describing as the greatest political comeback in American history, romping to victory in Tuesday’s presidential elections and dashing hopes for the first woman leader in Mrs Kamala Harris.
Mrs Harris called Mr Trump Wednesday to congratulate him on winning the election and discussed the importance of a peaceful transfer of power, a senior Harris aide said, bringing stark contrast to the 2020 elections which he lost and still has not conceded.
Mr Trump made historic strides in becoming one of only two US presidents to win non-consecutive terms — in 2016 and now 2024. He is also the first Republican president to win the national popular vote since President George W Bush in 2004.
What made Mr Trump’s comeback unlikely was a litany of troubles that ought to have finished him off politically. These include 34 felony counts for fraud, one conviction for sexual assault, two impeachments in the House, and pending cases for seeking to overturn the 2020 election.
Yet, despite all that, his Republican party is set to take control of the Senate and possibly increase its thin majority in the House. With a friendly Supreme Court, the president-elect seems set to wield even more power than previously.
The inevitable post-mortem has begun as to what could have turned a dead heat, if truncated election campaign, according to opinion polls, into such a clear and decisive victory for a candidate who personally attacked his opponent throughout and painted a dark picture of America’s future without him.
“More broadly, he has made clear that he intends to make the world’s most powerful country more isolationist, more combative with tariffs, more openly hostile toward immigrants, and more demanding of its security partners, as well as less engaged on global challenges such as climate change,” The New York Times wrote Wednesday.
There are suggestions that, despite the tightness of the race which she launched about 15 weeks ago, Mrs Harris underperformed expectations, especially with women who broke for her but apparently not in the numbers she needed — 54 per cent compared with 44 per cent for Mr Trump.
One big question being raised is whether the 248-year-old United States is ready to elect a woman as chief executive, let alone one who is black and Asian and whose parents were not born in America.
It was also clear that other minority groups, such as Latinos and Muslims, and even African Americans, did not show up for her in the way they did for Mrs Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Mr Biden four years ago.
Some pundits have pointed out that the US has now joined other high-income countries in changing governments — notably Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Japan. France came close.
For most of those countries, there is strong anti-immigrant sentiment that, in the case of the US, the Biden-Harris Administration ignored, particularly at the southern border with Mexico, until it was too late.
When President Joe Biden eventually crafted a bipartisan Bill to stem the thousands of immigrants trying to cross the chaotic border into the US, Mr Trump torpedoed it, saying he wanted it as a campaign issue.
For all those who fretted about the health of American democracy, there is no doubt that it was on full display on Tuesday and that the people have spoken loudly and clearly.
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Publish date : 2024-11-06 16:16:00
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