Trump, Part Two
With the now President-Elect Donald Trump elected for a second time, will things ever be the same again?
Image credit DonaldJTrump.com
Last month many around the world held their breath awaiting the results of this deeply polarised election, with some mooting it as the new American Civil War. Across the pond here in the UK, a poll by YouGov found that 19 percent of people were optimistic about the election, but that a further 31 percent of respondents reported feeling “anxious” about results, with nine percent saying they were “scared”.
Republican candidate, now President-Elect Donald Trump, had before his second win criticised the system of mail-in ballots, accusing the democratic party and electoral volunteers of using this to rig elections against him. However, since winning a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, the President-Elect has been less insistent on electoral reform.
Polling by the Elections Performance Index suggests that in the previous 2020 presidential election, 58 percent of mail-in ballots were cast in favour of Democratic candidates, with 29 percent voting for Republicans.
This recent shift in trust towards the mode of voting, and the system itself is part of a deepening polarisation between Republican and Democratic voters.
Robert Smith is an expert in international relations at Coventry University in the midlands and is a long-time watcher of American politics.
We spoke to him to find out more about the differences between the UK and the US political landscape, and the impact the result of the election could have in Britain.
“The level of polarisation that there is now in American politics, in Britain we are lucky because we have the BBC, we have a national broadcaster. Although there is PBS in the US they are tiny in comparison.
You have political coverage that is siloed into political opinion, so the debate has become incredibly polarised.
And that was true before Trump came along, but what that has done is turbo-charged it”.
FOX, CNN, and MSNBC, the leading broadcasters in America are all for-profit commercial enterprises, with FOX, which leans Republican, taking 50 percent of the viewing figures and making annual profits of $1.2 billion in 2022.
Meanwhile, in the UK our national broadcaster, the BBC operates under strict guidance from OFCOM, the regulatory body that governs what can be broadcast. While it and its watchdogs come under much scrutiny, a similar system of checks and balances is not in play stateside. This has led many to disengage from traditional broadcast media, declaring the Mainstream Media as untrustworthy and biased.
IMAGE CREDIT MAHANOW.ORG
In recent years the USA has seen a blurring of traditionally Democrat vs Republican stances and values, with figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr crossing the divide and endorsing Donald Trump, much to the dismay of the wider Kennedy political dynasty.
One woman who chose to stay anonymous because of similar family conflicts described her motivations for how she cast her ballot.
“I voted for Trump, I’d be disowned if my kids knew. I’m an old hippy, I was at college in the 80s under Regan, I hated the guy. I’ve not ideologically shifted, but now I’m able to close my door and pay my bills I want the government out of my business.
COVID was a turning point for me, I had grandchildren born I didn’t meet till they were walking. I have to vote in my interests, I am not an enthusiastic MAGA type, I just want the government to leave us alone.”
The consequences of such a divisive election are to some extent already known, in 2016 many were just as conflicted as they are today, but the long-term picture remains unknown. With increasingly controversial cabinet appointments, Americans are yet again left with two irreconcilable narratives of what America is, and what America should become.