Sometimes fear triumphs over hope. Donald Trump ’s shocking victory in the 2016 US presidential election was described as a leap into the political unknown. This time there is no excuse.
America knew that he was a convicted criminal, serial liar and racist demagogue who four years ago attempted to overthrow the government. It voted for him anyway. The result is a catastrophe for the world.
It saw Kamala Harris’s competence and expertise, her decency and grace, her potential to be the first female president in America’s 248-year history. It also saw Trump’s venality and vulgarity, his crass insults and crude populism, his dehumanisation of immigrants that echoed Adolf Hitler . And the world asked: how is this race even close? But elections hold up a mirror to a nation and the nation does not always like what it sees.
Future historians will marvel at how Trump rose from the political dead. When he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden , people gathered outside the White House to celebrate, brandishing signs that said, “Bon Voyage”, “Democracy wins!”, “You’re fired!”, “Trump is over” and “Loser”. There was a tone of finality, a sense that, after four gruelling years, this particular national nightmare was over.
For many, there was the comforting idea that moral order had been restored. It was Trump who was the aberration, not Barack Obama , the first Black president who had preceded him. Hope, not fear, was the national default.
Now America was back o.