The Shift: Trump’s predictable comeback

Donald Trump is heading back to the White House. Many are framing his win as an improbable political comeback, but in retrospect, the writing had been on the wall for a while.

Biden didn’t win in 2020 because people were revved up about electing an Iraq War supporter and lifelong centrist. In fact, his decades-long quest to become President seemed completely dead after the first round of primaries. He was a symbol of Clinton-era austerity, Cold War nostalgia, and the shattered hopes of the Obama years, whereas the Bernie campaign was offering a modern New Deal to working people throughout the country. It’s no surprise that Sanders won over Latinos, young men, and other groups that Harris struggled to capture in many areas of the country.

You know what happened next. Eventually (thanks in part to an Obama phone call) the remaining candidates dropped out and united around Biden to squash the Bernie movement’s momentum.

It was a weird election. People were gripped by frustration, confusion, and anger over the impact of a worldwide pandemic. Health organizations estimate that over 400,000 people died of COVID during the Trump years and his press conferences became more and more unhinged. He told people to inject bleach. A sizable chunk of his base was convinced the disease was a conspiracy and he became associated with the sentiment, which hamstrung his ability to tout his administration’s connection to developing a vaccine. He even started trying to celebrate it this time around, but abandoned the talking point when his crowds began booing references to immunization.

Domestically Biden pushed a more pro-labor agenda than Obama, but his administration was never great at highlighting that. There were some perceptions of his time in office that simply weren’t true, like the idea that crime went up (even though it went down) and the idea that finally getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan was somehow a bad thing. This latter issue was hammered by the dutifully hawkish mainstream media, which sought to justify the longest war in American history. The right was successful in pushing the idea that inflation was up and a “border crisis” would potentially threaten the suburbs.

However, there were obviously a lot of issues that the Biden administration was terrible on and these were compounded by the fact that he had been very few people’s first pick the first time. Chief among these frustration’s was his unfettered support for Israel’s genocide on Gaza.

The specter of Trump loomed over everything. There might have been a brief moment when liberals believed he would face some sort of political consequence after the January 6th insurrection, but this is America. The only people who went to jail were deluded marks.

The GOP primary debates felt academic. Trump wasn’t involved but virtually everyone knew he would be the nominee. He faced legal challenges and guilty verdicts, but who honestly thought he wouldn’t be the nominee?

“‘This Will Be The End Of Trump’s Campaign,’ Says Increasingly Nervous Man For Seventh Time This Year,” reads the title of an often shared Onion article.

The article turns a decade old next year. It ran months before he became the Republican’s 2016 nominee.

With Biden’s approval rating underwater, Trump’s return began to feel inevitable. The presidential debate showed the world that the President had experienced a concerning cognitive decline. Not entirely surprising since we are talking about a guy who is 4 years older than Reagan was when he left office.

The Biden team was obviously aware of his age and condition. When he was elected in 2020 he claimed that he would be a transitional candidate, implying that he would hand off the job to a younger generation. This was either a lie or an idea that was entirely disregarded. If he had served a single term the party could have held an actual primary where issues (like let’s say I dunno, genocide) were actually discussed in front of voters. Instead Dems scrambled to oust him from the ticket in time to stave off an electoral shellacking. The people around Biden who concealed his situation from the press deserve to be embroiled in scandal but, again, this is America.

The Harris campaign had just over 100 days to make a case to the American people. Maybe that wasn’t enough time for any candidate to succeed, but it seemed pretty obvious that she had to separate herself from Biden.

A big, obvious move would have been ending the genocide. Some credited her for speaking about the suffering of Palestinians a little more than Biden, but it was impossible to take any of her rhetoric about working toward a ceasefire seriously when she also admitted she wouldn’t stop sending Israel weapons.

In contrast to embracing an arms embargo, the Harris campaign touted the support of people like former vice president Dick Cheney, a war criminal who had 13% approval rating when he left office. Tuesday’s results offer no proof that such moves helped win over Republicans, but it certainly further angered the left.

Protestors hit the streets to demand action on the outside, and groups like Uncommitted tried to shift Dems on the issue from the inside. These efforts didn’t just fail to move Harris, they produced little more than contempt from the Democratic establishment. At the convention, they wouldn’t even allow a Palestinian to address the audience. In recent months we’ve covered poll after poll showing that a shift in policy was broadly popular among voters, in addition to self-evidently being morally correct. Here’s the most recent survey, published by the Arab American Institute the night before the election:

A majority of both Harris (77%) and Trump (51%) voters say it is very or somewhat important that the United States demand an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza.
64% of Harris voters and 37% of Trump voters agreed that the next President should apply greater pressure on Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian land and allow the creation of a Palestinian state.
53% of Harris voters and 34% of Trump voters believe current U.S. policy towards the Middle East is too one-sided in favor of Israel.
A majority of Harris voters (65%) and a plurality of Trump voters (45%) believe the United States should comply with U.S. laws and not provide unrestricted assistance to the Israeli government if it continues to operate in a way which puts civilian lives at risk in Gaza and Lebanon.

Trump ended up winning the majority-Arab city of Dearborn, a place that had helped Biden win the important swing-state of Michigan in 2020. “Not making a clear break with Mr. Biden, even as she was vying for the White House, made Ms. Harris resoundingly unpopular in Dearborn,” reported the New York Times. “Her campaign chose not to have her hold public rallies or meetings in the city, perhaps fearing that any such event would be greeted with protests.”

In the end, Harris didn’t end up losing the election because of Michigan. Trump’s victory was decisive and points to multiple factors. There was a lot of commentary and debate about Green Party candidate Jill Stein but she ended up getting 0.4% of the vote, less than she did in 2016 and not much more than RFK Jr. did despite dropping out of the race. Even if you took all the third-party totals and gave them to Harris, she still would have lost.

Gaza might not be the specific reason for Trump’s return, but the issue is one prism to examine the failures and priorities of the Democratic party. The developments of the past year will undoubtedly impact how communities engage with the political system and what strategies will develop.

In May, Trump told a group of pro-Israel donors that he’d set the Palestine movement back 30 years if elected. Student activists have already faced vast repression under a Democratic, but it wouldn’t be surprising if tensions escalated or an emboldened right-wing took further steps to crush criticism of Israel.

Meanwhile, the genocide continues and Palestinians keep being killed regardless of election results.