In late 1991, I got a call from my top boss, a rising star in the corporate hierarchy at the ANZ Grindlays Bank. “You are going to be posted to California to head our NRI (Non Resident Indian) services”, he roared, with the confidence of a bull on an untrammelled run. I was thrilled to bits.
Forget the mouth-watering prospect of going to the United States of America, I had not even travelled to Sri Lanka at that time. There was no “ foreign visit” in my boring bio. I don’t think I even had a passport, which was by itself a status symbol. Friends and relatives who had visited Uncle Sam would return carrying Charlie perfume bottles, Hershey’s chocolates, Toblerone bars and tee-shirts with NYPD emblazoned in iridescent yellow. They were my prize property, these magnanimous gifts.
Trust me, The Great American Dream sold in the IIT’s and intensely acrimonious family dinners was real. I spent several sleepless nights dreaming of accidentally bumping into Cindy Crawford at LA Airport, and her being instantly charmed by the brown boy. To cut the long story short, that celebrated professional peregrination never happened. California became Calcutta on the official circular and I quit the bank, feeling like a rejected loser.
But when I saw President-elect Donald Trump make what he correctly called as “ the greatest political comeback in history”, I was hit by an indescribable schadenfreude for the citizens of the richest country in the world. I was glad I was not there.
By the time you read this, political analysts, news correspondents, foreign policy wonks, and sundry members of the punditry elite will have done a meticulous biopsy of what had led to a landslide win for the saffron-haired political gadfly. Trump’s overwhelming sweep across the differing voter constituencies has a compelling reason behind it.
In 2016, Donald Trump was seen to be a raging infant who dramatically usurped the classical conservatism of the Republican party by adding his own idiosyncratic medley to it. Although he faced a stigmatised business record and several sexual abuse allegations of varying degrees, he was seen by many White voters (approximately 60%) as the ideal high-risk candidate to despoil the dominant Barack Obama legacy. Hillary Clinton, her outstanding credentials apart, was easy fodder – a former First Lady who would treat the White House as her powder room. That “establishment elite” narrative struck a deep chord (and it has not gone away). The rest is history.
But 2024 was expected to be different for multiple reasons. Trump was a convicted felon and the charges ranged from sexual abuse, falsification of business records, mishandling classified documents to engineering a revolt against his own government. The January 6 insurrection at Capitol Hill in 2021 was a black day in the history of the American presidency. Trump’s visceral misogyny, vulgar remarks at Democratic candidates Kamala Harris and Clinton, and his regressive views on reproductive freedom for women, would have made any rival believe that the accomplished muckraker was toast, at least with half of the voting population. Turns out, he wasn’t. Of course, Trump benefitted enormously from the awful marketability of ‘Genocide Joe’ (President Joe Biden christened so in light of the genocide in Gaza), and Harris, a Black American woman of Asian origin, who naturally faced strong headwinds. Given that the atrocious US election process is down to seven crucial swing states, Harris still had reason to be optimistic. But the results are devastating for the Democrats. They lost the House of Representatives and the Senate in a comprehensive rout. Taylor Swift, Beyonce, LeBron James and Bruce Springsteen didn’t really add up to much. Born in the USA, anyone?
Authoritarian demagogues use emotive content to establish connection with people: Trump did that repeatedly with rehearsed finesse on border security and deportation of illegal immigrants, both embedded with hyper-nationalistic sentiment. Of course, there would be other issues like consumer inflation and rising mortgage costs, but Biden’s own uncharismatic extended stay had made Democrats wobble. The assassination attempts on Trump added to the sympathy factor for the frequently bankrupt, flamboyant billionaire New Yorker, rebuked by the liberal media for his Islamophobia, overt racism, threat to order the Army against political opponents, stance on climate change, among other things. All of these seem like valid issues, yet they failed to register. Why?
There is a fundamental question that few have addressed: How come the wealthiest man ever to enter the Oval Office – who owns the Mar-A-Lago golf resort, towering Manhattan skyscrapers, and several urban properties and businesses like Truth Social, who mischievously circumvented disclosure of his tax returns – is the big hope for the struggling, working class, bottom-of-the-food-chain rural America and strictly religious Evangelical voters?
It seems like a bizarre contradiction. To make matters worse, Trump has promised greater tax cuts for the big US corporations and was hugely funded and supported by the richest man in the world: Elon Musk. But if you dig deep, there is a primal factor at play behind this anomaly. There is a reason why Trump scored big with Latino voters despite the anti-Mexican border-wall rhetoric, unemployed and harassed Black young men, Asians from different countries, and even women: America distrusts the Washington career politicians.
This year’s elections are merely a continuation of 2016, and in any case, 80% of Republicans were unwavering in their belief that Biden was an illegitimate president, an apostate who rigged the 2020 verdict in cahoots with an immeasurably entrenched deep state in American politics; the cosmopolitan elite. Conspiracy theorists of the far-right had sustained this disinformation campaign assiduously since January 7, 2021. On November 5, 2024 they successfully ensured closure of that project.
American cynicism with the Democratic elite (liberalism has been badgered mercilessly as if it is an upper-class construct and has nothing to do with human freedom and individual liberty) ensured that even a good and well-intentioned Harris, who singularly thumped Trump in their televised debate, found her impressive triumph electorally inconsequential. There seems to be a rising fatigue, cynicism and contempt for regular mainstream politicians, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. Trump was and is an outlier, let us not deny that. So MAGA, a trite and cheesy campaign worked magic. Again. It was simple to understand and easy to feel.
Trump, his repugnant baggage of ugly verbiage notwithstanding, grew bigger with every ludicrous extremity he uttered. Every time Trump appeared in court, he looked defiant; this was a brutal 16, Pennsylvania Avenue establishment apparatchiks at work, revengeful and bloodthirsty, he wished to convey. Poor Donald was just an innocent victim of Washington’s seedy machinations. America agreed with him, and it was not just the Blue Wall states or the Rust belt. Pollsters are still reading the tea-leaves.
Trump won in 2016, and now in 2024, because the Americans wanted a man who is at core not just an outlier, but “ an outsider”. He was their insider in the political corridors of Washington. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, calling him a fascist or Republican Senator Mitch Mcconell rubbishing him as a despicable human being or stupid, had no impact on Trump’s political brand. Someone who threatened to nuke North Korea on Twitter, mocks CNN publicly, eulogises Vladmir Putin, wants Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job”, and invokes the return of Joseph McCarthyism, felt closer to heart and home for a majority of the Americans. For them, Trump is not a Republican, but a loyal American best suited for the White House. The voters thus looked beyond their age-old traditional fidelity. They trusted Trump on bread, butter and jam issues. America in 2024 has voted for a president that they think is more like them.
America went to bed on November 5, 2024, a balkanized country. For 51% of them, the great American dream was still alive. For the remaining, the great American nightmare had just begun.
Sanjay Jha is a former national spokesperson of the Indian National Congress party. He also worked as a banker and an internet entrepreneur.