Trump Is Toast

Ben Wildsmith

Donald Trump is going to lose in November. I’ll go further and suggest there is a pretty good chance that he’ll pull out of the race, or at least try to negotiate the conditions that would allow him to do that.

Last week’s Democratic National Convention was a very different affair than had been feared by those attending. Delegates who had been braced for a week of wincing, as Joe Biden mangled names and policies whilst staring into the distance at an approaching light, instead celebrated in sheer relief at the competence and vigour of the campaign behind Kamala Harris.

The Vice President herself exuded an easy confidence that belied the chaotic circumstances of her nomination. For all the smiling unity on display, there is a story yet to be told about how Biden was finally persuaded to step aside.

Whatever the murky details of that process, it was necessary skulduggery as the underlying narrative is of the old yielding to the new.

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Abundant joy

The abundant joy on show in Chicago was rooted in more than relief at the overdue replacement of a deteriorating candidate. It reflected the passing of a political age, with Barack and Michelle Obama assuming the roles of party elders and a slew of younger politicians like Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan taking their place on the national stage.

Chicago was a fitting place for this transition to occur. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held in the city as protests against the Vietnam War were met with violent policing measures.

It was an iconic flashpoint of ideological politics that marked a difference in priorities between those born before and after WWII. We are at a similar juncture today.

Societies will always disagree on the way forward to an agreeable future. Those conversations, informed by our differing expertise and cultures, are how we learn from each other; how we grow. For them to bear fruit, though, there must be an appetite for the future, an urgency to shape the flow of history.

Societies fail when leaders can’t keep pace with the evolution of those they are leading. Watching the fateful debate between Trump and Biden was an experience that would have been familiar to people who had lived through the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Moribund leaders, whose world view was formed when they could bound up a flight of stairs, are both a symptom and a barely living embodiment of exhausted societies.

Mediocrity

Politicians flourish with the hot breath of potential successors on their necks. Great politicians nurture emerging talent with that in mind. Tony Blair and Mark Drakeford are recent examples of leaders who abandoned their legacies to mediocrity.

Americans, like us, are in desperate need of things upon which they agree. Muskian algorithms and outrage-incentivised media have prised open divisions in our societies so ruthlessly that our politics has become divorced from life as we live it.

The nuanced compromise of work, family, and neighbourhood is drowned out by deranged bellowing across ideological chasms that exist only to perpetuate the noise.

The absurdity of living on the breadline whilst authoritatively opining about leaving the EU on ‘WTO rules’, or devoting hours every day to ‘legitimate concerns about immigration’ when you live in a village with the cultural diversity of yoghurt speaks of societies that have given up on debate and sought solace in rage. It speaks of impotence.

Which brings us back to Trump. It can be difficult to see his appeal from this distance. Ill-natured machismo plays poorly in the UK, where our embittered misogynists have learned to cloak their inadequacy in layers of irony.

Royalty

Posturing atop a pile of money is reserved for royalty here, and that comparison is perhaps more apposite than any than can be constructed from the UK political scene (apologies to Andrew RT Davies).

Whenever there is a royal event nowadays, social media is awash with people railing against the anachronistic ostentation of it. Sparkly hats and golden carriages have become, for many, tawdry echoes of a history that crumbles into disrepute under ethical investigation.

The means by which European and American wealth was accumulated have become a matter of concern all around the world, so the celebration of it is becoming unacceptable. It is, simply put, cringe.

If 2024 had a lesson to teach, it is that 2016 is history. As that period’s ageing electorate starts to be replaced by a younger cohort, politicians who can’t adapt are doomed.

Trump’s campaign, which hitherto relied on Biden’s infirmity as its central plank, is all at sea when it comes to Harris. Clunking references to race, she ‘turned black’ according to Trump, and the misogynistic jibes that found an audience when aimed at Hilary Clinton, are falling on ever stonier ground.

Most illustrative of this is Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance’s horrendously misjudged remarks about ‘childless cat ladies’ in politics. Much of the 2024 electorate heard that, before looking at Harris’s adoring stepchildren and recognising the wholesome dynamics of a successful blended family.

They saw the choices that people make in order to make a difference.

Toxic

There remains much to worry about in America. Harris is running without much of a policy offering; the nation’s foreign policy remains troubling, and the fundamentals of its economy drive inequality on its shores. In looking to the future, however, the Democrats have shifted the dial.

A conversation can be had that isn’t dominated by toxic nostalgia. The looming realities of climate change, AI, and a multipolar world must be shaped by people who have time enough left to experience them. The uncertainties of the future won’t be halted by yearning for an imagined past.

If the polls tip far enough, Trump will feel the chill of a prison cell approaching. Nothing within him could sustain the humiliation of a loss so emphatic as to be undeniable, still less the prospect of incarceration.

In return for a pardon, Trump’s threats of autocracy could be taken off the ballot paper. In granting one, Biden would secure his legacy.

Labour’s insistence that we accept its uninspiring election offer here in the UK was dishonest. There was no route to victory for the Conservatives and they knew it.

In America, the peril is real and by orders of magnitude more terrifying. By unifying behind Harris, the Democrats may have saved democracy.