By Rosie Moore, Second Year, History
Three hundred and twelve Electoral College votes, fifty-three Republican Senators, and 50.2 per cent of the popular vote later, Donald Trump has accomplished the greatest comeback in American political history.
Maya Angelou once said, ‘I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.'
The 2024 presidential was framed by the Democratic Party as once in a generation, with civil rights and the survival of democracy on the ballot. Yet support for Trump transcended this critical narrative, and indeed traditional policy debates. His strategy for the election was simple: the champion the forgotten. The MAGA (Make America Great Again) machine leveraged populism to position Trump as the voice of ‘real’ Americans, pitted against the ‘woke liberal elites.’
Like most populists, Trump has long traded in the frustrations of being ‘hard done by’ or ‘left behind’. He fosters anger and resentment, the culmination of which was observed during the insurrection he instigated at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, on grounds that he believed the 2020 election (which he has never conceded) had been ‘stolen’ from him. Then, his rhetoric led to the deaths of six, and four charges against his name. Trump’s ability to harness and exploit the emotions of his followers, not unlike a cult-leader, made him capable of calling them to arms; he has reshaped what it means to ‘back’ a candidate in liberal democracies.
The anger of those who stormed the US Capitol has only gained momentum since then. In 2024, the election was not about policy; the crux of the Democratic defeat was not the economy, as many think, but divisive class-based politics which fuelled a narrative coloured by resentment. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, it’s not about what you do, or even exactly what you say, but how you make people feel.
Trump’s strategy was a combination of speaking about what offends and affects voters. He redirected attention to issues such as inflation, where many Americans felt directly affected, and presented himself as an avatar for dissatisfied urban America. Yet Trump wasn’t fighting for re-election in the name of the working man, or to address the wealth gap—Trump is not Bernie Sanders. He isn’t even a conservative. He’s against free trade, and his plans for tax cuts without spending reductions are likely to add $7.5 trillion to America’s deficit. Rather, he sought to capitalise on frustrations over economic stagnation in order to channel them into a populist disillusionment with ‘elites’ on which his platform is built.
The point is, Trump doesn’t really believe anything. He runs on a cult of personality, rather than a political philosophy, and his lack of genuine policy focus is epitomised by his zero-sum approach to relationships and negotiations. For Trump, there are only winners and losers; his foreign policy is therefore hawkish and unpredictable, ranging from tariffs on imported Chinese goods to the killing of Iranian leader Qasem Soleimani. If anything, his actions are driven by an isolationist agenda, which is less about serving the American people, and more about maximising his personal benefit.
Trump transcends the traditional left-right political debate. Far from a notion of the 2024 election being won on the economy, or a MAGA commitment to the ‘real issues’, Trump’s victory was a result of a decisive sidelining of policy agenda altogether, in favour of fuelling an emotional and divisive campaign which send people to the polling booth equipped only with whatever it was that Trump had made them feel.
Featured Image: BP Miller / Unsplash
How important is the rhetoric of 'feeling' to your own political views?
