For
some people, November 5, 2024, was one of the
greatest days in American history. Others may
well remember it as a day that will live in
political infamy. The 2024 presidential election
is over, and Donald Trump has been reelected as
the forty-seventh president of the United States
of America. One can only imagine what Grover
Cleveland would think of this chain of events.
Cleveland was the only other president to serve
nonconsecutive terms - he was the twenty-second
and twenty-fourth US president from 1885 to 1889
and from 1893 to 1897.
If people are honest with
themselves, they would probably admit that
Tuesday’s results shocked but did not totally
surprise them. Trump went on to win both the
popular vote and the Electoral College. The
latter ultimately determines who wins the
presidency.
3 When the drama settled, many
individuals, both inside and outside the media,
engaged in fierce post-election-day morning,
afternoon, and evening quarterbacking. They
bandied about various scenarios and theories
regarding how such an outcome could possibly
have occurred. In truth, many people again voted
for Donald Trump for several reasons, despite
knowing full well of his past and present
transgressions.
Throughout various periods in
our nation’s history, charismatic politicians
espousing a populist message have sporadically
emerged onto the political scene garnering the
support of those citizens who felt
disenfranchised or ignored. Both Trump (and
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016)
successfully tapped into the intense populist
tsunamis that were raging throughout the nation.
Both men fervently discussed economic
marginalization, outsourcing of jobs, Wall
Street (Trump has made a U-turn on this issue),
unchecked globalization, neoliberalism, and
other factors they saw as contributors to many
working-class people’s demise. The major
difference was that Trump has brazenly tinged
his message with a blatant and dangerously high
level of jingoism and nationalism.
Another
undeniable factor was the double standards that
segments of the media applied to both campaigns.
The passive-aggressive approach to which Harris
was subjected was disingenuous and annoying.
While Trump routinely went off the rails and
little if anything was said, with Vice President
Harris, every comment was meticulously critiqued
and dissected. CNN commentator Van Jones stated
it most accurately when he declared“[Trump] is allowed to be
lawless, she has to be flawless.” Indeed, this
appeared to be the case!
W.E.B.
Du Bois accurately stated in his classic book The
Souls of Black Folk that
race would be the definitive issue of the
twentieth century. His prophetic message still
rings true today as we are about to arrive at
the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first
century. To be blunt and to keep it real, the
Trump campaign once again engaged in a blatantly
racist, sexist, shameless, divisive campaign.
Remember the October 27 Madison Square Garden
carnival? His advisors and surrogates employed
the same nativistic playbook that has preyed
upon and exploited fearful Whites’ resentment
toward immigration, DEI and affirmative action
(despite the fact that White people, especially
White women, are the biggest beneficiaries of
the policy), multiculturalism, LGBTQIA+ rights,
and other issues often considered anathema to a
number of racist, sexist, homophobic,
anti-Semitic, and xenophobic members in this
group.
Voters leveled numerous double
standards toward Vice President Kamala Harris
but not toward Donald Trump. Throughout the
campaign for president, some voters insisted
they just did not know enough about her. Several
political pundits argued that she was light on
specifics; journalists bemoaned that she did not
engage in long interviews, or avoided answering
tough questions, or answered easy questions more
sharply. She didn’t provide enough policy
details. Some wondered: Do we really know her?
Is she too aggressive? Is she not aggressive
enough? Her opponents cast her as an “empty
suit,” a lightweight with dangerous ideas.
In contrast,
they gave Trump leeway to espouse all sorts of
crude, incoherent rhetoric, which much of the
mainstream media largely dismissed, if not
outright ignored. They
would often let him go off on tangents about
various topics without challenging him to verify
his statements as they required of other
candidates. It is also probably safe to say that
the press was largely unprepared to cover a
presidential candidate who was already a
professional media celebrity. He was able to
manipulate much of the press core successfully.
There are others. This fact
itself was disturbing.
Differences
and double standards aside, many American people
returned this morally deficient man to power,
notwithstanding his past and present behavior,
including chronic sexual
abuse, rampant
fraud, abundant lies, multiple felonies, racism
of his campaign, insults,
and threats. In the most blunt and searing terms
possible, many high-level individuals warned the
American people of the impending danger. His
previously loyal vice
president declined to endorse him, his
top generals referred
to him as a “total fascist,” and
some of his closest aides and Cabinet members
described in detail his unhinged character and
callous indifference to the Constitution.
Race
aside, we cannot totally dismiss the reality
that Trump’s political coalition was totally
devoid of people of color. In fact, he achieved a
surprising upset victory in a heavily Black county
in North Carolina and won
Dearborn, Michigan’s largest Arab-majority
city. He doubled
his Black support in Wisconsin and won
Hispanic men by ten points. On the
contrary, Harris’s efforts to bolster her appeal
in the suburbs failed to materialize. In fact,
she performed worse than Biden did in 2020. Trump
created a new one by turning
out new voters, often young and male, who view
him as an entertaining figure. Each of his three
presidential campaigns rejected traditional
notions of political decorum and ran instead on
grievances and cultural concerns.
As is the case with race,
America is a nation with sexism deeply etched
into its social fabric. Hillary Clinton was
unsuccessful in her bid to become the nation’s
first female president. Kamala Harris fell short
in achieving this goal. If we are honest, more
than a few women refused to cast a ballot for
another woman. They can be conditioned to be
misogynistic, whether conscious or otherwise. In
Harris’s case, being Black and Asian were
additional impediments against her. The
intersection of race and gender worked against
her.
Meanwhile, the
forces of White Supremacy, sexism, homophobia,
xenophobia were triumphant on Tuesday. The
nation is entering uncharted territory. Those of
us who are committed to liberation and equality
for all citizens regardless of race, gender,
sexual orientation, religion are unrelentingly
committed to equal and humane treatment of all
human beings as opposed to the preferential
treatment of a select few.
