By Tom Barker
Donald Trump, a racist, billionaire sex offender, will once again be the next President of the United States. In a crushing defeat for the Democrats, Trump not only won the electoral college, he was the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since 2004!
So, what does his election mean for the working class in the US, and is the country moving to the right?
The first thing to say is that this election was Harris’ loss as well as Trump’s victory. Since the 2020 election, the Democrats’ vote fell by around 7 million. Only 58% of voting age adults participated in this election – 4% lower than the 2020 election.
Nevertheless, Trump is now in a stronger position than he was when elected in 2016, winning millions more votes on a more nakedly reactionary platform, reflecting a concerning shift to the right among important sections of US society. The Republicans now control the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the balance of the Supreme Court has also been shifted in Trump’s favour. What’s more, clearly a larger portion of the working class were willing to vote for Trump, despite the extreme toxicity of his political programme. This is a development that has to be taken seriously. Women, LGTBQ+ people, and migrants in particular are more vulnerable as a result.
Why did the Democrats lose?
The liberal capitalist establishment has scrambled to rationalise its defeat. Guardian columnist John Harris, concludes that the Democrats lost because people “despise the left”. Shortly after the election, Novara Media asked “Is the left dangerously out of touch?”. Some Democratic politicians are actively blaming their defeat on “pandering to the far left.”
They might all have a point if the Democrats were actually on the left! In reality, the Harris campaign was based on an utterly vacuous policy platform, mainly consisting of ‘feel good’ messages and not being Trump. Her campaign was devoid of any policies which could even begin to address the dire needs of workers and the oppressed. Far from “pandering to the left”, when interviewed Kamala Harris pandered to the right on core issues such as immigration and the economy.
Furthermore, for a campaign supposedly based on ‘hope’, the Democrats’ record when in office didn’t inspire any. The Biden-Harris administration failed absolutely to prevent abortion rights from being overturned. Kamala Harris, in her capacity as Vice President, maintained Trump’s racist deportation policies. The Democratic establishment is up to its shoulders in blood from its active facilitation of the genocidal onslaught in Gaza and the spread of war in the Middle East. In the last year alone, the US has provided a record $18 billion in military aid to Israel. Hardly things that inspire ‘hope’!
Trump, by contrast, promised to “end inflation”, make tips and overtime pay tax-free, and abolish tax on social security payments, attempting to speak to the economic realities of millions of working-class people in the US, whose living standards have been decimated by successive governments. Harris, the incumbent candidate of yet another government of misery for the majority, was largely silent on these issues. While both candidates defend the interests of the billionaire class, which have nothing in common with the needs, this made it possible to portray himself as standing up for ordinary people against the Democrats.
Ruling class divided
Harris was the favoured candidate of the discredited neoliberal establishment. She was seen by much of the ruling class as a safe pair of hands for capitalism who boasted support from banking, investment, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries, military leaders and even Republican war criminals like ex-Vice President Dick Cheney. Trump, by contrast, though seen as unpredictable, had major backers among the capitalist elite, particularly from fossil fuel giants, as well as big tech. His victory represents a further embrace of nationalism, antimigrant hatred and the general reactionary agenda by the US ruling class – a phenomenon which is mirrored internationally.
Such corporations have already seen a big boost since his election, with oil and gas prices rising as a result. This is partly explained by Trump’s proposed tariffs on foreign imports, which will drive up demand for domestic fuel. These tariffs, while strengthening the dollar in the short term, threaten to seriously undermine the world economy – something which some of the more far-sighted capitalists understand (although they themselves have no solutions). This will inevitably set the scene for further cost of living squeezes and explosive class struggle.
More hardship for workers?
Notwithstanding Trump’s various commitments to turbocharge the economy, even before the election some of his most prominent supporters made no attempt to hide who it was that was going to pay the price. At a stunningly chaotic virtual town hall event in late-October, Elon Musk warned that, “we have to reduce spending to live within our means… and, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship”.
Coming from the richest person in the world, this is frankly ridiculous, but it is something that will sound eerily familiar to people in Britain. Starmer’s Labour, which models itself in many ways on the Democrats, consistently warned of “temporary pain” for working-class people if Labour were elected. It speaks volumes about the crisis of capitalism and the inability of the ruling class to maintain control that two such (ostensibly) opposing political tendencies should speak in an almost identical language. It is precisely this reason why the need for a new party has never been greater.
In the absence of a credible left alternative, it is hardly surprising that many working-class voters either switched to Trump or failed to turn out for Harris.
Without a working-class movement which can channel working class anger at the neoliberal elite away from the poison of Trumpist right-populism towards real proworker policies, the right will only continue to grow.
Working-class resistance
The political terrain in the US is characterised by extreme polarisation and contradictions, meaning that shifts to the right are sometimes more complicated than they appear. Many have decried Trump as a fascist and his incoming government as a threat to democracy. While the threat of Trump should not be minimised, it must also be understood in a balanced way. Historically, the success of fascism was built on the defeat of the trade union movement. Today, by contrast, the labour movement is not defeated. In fact, the US has just gone through its most intense strike wave in 30 years – something which is still continuing in heavy industry, with UAW auto workers winning a historic strike, Boeing workers winning 38% pay rises after strike action, and dockworkers winning 62% pay rises.
This will ultimately only intensify under Trump. This has been the fate of the recently-elected ultra-right wing Argentinian President Javier Milei, known as ‘el loco’ – the madman – who pledged to “take a chainsaw” to the country’s public sector. Milei’s administration has been rocked by a series of general strikes, street blockades, and near constant opposition.
Nevertheless, a Trump 2.0 Presidency represents a clear danger to women, LGBTQ+ people and the oppressed. It is already helping to embolden the far right, with a small but politically significant “Men’s March” against abortion rights taking place just days after Trump’s election victory. This needs to be a catalyst for resurgent anti-oppression movements. The massive airport shutdowns that took place after Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ in 2016 provides a glimpse of what is likely if Trump should proceed with something similar, including his mass deportation plans.
The picture is extremely contradictory, largely owing to the absence of a mass workers party. Many of those currently involved in strike action voted for Trump. This shows that working class people can simultaneously be part of militant struggle and still be susceptible to anti-working-class ideas like racism, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia. This underlines the central importance of combating divide-and-rule tactics which threaten the unity of the working class. Socialist Alternative in the US has been building protests against Trump 2.0 since election night. We stand for a new party of working class struggle with socialist policies, the building of which is a vital and urgent task.
