Opinion | Donald Trump And The Inescapable Musical Chairs Of Politics

As I walked out of my Upper West Side polling station in New York City after casting my vote, the lack of energy in America's most liberal city was palpable. The pins being sold just outside said “Keep Kamala and Carry On-a-la”, but the calmness was about to explode. 

Donald Trump's stunning comeback forces an acknowledgement that Americans do not want to simply carry on. Much like India earlier this year. They are increasingly tired of the financial pain that started after the 2008 financial crisis, rendering many of them under-employed. The most powerful ingredients of rapid global economic growth in our lifetimes—globalisation and technological replacement—have ricocheted back to cause acute pain at the working-class Americans' dining tables. And they are hoping, against the odds, that their ballot can overpower that bullet.

This is precisely the reason why, much like the re-emergence of the former President, a defining trend is now categorising the American election cycle. And, I would argue, the Indian election cycle too.

Incumbents Beware

This is now the third presidential election since 2016 when the incumbent party has been voted out, a trend not seen since the 1970s when Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were voted in quick succession as inflation eclipsed all else. Once is an accident. Twice, a coincidence. Three times, a pattern.

In India, the lack of a majority for the incumbent party this year was an indication of that very problem that is proving difficult for any global leader to resolve. In fact, there has been a dissipation of existing power if not an outright change in every major government across the world this year—from the UK and Italy to Germany and Japan, and others.

As Bill Clinton's political strategist Jim Carville stated prophetically thirty years ago, “It's the economy, stupid.” But some would point out that the stock markets are at an all-time high and economic growth was at par in both Trump and Biden years. So, why the discontent? Didn't life seem good enough?

Yes, but only for the elite, whether in the US or India. The elite are the real beneficiaries of the riches-to-riches story. How long can you ignore the larger population that now has to work an average of 2.5 jobs to keep the same lifestyle as a decade ago? In the case of India, too, yes there are cheap mobile phones and food handouts, but job prospects cannot keep up with young aspirations.

In this discontented mix, a message like Trump's, which primarily centres around inflation and its many symptoms—immigration being an obvious one—will obviously be attractive. But so is that of any politician who offers a change in the existing status quo. It is akin to a company changing multiple CEOs in the hope its fortunes will change, not realising that the problem lies in the product itself.

The Polarisation Card Is Losing Its Edge 

This election has broken several myths—the overriding one being polarisation—including that echo chambers are permanent and defined and will not sway voters from their trenches. That certainly was the case in 2016, when Trump's winnability was attributed to a fringe base of non-college-educated men. But in 2024, Trump's winnability is attributed to virtually all subsets.

A case in point is young men, and shockingly for the democrats, young men of colour—whether Latino or Indian-American—swinging in Trump's favour. The Left is finally realizing that they cannot club all minorities together, much like the Right in India is realizing the majority cannot always be a single voting bloc. Their loyalty, and more importantly, their ethics, are being questioned. I disagree. This was not a vote for the messenger, it was a vote for the message. 

This election has stuck a needle into the bubble of polarisation that the world has sworn by throughout the last decade. Both sides tried to polarise voters, whether it was Trump with immigration or Harris with abortion. But it did not work. There are voters who have chosen Trump and abortion rights. The choice is no longer binary. Above all else, the voters in America are pragmatic.

The same is true for India. The 2024 India voting reflected the discontent among ordinary voters, where the economy superseded everything else. The conservative argument of caste or religious lines shaping voting patterns is increasingly becoming redundant. 

As it has long been said, democracy is a luxury when there is not enough food on the table. But there are also similarities between the out-of-touch ‘Khan market gang' in India and America's coastal elite. Instead of focusing on the real issue of voter pain, the Democrats' and the Indian Opposition's patronising tone of ‘How could you vote for him?' reeked of moral superiority borne out of privilege, not realism.

Only Betting Markets Got It Right  

The media and the pollsters have got it so far wrong that they are in danger of losing their voice. These echo chambers are now functioning as cheerleaders of political thought. They dole out a narrative rather than acting as arbiters of reason. It is ironic that the most truthful picture came from sources that are often the most tainted in history—the betting markets in the US and the satta bazaar in India. Whether Trump's sweep or the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) underperformance, they were the only ones who got it right.

Kamala Played Well

Kamala Harris also emerged as a hero to many. Clearly, many things that were out of her control went wrong for her: Biden's selfishness in holding on to power, the war fatigue, and the all-important anti-incumbency. 

When my 10-year-old daughter accompanying me to the voting booth asked me why a woman gets passed yet again for the most powerful job in the world, I told her to walk tall the next day. Because in the shortest presidential campaign in American history, of only 107 days, Kamala managed to achieve the impossible and did better than any reasonable hope. LOTUS for POTUS simply did not have enough time to bloom.

I do not think America acted like it did in 2016 and chose to vote against a female President. The pain threshold that Trump pressed on was much lower on Maslow's needs chart for the gender ceiling in American politics to even be a conversation. A famous meme from the Kamala campaign was a father going with his daughter to the polling booth and saying he was voting for her. I believe the father did still vote for his daughter, not necessarily as a mark of support for the candidate but as an act of hope of providing his family with a better life.

Trump Needs A Hail Mary 

But will Trump be able to deliver on that hope? In the America of the 1980s, the Republican party's modern hero, Ronald Reagan, achieved the impossible as he took on the structural inflation problem, giving birth to decades of prosperity.

For Trump to leave the legacy he wants, he will have to be in offensive tackle mode for the next four years and deliver a magical Reaganesque solution to the working class pain. Or else, given the musical chairs game global politics has become, the Dems will be back in the White House in 2028.

(Namrata Brar is an Indian-American journalist, investigative reporter, and news anchor. She is the former US bureau chief of NDTV)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the authors