Illegal immigrants: Democrats’ message came across as vague, preachy and hopelessly removed from reality

Washington, DC & Minneapolis

Donald Trump’s resounding success in the US elections has reinforced the political and journalistic elites’ deficient understanding of public attitudes in the post-pandemic world order. On top was the end of the fixation to involve America in global disputes to preserve and perpetuate its hegemony. For the less well-heeled Americans, this was unnecessary spending, compounding their immediate economic challenges.

The emergence of a consensus for an inward-looking political philosophy among a cross-section of voters lent Trump a trope to present himself as the 'peace candidate' and gain wider currency for his "America first, Americans first" message. This destroyed the social coalition the Democrats painstakingly assembled in the 2020 elections. According to a New York Times analysis, counties that were strongholds of the Democrats in 2020 witnessed a drop of 1.9 million votes for Kamala Harris.
This shifting allegiance helped Trump win over 75 million votes against Harris’ 71.8 million—this is the second time any Republican candidate has won the popular vote since 1988—and clinch 312 of 538 votes in the electoral college.

The developments do not mean merely a loss of power for the Democrats, but have left them with a resourceful yet ineffective organisation, which despite massive capital, a favourable media discourse, celebrity endorsements and a proclaimed loftiness of moralistic standards was spurned by a diverse array of regions and demographic groups. Party insiders said their initial assessment was that a "too moralistic" war bugle, which over-emphasised the need to repudiate Trump's politics in order to save the US democracy and its pluralistic traditions, came across as either vague or preachy or even hopelessly removed for several sections of the electorate who were beset by soaring food prices. They found Trump’s depiction of illegal immigrants as a source of their economic woes plausible.

David Schultz, a prominent author and professor of political science at Hamline University, Minnesota, summed up the Democrats’ staggering election loss as a fallout of their “taking the working class and people of colour for granted and focusing on identity politics and on the interests of those who are more affluent”. He said the problem for Democrats was not so much the loss, but the shift of many constituencies away from the party. "The US is more conservative than the extreme of the Democratic Party and the message should be that class and economics is more important to most than is identity. This election revealed that the political left-right continuum as defined by American politics for the last few years has shifted."
Barbara Cox, a policy analyst based in Minneapolis, said "the Democrats will have to do a lot of listening to the working class voters and policies". Trump’s "efficient businessman" image played a role in consolidating the working class for him. He made improvements not just in the rural hinterland; his urban swings were evident across the political map, including in New York City where he gained significant ground. The decline in public interest in voting for the Democrats in key cities, such as Detroit and Philadelphia, precluded Harris from winning the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Among the people of colour, Trump’s gains were monumental. According to an exit poll conducted by Edison Research, whereas Trump polled 32 per cent Hispanic votes to Biden's 65 per cent in 2020, his share in 2024 climbed to 46 per cent against Harris’ 52 per cent. Among Hispanic men, Trump registered a vote share of 55 per cent, which validates concerns regarding a cross section of voters’ incompatibility with a woman head of state.

Harris’s October surprise included a backlash from Arab Americans who were concerned about the human rights situation in Gaza. In Michigan's Arab American majority city of Dearborn, Trump beat Harris 42.5 per cent to 36 per cent. A staggering 18 per cent voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Trump’s support among Afro-Americans went up from 8 in 10 voters in 2020 to 9 in 10 voters. Every three of 10 black men under the age of 45 voted for him, which is roughly double the numbers he got in 2020. ESPN anchor Stephen Smith argued that Michelle Obama’s speech in Kalamazoo in Michigan, where she warned African Americans that supporting Trump would mean voting "against us", backfired as the intended audience "felt pressured and misrepresented".

There was also a widespread feeling that the Democratic Party had become an echo-chamber of the elites and the left liberals. Trump seized on this vexation, and accused Harris of trying to restructure the American polity on socialist lines. Harris’ entry into the race as a handpicked candidate of the Democratic National Committee cemented the notion of her being a creation of the establishment. Though Harris raised a whopping $1 billion in the early days of her campaign and gained endorsements from celebrities, the average voter saw this as the elites’ attempt to dictate America’s political and democratic processes. Two assassination attempts on Trump added allure to his story of a persecuted political protagonist trying to repair the system.
Yet, there is no dearth of crestfallen voters who are fretting that the return of Trump will exacerbate social divisions. "The inherent white nationalism in Trump’s politics is hard to miss. While many people voted for him as they were enraged by an ailing economy, another Trump presidency will erode our social fabric," said Tahiru Titus Jafaru, an African-American who retired as civil engineer.

The fear that American democracy might soon reach a dangerous inflection point is shared by many white Americans as well. Kirk Dornfeld, a retired medical practitioner, said Trump could push the American society irreversibly to the right, while hollowing out institutions. "I expect Trump will pardon all the people jailed in connection with the insurrection on January 6, 2021,” said Dornfeld. “He will ban abortion and abortion drugs nationwide. He will appoint young, conservative judges to replace the older conservative judges in the Supreme Court, and he will try to control the military."