The Return of Trump With An Ethical Minefield of Toxic Trumpism | Vijay Kumar

So, Donald Trump has returned to the White House as the 47th President of the United States of America. He is the only second American, who has won two non-consecutive terms. In the end, the result was not as close as it was predicted. Trump registered an emphatic win by securing a majority in the Electoral College as well as in popular votes. All the seven swing States tilted, rather decisively, in favour of Trump in drastic contrast to the 2020 election in which six out of the seven States voted in favour of Joe Biden.

It is a stunning and astonishing comeback, or as newly elected Veep, J.D. Vance has said, one of the greatest political comebacks in American history. The victory of Trump is more resounding than his first win in 2016 against Hilary Clinton in which he lost popular votes by more than three Millions.

So, like in 2016, the glass ceiling could not be broken and women could not occupy the White House. In fact, the diametrically opposite has happened, as an incorrigible misogynist has won the race for the White House.

In some sense, an unambiguous verdict in favour of Trump has spared the Supreme Court from entering into a political thicket. It was widely believed that US judiciary, right from the Court of First Instance to the Supreme Court, would be flooded with lawsuits and election petitions in the event of Kamala Harris leading by a razor-thin majority. Therefore, an unequivocally clear result in favour of Trump is a great relief for the American judiciary, especially the US Supreme Court. Any eventuality of getting embroiled in polarized politics would have eroded the credibility of the Supreme Court, as happened in the case of Albert Gore vs. Bush Jr. in 2000.

The result of the 2024 presidential election is an unmistakable pointer to the ascendency of right-wing politics – not only in the US but in other parts of the world. In the 2020 election, when Trump lost to Joe Biden, I wrote that “Trump is gone, but trumpism is surviving and will survive” and the 2024 election result is testimony of that. Though Trump, in his hour of triumph, has made uncharacteristically magnanimous comments that he would unite all the people of America, his victory will, in reality, calcify the already polarized social structure of America. Trump’s win is a success of a toxic combination of right-wing politics and neo-capitalism at a time when inequality has risen at an alarmingly unethical level in the US. By the same token, the defeat of the Democrat nominee is also a defeat of women’s rights, especially women’s rights over her reproductive organs, and the defeat of multi-culturalism. The possibility of the already impuissant United Nations being rendered irrelevant and the collapse of rule-based international order is looming large. Similarly, the future prospect of NATO has become uncertain, as Trump would act like a ‘Bull in China Shop’. Yet another downside of Trump’s victory may result in the erosion of the soft powers of the US. All celebrities of Hollywood and the music world, representing and symbolizing the soft power of the US, rallied around Kamala Harris, and yet, failed to make even an iota of dent among the hardcore supporters of Trump. More calamitously, the most pressing problem of climate crisis would become causality.

Trump raised the issue of immigration and that not only cut ice with his supporters but also succeeded in trumping the issue of abortion raised by Kamala Harris. The defeat of Kamala Harris underscores the strong presence of patriarchy in US culture. It is emphatically clear that US males, at least in their imagination--- maybe even in practice and belief ---- are not prepared to accept a woman as their President. Obama’s two consecutive victories, paradoxically, resulted in the surge and consolidation of White against Black. This explains that a woman, and that too woman of colour, was not accepted as the President of the country not only by White males but also by White females.

Joe Biden’s policy, particularly in respect of the Gaza crisis, has also damaged Harris’s prospects. Throughout Biden kept on vacillating on the Gaza issue. He failed to restrain Netanyahu and his hope for securing ceasefires in Gaza before the election was dashed by belligerence of Netanyahu. This resulted in the alienation of Muslim and Arab votes in favour of Democrats. Harris, being present Veep in Biden’s Presidency, could not have escaped from the dithering politics of Joe Biden on the Gaza issue.

Trump’s spectacular comeback in the White House will have huge geo-political upheaval. It will embolden the play-pen dictator like Putin in Russia and demagogues like Netanyahu, Orban and Modi. The transactional politics of Trump may lead to inequitable world order and substitution of rule-based international order by the morally catastrophic practice of ‘Might is Right’.

The American Constitution is based on the principle of checks and balances. But the function of check and balance is in danger of being eroded, as the Republicans have succeeded in capturing the Senate, and are heading towards a majority in the House of Representatives. Therefore, the US Congress, especially its Republic members, in this milieu of polarized politics, cannot control the whimsical unilateralism of Trump. The American Constitution is the first Constitution, which guaranteed the Bill of Rights to its Citizens. In particular, the First Amendment, which guarantees unbridled right to free speech and expression, has been the strength of the US in interrogating the abuse of power by a political executive through robust enforcement by an independent judiciary. But today’s US Supreme Court is packed by majority of six conservative judges appointed by Republican President – out of which three were appointed by Trump himself in his first term. In comparison, three liberal judges – incidentally all three women— out of which two were appointed by Obama and one by Joe Biden, are in the minority. Given the recent dubious judgment of the Supreme Court granting immunity to Trump for his actions as a President on polarized lines, the Supreme Court is not expected to interrogate the abuse of power by Trump. So, it would be for American voters who made a decisive choice in favour of Trump to live up to the challenge and ensure that the abuse of power by Trump is interrogated. One way of doing this is by letting the Democrats capture the Senate and the House of Representatives in the mid-term election to be held in November 2026.

In 2016, when Hilary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, despite securing three million more popular votes, she accepted her defeat gracefully and addressed the nation by saying that “she failed to breach the glass ceiling but the day and moment will come when glass ceiling would be breached.” The 2024 election provided that opportunity, but the lofty cause of women entering the White House is frustrated by the crushing defeat of Kamala Harris. Nobody knows when the next occasion and next moment will come for that historic opportunity.

(Author: Vijay Kumar, Senior Advocate,Supreme Court of India and Author Of Recent Book The Theory Of Basic Structure: Saviour of The Constitution And Democracy)