My last blog did not take account of just how slowly votes are counted in US presidential elections. While the result has been obvious from the grey dawn of Nov 6th, and the outlines of the vote equally apparent, a precise accounting has had to wait until now. Even now (Nov 27th) the vote count stands at 99.7%, so there’s roughly another few hundred thousand votes to tot up, but these won’t make much difference to the broad conclusions that were reasonably obvious, and therefore broadly misrepresented in the media, from day 1.

First of all, contrary to my initial blog, Trump did gain votes from 2020. But not many. His total was just over 77 million this year, compared to just over 74 million in 2020; so, a gain of just under 3 million votes.

Similarly, Kamala Harris lost a lot of votes on Joe Biden’s total in 2020, down from just under 81.3 million to just over 74.4 million; so a total loss of 6.9 million votes.

Turnout was down overall by about 3 million votes.

So, the core conclusion that this was more a Democrat slump that a Trump surge still holds. This matters because some of the conclusions coming from Democratic Party reinforce the strategic choices that led them to lose. There are basically three strands to this.

1. They are in denial about “the economy”, arguing that people under $100,000 a year, whose real wages were lower at the end of the Biden term than the beginning were suffering a delusion because “economic indicators” were going so well. Putting this across as people not “feeling” how well they were doing, when they were actaully doing pretty badly, is a form of gaslighting that, evidently, doesn’t work.
2. They seem to think that the problem with Kamala, campaigning with the Cheyneys, “I own a Glock”, “border state prosecutor”, “Israel has a right to go after the terrorists” Harris was that she was too “woke”.
3. They are having a tactical discussion about whether Biden should have withdrawn earlier – obviously he should – and whether they should have had a primary process – neither of which addresses the fundamental problem that any candidate wedded to the same strategy would have faced the same defeat.

This denial is designed to move the Democrats onto the same ground as the Republicans on the spurious argument that there was a significant shift towards them. There wasn’t. It is not a strategy to remobilise their lost voters, let alone an attempt to pose answers that meet the needs of working class voters. Quite the opposite.

It reflects a deeper reality that – their protestations that Trump is a fascist nothwithstanding – they would prefer to lose than contradict the demands of their donors, let alone challenge core US imperial imperatives; which is the fundamental purpose of both parties and the reason why the US political structure is set up the way it is; to squeeze out any genuine challenge that might express the popular progressive majorities that exist for, for example, Medicare for all, Abortion Rights, Serious action on climate, raising the national minumum wage, ending US support for the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza and opposing a wider war involving Iran.

Polling showed, for example, that taking a harder line with Israel would have won Harris significant votes in the swing states.

What we had instead from the Biden adminstration was a performative 30 day ultimatum – due to expire conveniently after the election – for Israel to allow more aid into the Gaza strip on pain of having (some) arms cut off – because even in performative ultimatums, you wouldn’t want to go too far in case the wrong signal gets picked up – in the hope that this gesture would bring back some of the votes that their single minded support for Israel had alienated.

Needless to say, when the 30 days were up, in the middle of Israel’s most ruthless offensive yet – implementing the “General’s Plan” to completely clear the whole of Northern Gaza of its Palestinian population, making it a free fire zone and totally shutting down of any supply of food, water or medicine – the US declared that enough aid was being allowed in for them to keep praising Netanyahu and passing the ammunition.

The psychological shock to a lot of people in the mainstream of politics is that 2020 was supposed to be a “return to normalcy” from the insane aberation of four years of Trumpian excess, after which the Pax Americana could be reasserted on its customary tried and tested basis, with all its familiar landscape intact. The problem is that it can’t, now that the US is no longer the world’s largest and most dynamic economy, the old rules won’t work anymore, so what people thought Biden was now looks like an interegnum in a “new normal” in which the US takes off its masks and stands before the world in all its hideous nakedness as a climate denying rogue state, reduced to having to bully its allies to increase military spending and banking on increasingly overt threats to try to bluff its way out of decline.

This is unlikely to work, but is extremely dangerous and damaging nonetheless.

Beyond the grotesque and demeaning soap opera of his cabinet picks, like putting the former head of the Worldwide Wresting Federation in charge of Education, which could be filmed by Hollywood as the Joker taking control of the Gotham City Mayor’s office.

• If Trump imposes 60% tariffs on China and 20% tariffs on everyone else “on the first day” the knock on effect on the world economy will be severe – causing an economic squeeze and political turmoil among allies as well as opponents, sharply rising prices in the US itself and a hard hit to living standards. Those who voted for him under the impression that they would be better off – and many did despite misgivings about his other policies – a response identified as a definite trend by exit pollsters – are in for a shock and are likely to turn.
• The same applies to mass deportations, if they are carried out. Removing hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, from the workforce would be seriously disruptive economically, even discounting the immensely divisive and traumatic social and political impacts across communities.
• If Trump carries out his promise to reverse major US climate policies passed during Joe Biden’s presidency, this could push $80bn of investment to other countries and cost the country up to $50bn in lost exports, according to a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
• The required ramp up of military spending among allies, in the context of an economic squeeze generated by the tariffs, would also create increasingly febrile and feverish politics even within the US’s core supporters; as we are already seeing in Japan.

The decline of US power has entered a bumpy and perilous period and the election of Trump is a symptom of that. Standing on much thinner ice than the media is suggesting, the harder he tries to grip, the more things will slip through his fingers; the harder he tries to assert US power, the more he will expose how much it has already slipped.