My TakeOf course Donald Trump can win again
- The former president has many unique American characteristics, but he is also increasingly a common phenomenon across the Western world
People are belatedly waking up to the idea of Donald Trump returning to the White House. The polls say it all. You can google them so I won’t bother repeating here. A recent one by Bloomberg, for example, showed he led the second Republican favourite Ron DeSantis by high double-digit percentage points.
Because so many people, both Americans and foreigners, hate and despise him so much they cannot possibly imagine why anyone would like or support him. But once you get out of that hateful mindset, it’s not difficult to understand.
US system no longer delivers electoral legitimacy
I read somewhere that quite a few US political scientists and pundits consider the late George H.W. Bush as the last “legitimate” president the United States had. By that they mean both card-carrying Republicans and Democrats accepted Bush Snr as their president, even if they didn’t vote for him. And that’s three decades ago.
Since then, an ever increasing number of the opposition voters have rejected the elected winner as their legitimate representative. Is it any wonder that a majority of Republicans believe the last election was stolen?
Son George W. Bush spoke too soon at his inaugural address that the hallmark of American democracy was the peaceful transfer of power. His own bitterly contested election, where his opponent won the popular vote, was ultimately decided by a handful of Supreme Court judges – appointed ridiculously for life – who could override the wishes of the electorate.
Under the current political climate, the nation’s highest court, once considered the single unquestionably independent and universally representative institution, is losing its legitimacy because of its extremely ideological judges and their allegedly outright corruption.