By Sham Samaroo
New York (November 9, 2024) – They are already calling it historic, a comeback for the ages. Unprecedented. Donald Trump re-elected President for a second term. Judge me not by the heights I have reached, but the depths from which I have risen (Frederick Douglass).
Four years ago, Donald Trump’s promising political career ended in defeat, disgrace, and condemnation from his own party, much of it his own doing. His attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election was a “disgraceful dereliction of duty”, said Mitch McConnell. The impact of his rhetoric on the January 6 riot on the Capital cannot be discounted, notwithstanding instigators in the crowd who may have incited the attack. On January 20, 2021, Trump departed for Mar-a-Lago a beaten man. The New York Times read: “The terrible experiment is over. President Donald J. Trump: The End.”
That is why, today, Democrats are scratching their heads in collective disbelief wondering how did this happen? It’s the economy, stupid! Across the country, Trump kept asking one question, “Are you better off now, than you were four years ago? The answer? A resounding no. Everyday Americans (the ones the Democrats claim to care so deeply about) have to do two/three jobs just to make ends meet. While having to look on helplessly at two wars raging with no end in sight, and at the immigration fiasco on the southern border. As if that were not painful enough, they see it finding its way into their pocket books while the elites in Washington live high on the hog.
Trump’s margin of victory across all major demographics challenges the spurious claims since 2016 of white racism, bigotry, and misogyny. Trump won both the popular and the electoral votes. In just about every state, the needle moved dramatically in his favor. A majority of Americans, some 75 million, across all racial, ethnic, religious, gender divide – Black men, Hispanic, Women, Young People, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Amish – voted for him. Are we to believe they are all racists, bigots, uneducated, misogynists? Democrats must do some serious soul searching. The party needs to get back in touch with the plight of everyday Americans who for the last four years felt ignored and disrespected.
While the rising cost of living was indisputably the main reason for Trump’s victory, an important factor not to be discounted is the boost Trump received from the unlikeliest of sources – prosecutors in New York, Georgia, and the Justice Department in Washington, DC. The former President was served with some 94 federal and local indictments. Trump even joked that he may be a bigger criminal than the notorious Alphonse Capone. For many on the left, justice was finally being served. Americans love to argue. We disagree on just about everything from life’s most important issues to things as simple as McDonalds or Wendy’s. It’s an American thing. But if there is one thing that unites Americans, it is a strong sense of right and wrong. Over the last four years, a growing number of Americans began to wonder whether the Justice department was being used to go after political opponents.
This fierce dislike of injustice might have something to do with their history of slavery. Slavery was not of America’s doing. The young Republic inherited slavery from British colonial rule, but fought a bloody civil war to put an end to that ugly, heinous scourge of mankind. Let’s not forget, however, that seventy eight (78) years would go since Independence before a major political party took a stand against slavery. That was the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, founded in 1854 some 78 years after Independence in 1776. The party of Jefferson, the forerunner of today’s Democratic Party was around from the earliest years of the Republic but did not take a stand against slavery.
From his earliest days as a backwoods lawyer Abraham Lincoln believed that slavery was wrong. When the Republican Party was formed in 1854, Lincoln brought with him that belief that slavery was a moral evil imbedded in the psyche of America from the days of colonial rule. Lincoln saw just how deeply entrenched it was during his two-year tenure in Congress when he proposed a bill for the gradual emancipation of enslaved people in DC. The Bill needed approval from both abolitionists and slaveholders, and never made it off the floor. Elected President in 1860, Lincoln returned to Washington aware of the enormous challenge to end slavery. He reasoned that the best route was to prevent the spread of slavery into the new territories and watch it die a natural death, something the Democrats and their slave owning supporters firmly opposed. Plans were afoot to assassinate him before his arrival in Washington.
Within days of taking office, the southern states seceded from the Union. They wanted to preserve the institution of slavery, and believed that Lincoln’s Republican government would end it. The country descended into civil war that pitted Americans against fellow Americans, neighbors against neighbors, brothers against brothers. As the war raged, the scathing attacks on Lincoln became personal: “We went in for a rail-splitter, and we have got one.” Once, after a difficult meeting with General McClellan, Lincoln’s secretary noted in his diary that he (the secretary) said to the President, “Mr. Lincoln, you are the President. How can you let him treat you this way”? Lincoln replied, “If he can win this war for me, I would even saddle his horse for him”. Lincoln was willing to endure personal insults and humiliation to save America.
After his nomination for president by the RNC in 1860, Lincoln became the butt of jokes, dismissed as an uneducated buffoon. “The conduct of the Republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of small intellect, growing smaller. They pass over statesmen and able men, and they take up a fourth rate lecturer who cannot speak good grammar”, thus wrote the New York Herald (May 19, 1860). But in four years, Lincoln, the President, grew with the office. He became even more committed to the idea that slavery was a moral evil. Prior to the 1864 elections, Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln’s closest advisers cautioned him to wait until after the election. The South was winning the war and they feared that the Emancipation Proclamation would be the death knell to his re-election bid. Lincoln firmly resolved to issue the Proclamation. Should it cost him the election, then so be it, he thought, because saving the Union was Lincoln’s first priority. Re-elected President in 1864, the Great Emancipator successfully ushered through Congress the 13th Amendment that would formally abolish slavery and free some four million slaves. Sadly, Lincoln was assassinated before the Amendment became law some months later.
A leader must be willing to put his/her career, even life on the line for the country. Trump survived two assassination attempts and continued to fight, fight, fight, but let’s be clear, Trump is no Lincoln. He never was, is not now, nor will ever be. Let’s also be clear that that is not a knock on Trump. Lincoln is arguably the greatest American that ever lived. “The greatness of Napoleon, Caesar or Washington is only moonlight by the sun of Lincoln. He was bigger than his country, bigger than all the Presidents together… and he will live as long as the world lives” (Leo Tolstoy, The World, NY 1909).
Trump is not a politician and does not worry too much about being statesmanlike. In reality, though, he is not very different from many of today’s world leaders. If Trump is a wolf in wolf’s clothing, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Being career politicians, they have had lots of practice in the art of double talk. In Trump, what you see is what you get. He is a New Yorker who makes crass jokes that often polarize him.
Trump’s motto is America first, something our much-admired world leaders would never say aloud. But make no mistake about it. They too believe their country first, and rightly so. They pursue their agenda no less ruthlessly. In a perfect world, one would wish things were different, but it’s a dangerous and dishonest world that we live in today. On the campaign trail Trump repeatedly said that if he were in office the two ongoing wars would never have happened. During elections, it is customary for the challenger to criticize the incumbent by playing the “if I were in office” game. Trump does not have to play the if game. He has a record to run on. Trump is the only president in the last 100 years who did not commit a single American boot on foreign soil.
In 2016, President Obama told President-elect Trump that his biggest problem would be North Korea. North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jung Un, like his father before him, Kim Jong Il, and before him, his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, has been a thorn in the side of every American President. In possession of nuclear weapons, American presidents have sought to appease them. But if there is one thing that history has taught us, it is that one cannot appease dictators. How did Trump handle it? Like a typical New Yorker. He walked across the DMZ, greeted Kim Jung Un and said to him, to the effect, so what’s your problem?
Trump has been given a mandate by the American people. Will he fulfill his promises to them, or will he go after his enemies as his detractors are telling us. Trump said success would be his retribution. Unlike 2016, Trump has a professional operation around him. But Trump may still do what he wants, the way he wants. No one really knows what he will do. We just have to wait and see.
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The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the position or policy of the THE WEST INDIAN.
