The result of US elections points to a reconfiguration of the political forces that will move the world in the next four years. Although polls showed a minimal margin between the two candidates, we could finally be talking about a map in which the Republicans control the powers of the state almost without opposition, which should worry the Democrats who were betting on campaign formulas that did not connect with their traditional electorate and who failed to get swing voters to decide on Kamala's proposals. But beyond what happened with obvious force, what are the causes of such an overwhelming defeat of the blue party?

The American economy, although it presents recovery numbers at the macro level, has not yet proven at home the results expected by working class. An adjustment of market indicators and an adjustment of public debt are the priorities for the American political class, but at the same time it has not been taken into account that this is part of the aspirations of the common people and that there were four years of Biden administration in which people expected a drop in prices that did not occur. That takes its toll and therefore influenced the vote against Kamala, who was perceived all the time as part of that government and therefore as a conservative element in the sense of maintaining those material conditions. The working class, which is traditionally the base of the party, did not see its expectations fulfilled, which in 2020 led millions to vote for Biden. At the level of perception, that is, emotional management of the campaign, the blue party did not know how to handle it and fell into a rhetoric of inclusion that in practice the electorate saw as something distant and empty, as something that was not within their goals.

This political correctness based on gender issues, apparently very progressive, was something that in the end conspired against the mobilization of people. The working class does not want to know about cultural discourses that are not in the concrete reality of their days. In reality, these issues are perceived by a good part of the common people as bourgeois issues of the dominant class and not as a legitimate aspiration of workers. It’s not that minorities do not want inclusion, but that the use of inclusion as a partisan and campaign element no longer catches on, it no longer generates the same waves as before because four years of a domestic economy in crisis were much heavier for the collective conscience. The ethereal patriarchy is not going to lead people to vote against it, but the effective vote is made when there’s at least an emotional connection with real frustrations. In that sense, although from the manipulation, Trump's campaign was right and this explains the radicalism of his speech that in appearance was disconcerting and chaotic. The advisors knew that this was what the masses were going to need from an emotional point of view, if not a rational or logical one. Once again, bourgeois democracy teaches that its participation mechanisms can be filled with elements that are not based on explanations, but on feelings and subjective desires.

Trump is again in the presidency and right now he is an enigma. If he manages to control the powers of the state without opposition, he will be able to carry out even his most radical campaign proposals. Immigration is in the eye of the hurricane and what’s derived from the measures to be approved. However, in key places of the nation, Latinos were the Republican majority and became decisive. This in a contradictory way, which shows the wear and tear of the Democrats who did not even manage to capture the favor of that mass of people who, if Trump's logic is applied, are deportable. The United States in any case needs immigration as a workforce and benefits in part from a type of qualified people who come from professional sectors of the third world. Furthermore, the American political class knows that we are not in times of isolationism and that globalization, largely made in the image and likeness of the West, requires a trade network that makes countries interdependent and that thanks to that the standard of living of citizens themselves is sustained. All this indicates that the issues of protectionism and of protecting the United States and then making the business class and capital return will be very difficult in a government agenda that wants to act on so many fronts. The Republicans, as representatives of the political class and therefore part of the establishment, know that the system of alliances and treaties after 1945 is in crisis and that the support of the dollar depends largely on maintaining this “consensus” The increasingly fragile world that is based on the ever-conflictive unity with Europe and the rest of its Western allies. The emergence of a new global birth and the threat it poses 0for the United States seems to be the worst moment for isolationism. In four years of applying exceptional policies, the post-World War II world could have been lost, which would make it too late for the democratic globalists and their international pacts, as well as their social and birth control policies.

In 1917, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, broke the isolationism of his country by intervening in a European war. Until then, the application of the Monroe Doctrine declared that America was for the Americans, which gave the old empires a supposed free hand in the rest of the world. Since then, the Americans have been present in international pacts and conflicts as an important counterweight to other powers. If in 2024, the United States returns to the position it was in before 1917, the influence of the United States will be affected and it will no longer have the industrial weight necessary for countries to accept a consensual treaty that would give preference to the North American currency. In fact, it was not until after the Second World War that the dollar reigned supreme on the planet as an exchange rate with total equivalence. The order we currently have in the financial system is the one that emerged from the dynamics of distribution in the 20th century, in which first the war between empires and then the ideological confrontation between the East and the West shaped the political reality. But already at the doors of the second quarter of the 21st century, it seems that we are living in an era of change that is neither superficial nor temporary, but definitive.

Trump represents the return to nationalism of a part of the political class emotionally connected to the working electorate; this mix makes the formula catch on more in terms of the campaign than the globalist and cosmopolitan ideas of the Democrats. But in terms of concrete policy, other vectors of analysis are needed.

Will we perhaps see a pragmatism where the pacts that Trump seems to want to cancel right now, especially with the allies of Europe, will be respected? Will there be a rapprochement with those countries that could serve to fragment the emerging block of new powers? Foreign policy is the big question mark because, in addition to that, the configuration of the scenario for this century and the faster or slower evolution of the changes that are coming depend on it.

What will happen with the Democrats and cultural and political globalism? On the one hand, there’s an analysis within the party of factors such as leadership, political discourse and connection with the bases, domestic organization and the positioning of cultural agendas that disfavored the election of Kamala, the failure to carry out internal reforms in the field of security and the protectionism of the working class that gave Biden the vote in 2020, the failure to fulfill campaign promises, corruption and personal business, the involvement of the United States in conflicts that do not favor it and the poor management of foreign policy alliances. All of this forms a whole that affects the perception right now of a party that does not connect, that does not represent and that on the political map gave up almost everything that was traditionally its own except for states like California, which is the leading economy in the United States and remains a bastion of the values of the Democrats. It’s precisely the issue of social causes that falls in the spotlight, since the party's ideologues have to turn their approach to that issue. On the one hand, dividing the population between women and men and using the issue of feminism in the petty-bourgeois way of criminalizing masculinity per se not only goes against the very universal logic of human rights, but also threw male voters into Trump's hands. On the other hand, the emphasis on women's reproductive rights and sexual diversity requires a more humanistic and less radical approach, which connects organically with aspirations such as social and health security, prices and family; the latter values that Democrats left almost exclusively in the Republican field. The United States continues to hold conservative visions that are in the substratum of the nation and that are not necessarily negative, they are just part of the country's identity. The handling of these points of view from politics is what’s wrong from both parties and partly therein lies the source of the current polarization.

The great fear of a part of the intellectual class is the radicalization of the proposals of both agendas and therefore we saw elections marked by the vote of workers and the most humble Americans. Biden's majority in 2020 was not reached by either candidate, which means that there’s a part of the voters who did not see themselves represented and who therefore did not vote. This marks another point resulting from polarization: the lack of social participation. The second in line for Trump, JD Vance, declared that we are in a post-liberal era, meaning that the values of liberalism in politics could take a backseat to the rescue of what’s of supreme interest to the bourgeoisie: property. This explains not only the radicalism and the reduction in the margin of debate in the Western world, but also the beginning of a large-scale social control agenda that uses the influence agencies that already own the social networks. Corporatism and business replace the traditional political class and control the direct threads of politics, thus evicting the vestiges of liberal freedoms inherited from the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The arrival of Trump marks a crisis of globalism in which we could find many ingredients of interest for another analysis: ineffective protectionism (trade is not possible without China), self-destructive isolationism (the globalist empire is sustained by Western alliances), measures that try to call businessmen back (which in practice are not realistic in terms of the market and which when applied with coercion attain the opposite effect), international pressure on regional enemies from positions of mere strength (it would be necessary to see how they are concretized and if they have an effect in a world that is not that of 2019). The crisis of the globalists is such that it gives way to the arrival of a right-wing anti-globalist president who proposes an order that seems utopian in a world like the current one. In reality, it’s the great shocks that give birth to the most bizarre subjects and the most exaggerated expressions. And although there are those who believe that reality is equivalent to discourse, in reality the former imposes itself with force and tames even the most stubborn. Therefore, we must wait for the course of the current emerging administration and not confuse the campaign with what will be its mandate. In a phrase, we must be as pragmatic as the moment demands of us.

The globalists will try to block Trump with everything they have and this can degenerate into greater chaos and polarization in the United States, or they can prepare a candidate who comes with an emotional style and a different connection, which implies moving the ideological matrix of the party towards the center. The administration is anti-globalist in the sense of the cultural agenda, but it would have to recognize in the international alliances and in the existence of the collective West its pragmatic tools of power or it will accelerate the fall of the hegemony of the dollar.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff