Picking through the rubble: Glimpses of hope in the US election results

There’s a lot of noise, isn’t there? Everywhere I look – from social media, to newspapers, magazines, the television, even the streets here in London – people are talking. They’re emoting and reasoning with the events of the last few days. As I write, clicking between this tab and others because my brain can’t quite commit to focusing properly today, I feel overwhelmed.

There are people confidently declaring where Harris went wrong, or where Trump went (far) right in big, uncompromising terms. Others are making angry, sweeping statements, wagging fingers or delusionally denying reality. Whichever way you cut it, whoever you choose to blame or whatever flavour your analysis is, the fact remains – progress, and those who fight and organise for it, took a huge beating on Tuesday evening.

Despite what a number of liberal media outlets and commentators may assert, it is obvious that the Harris-Walz campaign was one of the most disastrous Democratic campaigns of this century. You need look no further than the fact that Trump is on course to win the popular vote as a Republican for the first time in 20 years.

An autopsy is desperately needed. Lessons need to be pulled from the ashes of the ‘hope’ (nebulous and vacuous as it was) of the Harris campaign and actually learnt this time. Those same lessons must ricochet around the world. Here in Britain our own Labour government – who offer a similar brand of substanceless hope whilst fiddling around the edges of crisis with no offering to working people – need to see this as a warning. Prime Minister Farage looms if Labour don’t heed it.

Let me start by saying that anyone peddling one definitive answer – one panacea that just so happens to completely align with their world view, particularly at a moment when the votes are still being counted, is perhaps not to be trusted. Or at the very least, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The truth is there are a plethora of different reasons why Kamala Harris lost. Some are structural – the inherent racism and sexism that runs like an ugly sore through society being one example. The radicalisation of young men by those peddling that bigotry, and the Democrats’ blindness to it being another.

Other reasons sit more squarely with the Democrats – their lack of material policy offering in the campaign remains truly shocking. The Harris-Walz campaign website, now an in memoriam for a presidency that never was, never actually included a policy platform. The administration's support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, along with the campaign’s cozying up to war mongers like the Cheneys (tactically disastrous as well as morally repugnant). A lack of real intervention to placate the effects of the inflation, which has spiralled out of control in America – I warned about this on the day of Biden’s inauguration – has allowed Trump an in to capture votes and inspire those otherwise not sold by his vision of hate and anger.

The arrogance of Joe Biden sitting in the candidacy until the last possible minute when it was clear he wasn’t up to the job. The folly of not having an open primary to road test candidates and introduce them to the world. The idea that memeing a candidate or turning outrider pages lime green to jump on the coke filled bandwagon of a Brat summer will somehow translate to actual votes. The list goes on, and on, and on.

Over the coming days, weeks and months, more reasons and more clarity will come as heads and hearts clear. There are 73 days until Trump takes office in a second term that will almost certainly bring with it pain, suffering and horror. Domestically, promises of scores settled, military round ups of immigrants, the threat of Project 2025 all loom large, emboldened as he will be by a stacked Supreme Court, a majority in the Senate and, potentially, in the House.

Globally the outlook is equally grim. Trump will likely give Israel carte blanche in the escalating salvos between them and Iran (though will his broadly non interventionist doctrine curtail Netanyahu if the Israeli leader thinks he doesn’t have the backing of American hardware?). Elsewhere in Europe, Ukrainians will anxiously await what the new administration's line will be on providing military aid to the country as they continue to attempt to repel Putin’s illegal invasion.

As a rampant climate change sceptic, Trump's last presidency saw him withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement. This time around he’s already spoken at length about the riches of the oil and gas that America has. As world leaders meet for COP29 in Baku and time slowly starts running out to prevent catastrophic climate disaster, many will be wondering what the point of it all is, and what possible hope there can be with Trump in the White House?

Many have said it and I don’t wish to be trite but, the time to start organising was yesterday. Both in America and across the world we must continue to build on the networks, groups, victories and defeats that have come before. I believe, however, that fighting the kind of battles we have before us is impossible without hope. That effective organising, communicating and building requires even the smallest spark to light up what is possible.

It is true, as I have hammered home for the last 800 words, that this election was bleak. It cannot be understated how horrifying the election of a sexual abuser, a fraudster, a convicted felon, a man who weaponises racism, misogyny, transphobia and homophobia for his own means is.

Underneath the headline numbers, there are pockets of hope. Glimmers of progress. Victories that we must cling on to, not because victory is the thing that fuels you (you will soon run out of energy on the left if this is the case), but because it speaks to the notion that all is not lost. Viewing the electorate that backed Trump as one homogenous group of right wing fanatics, as many of those finger wagging posts I spoke of earlier do, obscures the complexity of them. To paint everyone who voted for Trump as a violent, misogynistic fascist makes the inability to reach them, to galvanise, convince and mobilise them a fait accompli.

In Arizona, where Trump looks set to win pretty decisively, the Republican candidate for the Senate, ex-Fox News anchor, failed gubernatorial candidate, ‘Trump in heels’ Kari Lake, is currently trailing her opponent by 50,000 votes. The state, which is a pivotal swing state that Biden won by just 0.4 per cent in 2020 was also one of several with abortion on the ballot. Arizona joined Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, and Nevada in voting for a constitutional right for women to have an abortion. The measure was also on the ballot in Nebraska, South Dakota and Florida where it failed. But in the case of Florida, it only fell because it failed to meet the 60 per cent threshold needed. In reality 57.1 per cent of voters or 6,061,95 people voted for reproductive rights - which is over 1.5 million more than those who voted against it and just 50,000 less than voted for Trump for President.

Back to Missouri, a deep red state that Trump won by almost 19 points at this election, other successful measures on the ballot included the raising of minimum wage to $15 and the introduction of sick pay – both left wing demands that until even a few years ago, seemed completely out of reach in places that weren’t, e.g. Seattle.

In Massachusetts a measure that enabled rideshare drivers to form labor unions passed with 53.8 per cent of the vote. In Nevada, a proposition to exempt diapers from sales tax also passed with 68% of the vote. They also passed a measure that prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment, but I’m not sure they deserve praise for getting round to doing that in the year of our lord 2024.

In New York, where Trump flipped Long Island red, and statewide saw some of the biggest swings in the country, a ballot measure to expand anti-discrimination and equal protection rights to include ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive healthcare passed with 61.8 per cent of the vote.

Across the country in Washington state, ballot measures to repeal capital gains tax (a tax on the sale of assets which overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy) and to repeal carbon emissions caps both fell.

Harris lost the swing state of Michigan by 80,000 votes in one of the final nails in the coffin of her election campaign, but further down the ballot Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib – the first woman of Palestinian descent elected to Congress – won a fourth term in a resounding victory. Ilhan Omar, who along with Tlaib was one of the first Muslim women elected to congress, also won her congressional race. In North Carolina, a Republican gubernatorial candidate who had declared himself a ‘black Nazi’, stated that slavery wasn’t a bad thing, and has previously said some pretty heinous things about homosexuality and transgender people, lost his race which is a small mercy.

The wins may feel few and far between, particularly against the backdrop of Trumpian fascism, but they are there. In amongst it all, we must remember that people want to improve their lives, and the lives of others. They want good. They want hope. They want ambition and optimism. When progressive ideas are on the ballot, they win! That surely must be the takeaway for progressive parties and forces across the globe. But in the meantime, we must continue to offer that hope, ambition and optimism in our day to day lives.

From engaging in local fights to joining up to support the fight for reproductive rights across the country to migrant rights, the climate, resisting the genocide in Gaza, protecting Trans kids and so much more there are countless ways that we as individuals and as groups can help lay out a safety net and be ready to fight back from day one. Take time to grieve, take time to mourn, take time to pick through the ashes and look for whatever spark you need to get the fire roaring within you and most importantly, never stop fighting.

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