Four years ago, Donald Trump was written off as politically dead. He was twice impeached, blamed for the high crime of insurrection, prosecuted in the courts for multiple criminal and civil offences, ridiculed by the media, and defeated in his reelection bid.
His stunning resurrection in the recent presidential election has, therefore, shocked many political pundits and pollsters.
Trump’s opponents have long argued that he is a threat to American democracy and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the presidency. They point to his autocratic behaviour, indecency in public discourse, and unlawful actions. They also fear that he has the Supreme Court in his pocket.
So, how could the American political system allow Trump to win again? The answer lies in the apparatus of presidential electioneering: the open party system, primary elections, and the Electoral College.
America’s open party system allowed Trump to remain relevant after his defeat by picking and supporting candidates in various state and local elections. If a politburo or party bosses ran American political parties, Trump would have been consigned to oblivion.
Instead, he was able to pursue his agenda through the candidates he supported and the alternative media outlets he courted.
Many of the candidates were brand-new faces, such as Blake Masters in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia, and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. In a closed party system (like India) where party bosses decide who gets the party label, Trump couldn’t handpick candidates without holding a party position.
The US system of primary elections then allowed Trump-backed candidates to keep testing his MAGA agenda. By 2022, the Make America Great Again slogan became synonymous with populist policies, such as border control, tax cuts, tariffs, and anti-woke (extremely liberal) social policies.
Some of Trump’s pet issues, such as his denial of the 2020 election defeat, proved to be unpopular and fell by the wayside. For example, Kari Lake, a Trump-backed candidate in Arizona who tried to make hay from election denial, lost her bid for Governor as well as her run for the Senate.
All this allowed Trump to run in the presidential primary elections on a MAGA platform that was finely honed and very popular.
He was the first Republican to announce his candidacy but soon faced a crowded field of 12 opponents. They included his former Vice President (Mike Pence), five governors (Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum), a Senator (Tim Scott), a House Representative (Will Hurd), and high-powered personalities like Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump’s agenda was so popular that eight opponents dropped out even before the primaries began. Hutchinson and Ramaswamy drew less than one percent of the vote and ended their bids. DeSantis, who won Florida’s Governorship in a landslide, also dropped out with only 1.6 percent of the vote. Haley managed to get nearly 20. percent, but she couldn’t keep up with Trump’s popularity and eventually endorsed him.
During the general election, Trump focused on the Electoral College as he tailored the MAGA agenda to each of the seven “swing states.”
For example, in Pennsylvania, a mostly working-class state, Trump talked about bringing back jobs while Harris stayed focused on reproductive rights. In Wisconsin, a state ravaged by drug overdose deaths, Trump campaigned on finding an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, while Harris talked about lowering the price of prescription drugs.
Trump won all of these seven states by margins ranging from 0.9 percent (Wisconsin) to 5.7 percent (Arizona).
In the end, Trump’s MAGA agenda ended up drawing support from many traditionally Democratic voters. For example, urban counties swung to the Republican side by 5.8 percent, Hispanic-majority counties by 13.3 percent, and Black-majority counties by 2.7 percent. Trump nearly doubled his share of Black men and received three percent more votes from women than his 2020 bid.
In the gruelling two-year-long election, Trump faced two nationally televised debates, three assassination threats, and various court dates for his lawsuits. But he held more than 100 rallies across the country.
There is no doubt that Trump’s win is well-deserved and decisive, but how could the American voters ignore his threat to democracy?
The truth is most Americans never believed Trump was a threat to democracy. They cite two reasons: they see all attempts to paint him that way as political, and they have faith in the country’s constitutional checks and balances.
In my recent article Why Trump Couldn’t Be a Dictator Even if He Tried, I outlined the many ways by which Trump could be restrained: by their Constitution’s strict requirements for amendments; its separation of powers; the Senate’s filibuster rule; their unique federal structure where state governments cannot be dissolved, and by the independence and separation of federal and state judiciaries.
In 235 years under that Constitution, no President has been able to act autocratically because America’s savvy Founders didn’t leave any mechanism for them to do so.
Trump’s resurrection and victory show that the American political system is robust. It allowed the people’s choice to emerge despite a concerted campaign to kill Trump’s political future.
(The author is Founder and CEO of the Divya Himachal group and author of ‘Why India Needs the Presidential System’. He can be reached @BhanuDhamija. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)