Trump’s victory means Americans voted for the Republic not the Empire

Back in 2016 when Donald Trump first announced his presidential bid, almost every senior US politician dismissed him, usually with a kind of mockery that made fun of him. President Obama, for instance, said Donald Trump “will not be president”. Why? Because, he said, his trust in the “American people” led him to believe that they would not elect him. His top ally, House Speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi, echoed him by saying that she has  “great faith in the American people”, that they would reject Trump, even after he became the presumptive Republican nominee before clinching the official nomination in July 2016, two months after she made the remarks.

Almost every political guru, commentator and columnist in the country dismissed Donald Trump as a demagogue without any experience in government and becoming president of the US is a very “serious job”, as Obama put it. I was one of those who predicted his victory, a month before Election Day, 2016.

After Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton was official, Obama said Democrats have to “learn the lesson” from that election and reflect on it to be back in the political arena and be elected again next time.

It appeared they did, with Biden winning in 2020 and enraging Trump and his supporters who went on the rampage. In fact, the Democratic Party failed to learn the lessons of 2016, as certified by the fact that Donald Trump, in a historical move, defeated Kamala Harris to win the White House again on 5 November, 2024, while his Republican Party could well win the House after securing the Senate.

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What Democrats failed to grasp is not that someone like Trump could become the Commander-in- Chief but also that America is searching for its path for the first time, maybe, in its entire history. Make America Great Again (MAGA), the populist slogan adopted by Trump ever since he appeared on the political scene eight years ago, seems to echo with ordinary Americans eager to reclaim the Republic, while rejecting the Empire.

The 75,513,179 plus Americans who voted for Trump are a coalition of different groups, grassroots movements and, above all, people expressing anger against the elite, Democrats included,  at every level, not only at the presidential.

In ideological and political terms, such people voted for the United States Republic and firmly against the American Empire which definitely emerged after World War Two, when the US started taking over the world from the former colonial powers that were saved from the Nazis by American power and money.  The outcome of the election, returning Donald Trump to the Oval Office, after most Democrats thought it was impossible, says that ordinary Americans do not really care about the Empire. Political elites in Washington have spent the last 100 years building to make America great, not for its people’s well-being, its own industries, its own development, but around the globe through projections of both economic and military might, from the Middle East all the way to the Taiwan Strait.

Empires are hatched by thinkers, planned by politicians, supported by economics and maintained by military power. While the American Empire possessed the economic and military factors of the empire building equation, it lacked the ideology and the thoughts behind such structure and certainly made a mess of implementing any ideas about empire building its elites might have had. After dominating the American Empire, thinkers, with the exception of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilization, failed to envision the essence of the Empire they were preaching. Instead, the entire theories of empire building focused on making money. Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man offered the last serious US attempt to furnish the necessary ideology behind the Empire corner stone. But even this utopian theory was, essentially, about making money that would propel the world to become easily subjected to the perceived American Empire. The focus was, and still is, on money making and not wealth creation, failing to connect with the ordinary Americans who care about domestic taxes, freedom and personal well-being, with little interest in the idea of American Empire since it does not satisfy any of the fundamental interests of the ordinary person.

Major US companies do not care about why Russia or China should be seen as enemies, as long as such companies still make money in both countries.  For the voters in any of the Rust Belt States, including Michigan, any ideology that does not bring back the Steel Belt is worthless even if it meant the concentration of cash in the accounts of giant technology companies who are profit-driven and always follow the cash trail, even if it leads to nearby Mexico or faraway China or Vietnam. To such hegemonic companies, China is a huge consumer market, regardless of what it might be plotting against the presumed American Empire.

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This, in part, explains why people like Trump, armed with a demagogic political message, packaged in simple language such as MAGA, resonates with the ordinary Americans.

This has been the case in all swing states, including North Carolina and Michigan. In the case of the latter, another dimension appeared that connects foreign policy to domestic agenda. Commonly, foreign policy is not an issue in the US presidential election but, this year, Michigan showed how angry Democratic loyalists flipped Michigan to Trump, not over a domestic policy but over Gaza— a far away war. Donald Trump is likely to be worse than Joe Biden when it comes to US’ “ironclad” support for Israel, but the Arab communities in the state wanted to punish the Democratic Party for rejecting to even give them a spot to express themselves during the Party convention last August. Organisers welcomed speakers aligned with Israel, but denied others supporting ceasefire the opportunity, further sending them to vote for any other candidate but Kamala Harris.

It is rare for foreign policy to become a factor in deciding the winner, at least at the state level. The other side of it also says that the American Empire is not something voters like, as long as it is associated with genocide, like the one in Gaza. The American electorate might prefer a more benevolent, more humane, less warlike empire, just as their Founding Fathers had envisioned the earlier United States’ role in the world. In his farewell speech in 1796, George Washington warned against “entangling alliances” with foreign nations, instead encouraging neutrality. Another prominent Founding Father and president, Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural speech as President, 4 March, 1801, talked about foreign policy of “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations”, dismissing the kind of “ entangling alliance”, like the one now connecting the US and Israel, despite the latter’s despicable crimes it continues to commit.

Can Trump reclaim the Republic instead of the prevailing failing Empire? Definitely not in four years, but at least he has already spotlighted the Republic at the expense of the Empire.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.