Author: Mr Karoli Ssemogerere is an Attorney-at-Law and an Advocate.
2024’s biggest election ended with a change of guard at the White House. Former President Donald Trump, 78 becoming only the second individual elected to non-executive terms to the White House. Alongside him, is the youngest Vice President ever, Cyrus Vance, the Ohio Senator, just 40 years old.
If results hold, America may end up with one party controlling the three levers of power, Presidency, Senate and the House of Representatives.
Final election day opinion polls by the majors had the race in a tie, 49 percent apiece for both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. That enough would be bad enough for the Democrats due to just three factors.
First is the uneven advantage, Republicans enjoy in the Electoral College, they control more states than republicans. Second is an even more subtle number, Republicans control more state delegations in the House of Representatives. In event of a tie, the election would go to Congress, The House elects the President, and the Senate elects the Vice President. The third most dangerous number was the rapid increase in the number of Republican registered voters in 2024.
Nothing drummed up this registration than narrations of the “election steal” of 2020. There are now more registered Republicans than Democrats. In the so-called red-states, this advantage is very big. Not even an Iowa poll putting Harris ahead could drum this.
The US election also brought about another big factor, the worry factor. America is growing older; a section of America is also growing more affluent. These are not the expected people, professionals, middle class etc.
A new class of wealthy Americans are stay at home entrepreneurs led by franchise owners, stock traders, blue collar workers starting with plumbers, mechanics, electricians who are finally looking at the US tax code and are unhappy with high income taxes, high self employment taxes, high property taxes that are the foundations of social infrastructure and the social state.
Trump led men, while Kamala led women. However, in late breaking style, married white women are always expected to vote with white men. Second, the definition of white also includes, non-black Hispanics. These are the soft-belly that dominates the southern states, Florida, Texas that are getting redder each election cycle rather than the opposite. So that left the Democrats with a shrinking advantage in the older states, concentrated on the east coast and west coast, and older voters. Trump has achieved two things.
First, the long, expected Armageddon of the Republican party caused by demographics has not happened. As they age, voters are becoming richer and more conservative. The richer people are the ones more likely to be affected by everything the state represents, taxes, laws and regulations.
Second, he has moved American politics from two ideological polar opposites. Both parties in the MAGA era sound the same. So, the Democrats must offer fresh ideas, more, than abortion on demand, a reckless depopulation machine that will hurt America’s economic competitiveness and drive it into sub-1percent growth for years to come. Ask the Europeans, Japanese and the Chinese, how far they have reached with family planning?
A few weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas at an elitist lawyers’ conference, the Mass Torts Made Perfect, and got a touch of Trump populism. In September after a bad debate, Trump doubled down and offered not to tax tips. I saw this middle aged, gentleman hustle our bags, from the locker room, gladly accept our tip, counting a stash of cash in a way that only money changers do on the black market or gamblers do while playing the game of chance.
These sentiments do run deep. I wasn’t surprised by his antique, flipping burgers at a McDonalds in Pennsylvania either. Apparently, he does those hustles to keep up worker morale at his hotels. In Las Vegas, the Trump Hotel is one of the “small” hotels, far away from the strip where the big names rule, like Bellagio, Wynn, MGM and the others.
So, Trump’s smarts, a big ego but a very realistic one allowed him to incorporate Elon Musk a genius who assembled ideas that had been on the market for 20 years into easy to sell goods and services. That says a lot about him. Lastly, someone will have to whisper in the ears of all those prosecutors, drop those cases, now, they don’t matter, the people however unreasonable they are have spoken.
Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate.
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