Donald Trump, 47th ’s President Of The United States, Is Coming Up With A Master Plan For A Radical Reformation Of The US Government That Could Fundamentally Impact A Fractured Society

Washington, Nov 08, 2024 America is divided. It was well before the elections started. The voters or the American society was first vertically divided on gun licensing, abortion and Medicare. The two major shootings – the primary school at Uvalde in Texas that killed tiny tots by a merciless gun man and the police took a long time to respond, the Buffalo shooting where colored people were the targets.

This shook up not just the conscience of a nation but further divided it among those demanding stricter gun control with much more meticulous background check on who ought to possess a gun and the vendor to decide who is fit enough for him to sell an automatic fire arm to. A womans right to her body and her reproductive rights was reversed after a 70-year-old judgement known famously as the Roe Vs Wade by a majority of the supreme court packed with Republican leaning judges in a majority including three appointed by Donald Trump during his 2016 presidency. They were as you already know:

The cost of medical care and cost college education was another issue majorly bothering the urban middle class constituted in a fairly large share by the black African Americans, the south Asians, the Hispanic populations and a section of the white populations. Obama care was not liked the upper middle class or the elite on grounds why would i want to subsidies Medicare for a population which does not represent my interest. Brakes during Trumps time and a little restoration that followed with Biden when he implemented the Obamacare with his new definition of making health care cheaper and more accessible with an expanded affordable act reducing the price of mainly insulin drugs cappiting it at $35 dollars for a vial.

The 2024 elections with early bird Trump campaigning on his post 2020 rhetoric of a stolen elections thrown out by courts for lack of any concrete evidence and yet he kept harping at it because he never thought he would lose the election. Trump failed to understand that the pandemic that caused 500,000 people to die and a five million infected who survived with some of them with disabilities contributed to his defeat because he had mismanaged the strategy of tackling Covid 19 and he had overruled experts on their strategies.

For him, livelihood vs lived issue became an important issue as he thought livelihood would sell better with his voters, it did not , because he had not understood the full gravity of the severity or the intensity of the disease that devastated the world equal in measure to the spanish flu .

Hisd entire election was based on bashing Biden on a stolen election which was not goingh down well on either side of the aisle in a society riddled with far more complex problems. Bidens harping on threat to democracy too did not sell well with his voters who were far moere concerned with the cost-of-living rising post pandemic and fuel pices, grocery prices, cost medical care and the cost of college education.

It was like the entire country was fed up of two old men nagging with their self-obsession on their chosen themes for the elections. Majority of the country did not want either of them as the next president. A temporary relief came to them when Biden bungled the debate with Trump who did not do better but appeared better on the TV screens against an old man who had lost his cognitive functions was rambling, stumbling, and dozing off through the debate.

An alarmed democratic party put pressure on Biden to quit the race and find a new generation candidate that would appeal to the generation Z and first-time voters to swing the election in their favor. Biden quit a tad bit too late in the race. He nominated Kamala Harris without her even going through a primary for the party to choose because he trusted her more than anyone else, she was his shadow and the most loyal of them all.

Barack Obama was initially unhappy with the choice as he wanted his wife Michelle Obama projected into the race as he thought as she is a more powerful speaker and possessed better oratorical skills than Kamala Harris. Maybe he was right. But he had to respect his deputy’s choice. So, he threw in his lot with Kamala as he was the first one to sense the danger of fielding Biden again as his popularity ratings were down.

The democrats made a fundamentally wrong presumption – that Trump was unelectable because he was convicted felon as the courts in Manhattan rapped him for tax fraud orchestrated over 10 years or more, that took out his steam as a successful businessman, and punched a huge hole in his wallet. New York’s Attorney General Ms. Letitia James won the case successfully in getting Trump convicted for tax fraud and ordered to pay a fine of something like $350 million dollars as punitive measure. She had originally demanded $950 million but as Trump appealed to an appeals court the fine was reduced to $350 million.

A federal case of interreference in elections haunted Trump but it was not so severe as the Manhattan courts verdict that destroyed his reputation as a businessman among New Yorks elite which even today does noit want admit him into the exclusive club of businessmen because he was thought to be brash, a show off, and not respectful of his peers. The Federal case in Washington DC as grave – he was accused of conspiracy to overthrow an election verdict of a voters choice which he sought to subvert with lis that it was stolen, the choice of 81% of the population who voted for Biden.

Add to this the Congressional select committee headed by Bennie Thompson, democrat from Massachusetts, and co-chair Liz Cheney, Republican from Wy9ming, who hurriedly put through a report in the wake of the November midterms in the wake of the Republicans emerging as the majority in the house of representatives 222 to 213, albeit a wafer-thin majority. Trumps predicted Tsunami did not come with his wrong choice of candidates.

Trump was under fire from the republicans especially the liberal conservatives who did not like his authoritarian style of functioning and dictating his terms all the time to the party. He cleaned up the Republican National Committe stable and packed it with his supporters including the incumbent chief and getting his daughter in law as the co-chair.

Such was his power he wielded in his party even in times of his adversity that the democrats failed to perceive. Kamala Harris was not bad choice to start with but what was bad was that Biden stepped down too late in the race. Harris had very little time to organize a proper strategy to counter the leviathan Trump who was already well ahead in the race.

She did find instant popularity across the aisles as she raced to 51% lead over Trump after winning the nomination in a spectacular display of solidarity at the Chicago Democratic National convention where three presidents – Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and incumbent Joe Biden endorsed her besides secretary of state Hilary Clinton, former first lady Michell Obama, who made one of the most powerful speeches to date at a DNC on why Harris should be elected. A bevy of celebrities from Beyonce, to Taylor Swift to Bruce Springstei, to George Cloney and Julia Roberts endorsed her publicly.

The democrats were on cloud nine little understanding that Trump was not electable because of the rising popularity of Kamala Harris or the litany of legal baggage he carried with him into the elections. Trump, they did not understand that throughout his career even when he was out politics had the ability to appear on the front pages of New York tabloids for 30 years nonstop despite being a failed businessman, going bankrupt, with one scheme from another from Trump University to Trump Foundation, all folding up.

But he never gave up. His spirit was indefatigable. The stakes were very high in this election. If he had lost, Trump would definitely land up in jail doing a life term. He had to win. Fortunately for him the US economy was on the precipice under Bidens slow but firm management. The economy was not tanking as he claimed to voters. Biden had managed to pull the economy back with his Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell who with his unrelenting 52 week fed rate hike reined in inflation down to 2.4% against the 2% target.

The job scene was not bad. Biden had generated 22.1 million jobs under his four-year term adding 60,000 jobs a month against the record of 30,000 jobs under Barack Obama and Trumps own 40,000 a month. Here’s the thing: Trump inherited a successful rising economy from Obama and Biden inherited a sinking economy from Trump due to his gross mishandling of the Covid pandemic and half the term was spent just rectifying Trumps mistakes. The voters don’t get the micro picture of the micro management by Bidens team but overtaken by the existential crisis of high grocery prices, high mortgage rates, and fuel prices stalking their livelihood.

First of all, Kamala Harris failed to project herself as an alternative to Biden over what the people mistakenly thought was his blunders in handling the economy, not effectively projecting the truth that much of the time was spent by the democrats in rectifying Trumps mistakes, so in consequence the voters were sold on an exaggeration and the Big Lie that the economy was tanking and as he said “ Do you want live the same four years (of Biden) again the next four years”. He lobbed the choice to the voters across the aisles.

Voters in America have a choice of 250 varieties of pizzas, 150 varieties of ice creams to choose from Baskin Robbins, 200 different 65-inch TV model of OLED types for under $600, a variety Hondas, Toyotas, Benz or BMW from the lucrative used car market. But when it comes to a political choice, they are stuck with two old men nagging all the time. There is not much of a choice.

2024 was a defining moment for the electorate of America, it was a time to fix the bug, but they did not. They had a choice to fix the abortion issue, gun licensing and affordable health care and high cost of college education, but they blew it. Because at the end of the day Trump won with his argument that the economy was tanking, the government was siding with the wrong people, that their tax payer’s money was being fueled to fighting airs in the middle east and Ukraine in which they had no stakes.

That he would abolish taxes, slap exorbitant tariffs on trading partners who were feeding off the US economy and some countries that were feeding of on the military aid. Well, the argument sells well. How many see fine print of his proposals. Leading economists have argued that the average budget of the American house hold is poised to increase by $2850 by a rough calculation.

At the end of the day, Trump has won with his arguments with the people and that he would drop the manna from the heavens to keep the American economy buoyant, restore the prestige and pride of the America as a great nation though his MAGA campaign, show the masculinity of the American nation through his tough policies overseas to others who were feeding off the American tax payers’ money.

As one political commentator said: Well, when Trump was elected in 2016 it started as a joke among the educated and elite but ended up in tragedy with the pandemic mismanagement”. Now in 2024 Trumps election starts as a tragedy (for those who could not elect Kamala Harris, a black African American and south Asian woman of Indian descent, she represented all the minorities and fought for their rights) and end up as a joke in 2029? We live in a highly polarized world. The world does not need America but US needs the rest of the world. The macho image and masculinity of America, which is in trillion-dollar debts with its trading partners, does not sell and will not sell anymore.

NATO makes its own plans for security among its nations in its 75^th anniversary, sans Trumps American government. The EU will promote the Euro against the dollar which is already losing its value as the most tradeable currency in the world. The BRICS is growing and though Russian president Vladimir Putin has said it would take a long time to float the BRICS pay as an alternative to the US greenback, when it does arrive and with BRICS membership growing from initial five to twenty and ultimately to a hundred nations would torpedo the US dollar , fracturing it to such an extent that it would losing its bargaining power in international trade and would have to compromise a great deal in negotiations where it now projects a tough posture.

So given this background, Trumps masculinity may sell with US voters, and if he is not able to deliver on his promises, which he will find very difficult, given the global scenario of rising prices and a meltdown of economies, the US is in mighty big s…t in 2029 when the entire global scenario will change.

Add to this the power vacuum in the US. Trump will no longer be president when he lays down office, and when he is 82, he will be discounted by republicans, donors and even voters and may or may not support his candidate for president in 2029, though my bet is Nikki Haley, but Harris failure will deter the RNC from nominating her. Will be Ron De Santis take the mantle?

And the democratic party too faces a power vacuum looking ahead. The promise that Harris held has been shattered in 2024. All the heavy weights are out (Clinton, Obama, Biden). If it’s an insider my bet is on either California Governor Gavin Newsom, he has the charisma to become a president but his California model has tanked, or Hakeem Jefferies, the house minority leader. An untested commodity.

For Trump, his dream runs for the next four years: The presidency in his pocket, legal cases gone, fear of jail time gone, senate in his pocket, the house to be delivered on a platter shortly. The supreme court is in his hands as he can appoint more judges during his term. Already three are his appointees and three are GOP leaning including the chief justice.

Trump could succeed if he listens to, as the Latinos say “Patiencia”, of hand-picked advisors. If he chooses to listen to himself only, it could be a repeat of another 2020 for the GOP. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is no permanence in politics – voters are fickle minded. They blow with the wind and can blow the most powerful charismatic people away.

Feedback: ashoktnex@gmil;.com

TN Ashok

Contributor, IANS – Washington DC/New York Executive Editor, Corporate Tycoons – Pune, IndiaExecutive Editor, The Flag Post – Bengaluru, IndiaContributor, The Statesman, Hindu Business Line, Sarkaritel.com, Diplomacyindia.com
Former Economics Editor, PTI – New Delhi, IndiaFormer Communications Advisor, Alstom Group of Companies, SA – France/Belgium