America has abandoned student politics and got serious again. Will Britain follow?

Kamala Harris was the world's most high-profile DEI hire
Kamala Harris was the world's most high-profile DEI hire

The Democrats are starting to go through the stages of grief after their complete wipe-out in the US elections this week. In 2016 when Donald Trump first won they couldn´t process it. For four years they wasted everyone´s time, including their own, as they tried to pretend the loss had some other explanation.

They invented conspiracies – not least the Russia conspiracies – to try and explain their defeat. But they never came to terms with it.

This time the reaction has been different. The scale of Donald Trump’s victory is undeniable. When I spoke with his team at Madison Square Garden shortly before the election I was struck by their confidence. When they said that they were looking now not just to win the Presidency but to win the popular vote I thought they were over-claiming.

It turns out they weren’t. The fact that Trump not only won but won by a landslide should give the Democrats time to work out not just why he won but why they lost.

The main reason is that they had a hideously inept candidate. Joe Biden may be checked-out, but even he could probably have outperformed Harris if he had run. Because much as the Harris campaign tried to rebrand itself, the American public already knew who she was.

They knew that she had only been chosen as VP by Biden in 2020 because in that febrile summer of George Floyd Biden was bounced into promising that he would appoint a black woman as his running mate. It meant that in terms of the talent pool he had to fish in, he was restricted to a mere seven per cent of the American people. He picked Harris, and for four years she demonstrated how vastly over-promoted she was.

The American public came up with ways to excuse her weird word-salads, her crazy laughing and her inability to answer any detailed question. Some people decided she must be drunk. Others of us knew what it was.

Here was someone who was over-promoted, knew she was over-promoted and was nervous because she feared being found out.

This week she was found out. On Tuesday the American public rejected her because she had nothing to say to them.
When she talked about the economy it was never clear that she even understood what inflation was. When she was asked about anything specific she fell back on stories about growing up in a middle class home.

Even her dire concession speech on Wednesday fell into the same groove. She said that while she conceded the election, “I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign – the fight: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people.”

What does any of that even mean? Who isn’t for those things?

Just about the only issue Harris and the Democrats could confidently run on was abortion issues since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.

That issue hurt the Republicans in the mid-terms. But by now voters have worked out several things. One is that abortion is not the sole issue in a country with an open border and a cost of living crisis.

Another is that in any case the Court’s decision merely returned the issue to the state level, which is where it should have been anyway.

Thirdly it is just weird to run a campaign on “hope” and “promise” that makes such a priority of abortion.

Harris was the world’s most high-profile DEI hire. And she knew it. And the American public knew it too.

Her campaign seemed to take it for granted that if they annointed a woman as their candidate then women would automatically vote for her – however hollow a vessel she was. They also seemed to think that if they appointed a woman of colour then all black and other minority ethnic communities in America would vote for her. They didn’t. Trump gained in every sector of the minority vote.

That is because he doesn’t play the stupid DEI games that his opponents do.

He surrounds himself with intelligent women as well as men, but the Democrats tried to pretend he has a woman problem. He was the first President to appoint gay people to prominent positions in his administration. But the Democrats tried to pretend he has a problem with gay people. He surrounds himself with intelligent people from ethnic minorities, but the Democrats tried to pretend he has a race problem.

In fact Trump just spoke past all of these ridiculous claims. He spoke to the issues that actually bother Americans: illegal immigration, government overreach, cost of living issues, and how to maintain American dominance in terms of global trade and global power.

The Democrats got stuck playing student union politics. Trump went in far over their heads and as a result looked like the man who could not just ignore such politics, but sweep them away.

The Democrats tried to present themselves as the adults in the room. And they failed. Now Trump is in a position to show what American leadership on the world stage actually looks like.

That leaves Britain in a difficult position. We have a Foreign Secretary, among others, who has been stupidly insulting about the President for years. Again, this was for reasons of “virtue-signalling” and student politics. Keir Starmer’s new national security advisor, Jonathan Powell, is an advocate for a political paradigm that is not just dying but dead.

Well time is up on that. America just got serious again. Will Britain be able to follow suit?