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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

So much for Kamala Harris' mood, joy, optimism and Hollywood smile. America rejected the sale. Four years ago, a victorious Joe Biden called Donald Trump a “deviant moment.” Given that Trump has a good chance of winning the popular vote alongside the American Electoral College, history will surely now award that title to Biden. After all, Trump is one of the best-known and most scrutinized candidates in US history. Choosing him once might have been a coincidence; He came to this twice with his eyes open. Trump is rightly the next President of the United States.

The question is why? A big part of the story is that a sufficient number of Americans want what Trump is selling: mass deportation of illegal immigrants, an end to globalization, and a middle finger to the liberal elite's often self-parodying approach to identity, better known as wokeness. All of this outweighed voters' doubts about Trump's character. That the United States elected a convicted felon who is also charged with attempting to overturn the last election and is an obvious admirer of autocrats can be interpreted in two ways. Either voters don't take the risk posed by Trump seriously, or they know exactly what they're getting the country into but still prefer to carry on as before.

Either way, Trump's re-election is an existential catastrophe for the Democrats. It is also a historic turning point for America's allies. The Democrats' accusations will be numerous. Any autopsy will surely highlight the fact that a visibly battered Biden waited far too long to forgo his party's nomination. If Biden had withdrawn six months earlier, Democrats would have had time to find a better candidate than Harris. Maybe a real primary wouldn't have made a difference. To be fair to Harris, she ran a well-oiled campaign, beating Trump in the only debate and uniting Democrats behind her. But she was mediocre at best when the conversation focused on the economy – a topic she did her best to avoid. The lack of a compelling economic narrative would be a major mistake in any US election. Competitive primaries would have found that out.

Having inherited the crown so seamlessly, Harris had little time or incentive to correct her shortcomings. Still, she could have invented a “Sister Souljah moment” to prove she wasn’t a Berkeley radical. Bill Clinton's criticism of the black author of the same name in 1992 showed that he was not an old-fashioned liberal, which helped make him electable. Harris was careful not to be associated with the more outlandish progressive causes during her brief 16-week campaign. However, she did not convincingly retract her previous support for, for example, open borders and defunding the police.

Biden can also be accused of overinterpreting his 2020 victory. This was due to Trump's mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, rather than concerns about the health of US democracy. Biden won by promising to end the pandemic and restore normalcy to US politics. Sometime between his nomination and his inauguration, however, Biden began to believe he had the license to make sweeping changes. His redundant $1.9 trillion stimulus package fueled inflation, which was already rising due to supply-side disruptions. Of course, Trump posed a serious threat to the US constitutional order – as he does now on steroids. But in Merrick Garland, Biden chose an attorney general who was in no hurry to hold Trump accountable. Historians will puzzle over this.

Similar to Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016, there are many scars in Harris' defeat. But this time it will be far harder to blame foreign bad actors. Russia's Vladimir Putin will undoubtedly see major benefits from a Trump re-election, particularly in Ukraine. But it was the Americans who put Trump back in office without any apparent help. Either way, the Democrats' blame game will be secondary to understanding what comes next. Trump has vowed retaliation and he means it.

It's entirely possible that Republicans win a trifecta: the presidency, the Senate, which is now secure, and the House, which remains in limbo. If Republicans take full control of the Capitol, there will be little check on Trump's executive power. The U.S. Supreme Court already gave Trump the equivalent of a blank check when it ruled in July that he enjoyed broad immunity for his actions as president.

America has achieved a decisive turning point. It would be foolhardy to assume that Trump didn't mean what he said when he promised to take action against his enemies. It would also be an illusion to believe that he would feel limited in any way by his country's 50:50 split. Trump is on a mission to reshape the United States in unimaginable and destructive ways. There will be no turning back from the seismic outcome of the 2024 US elections.

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