Donald Trump stands on stage with former first lady Melania Trump, as Lara Trump watches, at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, on November 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
| Photo Credit: AP

“Freedom! Freedom! I can’t move…Freedom, cut me loose!” by Beyonce was the anthem that charged up supporters of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris at rallies where she sought to define her candidacy as a fight, primarily, for gender rights. Her opponent Donald Trump, who emerged as winner on Tuesday, also promised freedom. “We will be free again.,” he would tell his supporters, terming the U.S. an “occupied country”, promising to “rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered”, by undocumented immigrants.

Freedom and liberty are the most used words in American political campaigns for centuries — and they can be carriers of many meanings. In 2024, Mr. Trump’s ideas of freedom had more resonance and this went beyond the allegory of America as an invaded country. Mr. Trump and his surrogates successfully created a narrative of ‘liberation’ from the ideological and information ecosystem patronised by the Democratic Party that dominates the country’s popular culture and political views.

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TV anchor-turned-Trump supporter Tucker Carlson told one of the campaign rallies: “He’s liberated us in the deepest and truest sense, and the liberation he has brought to us is the liberation from the obligation to tell lies… Donald Trump has made it possible for the rest of us to tell the truth about the world around us.” He went on to question Democratic views on transgender rights, global wars, Ukraine and Russia, trade deals and immigration, terming them all ‘lies’. Another key Trump ally, Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign appearances addressed young voters specifically: ‘My message to Gen Z: you want to be countercultural today? Get married. Have children. Defend free speech. Pledge allegiance to your nation. Show up on your campus and call yourself a conservative… or whatever you actually are. Give it a try, I bet it’ll be pretty liberating.”

Democrats have a strong grip over the U.S. mainstream media. As per a 2022 ABC News/Washington Post poll, in 2022, 36% of U.S. journalists identified themselves as Democrats when the proportion for the general population was 27%. This was the highest proportion of Democrats in the media in the last half a century. The proportion of Republican journalists shrunk, meanwhile — between 2002 and 2022, from 18% to 3%. The portrayal of Mr. Trump as a liar, and his politics as ‘post-truth’ became the mainstream wisdom of American discourse.

Transgender politics appears to have damaged the Democrats significantly. Mr. Trump and his surrogates made coming out possible for a large number of transgender sceptics who chose silence over social ostracisation. On Wednesday —Joe Scarborough, a strident critic of Mr. Trump and morning host on left-leaning MSNBC, cited the Democratic transgender agenda as a key reason for the party losing a lot of its traditional voters. Mr. Trump’s campaign ads in the concluding days put the spotlight on this question. “Kamala is for they/them,” one widely circulated ad said. “Trump is for you.”

All of Mr. Trump’s speeches and ads referred to an undefined “they/them” as those who were against the nation and people, and the concept was tied to transgender politics in these ads. Democrats realised gender and immigration issues were eroding their own votes, and Ms. Harris sought a course correction, but it did not help as it turned out.

Burden of Biden

Democratic strategy for the past 10 years has been centred on Mr. Trump’s personality. It began as a good enough reason to unite various factions within the party, and its diverse social constituents. In 2020, this approach worked well, as all other primary contenders quickly fell in line behind Mr. Biden. In 2024, the party elite tried a repeat of that by fielding Ms. Harris even without a primary and replacing the ageing incumbent.

Mr. Trump who was training his guns at Mr. Biden quickly changed tack — he turned soft on the sitting President, and focussed his ire entirely on Ms. Harris. Mr. Trump even suggested he might pardon Hunter Biden — the President’s son — who is facing investigations. Half in jest, Mr. Trump repeatedly said Mr. Biden wants him to win the election. The attack line against Ms. Harris that she is a radical progressive stuck. The more she tried to define herself, the more she fell into talking about Mr. Trump and the dangers posed by his term in office. As it turned out, she inherited all the deficiencies of Mr. Biden and none of his advantages.