Nobody Has Won This Election

Aditi Someshwar

Heartbroken. It is the only way I can describe how I have felt since reading the results of the US election this past Tuesday.

While I am neither American nor live on American soil, this outcome feels like the worst possible one for the world. With figures like Trump retaining power, I can imagine quite vividly in my nightmares how the rest of the world will follow. It is always scary to be faced with a future where hate takes the forefront. 

Ideology aside, Trump’s clasp of the presidential seat will welcome economic policy such as tariffs (60% on Chinese goods and as far as 1000% on Mexico) and tax cuts for the uber wealthy. Along with social policy such as increased policing, police immunity, mass deportation, defunding of the department of education, and controlling curriculum. Yet, his most alarming promises involve decreasing women’s autonomy, pardoning January 6th rioters, bringing in the use of military force against American citizens he claims are ‘radicals’, punishing political opponents, and maybe most dangerously attempting to pardon himself of his convictions and legal cases. But even with all the policy damage he can do to the nation, nothing is a larger threat than the ideological shift in governance this new reign brings.     

There are already countless scapegoats being named to explain Harris’s defeat. Reason one, young voters didn’t vote the way we assumed. Reason two, third party voters derailed the objective. Reason three, Latino men didn’t vote in their own favour. These are just a few of the countless groups of citizens being singled out for how they lost Harris the election. Another perspective of analysis has been to blame policy proposals and how Harris simply hasn’t put up a strong enough fight to prove her worth for the nation. More common notions may be to blame ideology and the incapability of the public to accept that a woman can be president. Regardless of the several approaches put forward in the last couple of days, they all seem to be centred around either Harris’s faults or on voter behaviour. 

However, there is no reason to even consider these explanations. The most decisive fact of this election has simply been that people haven’t voted. In 2020 Biden received 81 million votes, while Trump received 74 million. This year Harris accounted for a mere 68 million votes, and Trump 73 million. It isn’t that support for Trump has radically increased or driven a substantial set of voters to swing red. No, people simply don’t seem to have cared enough about the outcome of this election to make it to the polling booths. This election was predicted to register record turnout, where did those predictions fall flat?  

At this stage, one can only speculate as all votes still haven’t been counted. Poor turnout may be because of the countless mishaps with receiving absentee ballots from exploding ballot boxes to never receiving a ballot in the first place. It may also be caused by the fact that in numerous states the election was called while people were still in line to cast their votes causing them to leave before voting. The ongoing Palestinian genocide was also a central issue which drove many to abstain from voting, with the pretense that any choice would be a terrible one to make in support of Gaza. Frankly, all of these explanations, while valid, would never be enough to explain how 14 million citizens decided in the span of 4 years that their vote didn’t matter. 

I come to the discouraging conclusion that it seems even with key issues like women's autonomy, police brutality, and mass immigration on the ballot, the majority of Americans do not feel the need to vote because they simply do not believe this changing of guards affects them. This election was not lost with the people who voted, but with the people who didn’t. Even if these numbers are slowly updated over the following weeks as all votes are counted, an important question remains of how a national election can be called without waiting for all the votes to be counted. 

A sentiment strongly supported across social media is that people survived under Trump the first time around just fine, so they will continue to live peacefully now. This disconnect from policy only elucidates a worrying trend within the world’s political hegemony, ignorance is now fuelling democracies, which begs the burning question - Will American democracy be able to uphold itself?

Truthfully, I find my thoughts around this election best echoed by Jamila Bradley. Many people seem to be labouring under the misconception that one has to be pro-community in order to benefit from this community. This is not true. You do not need to be pro-abortion to benefit from the access to abortions. You do not have to be pro-feminist to benefit from feminism. 

When we bestow someone with the title of a good spouse, friend, or colleague we allow them to retain the benefits of that title even if they actively undermine the mutual investment in the well-being and care they must exercise to actually be worthy of said title. In no uncertain terms, the people who voted for Trump, and especially those who did not vote at all, are aware that community and social welfare benefits them. Still they chose in the most literal sense, something they think benefits them more. They assessed the plethora of options available to them and chose the one that they thought would be the best for themselves. This happened to be the same choice that is the worst for us - women and minorities. So, regardless of whether you're American or not, think about the relationships you build because it is deathly imperative where you place your trust, your love, your bodies, your marriages, and your children. For when decisive elections like these arise, how can you ever truly trust someone who perceives that what is most dangerous for you is what is best for them. 

Today, as a global society, we have made it so easy for people to masquerade as good community members by picking up a title and doing the bare minimum. We offer the full benefits of community, and of care and belonging to people that will ultimately defer to their own wants and desires. People, when the time comes, will think nothing of throwing away your rights, your bodily autonomy, your health and safety, at the first glimpse of power that they can never even hold in their lifetimes. The truth is, nobody has won this election but Trump and his lackeys, no citizen will reap the benefits. Alas, I look to this election as a wake-up call for all of us to truly commit ourselves to building the future we wish to live within. 

I’ll leave you with a quote from Harris’s concession speech, I think we must all carry with us. “Don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before ... You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world. And so to everyone who is watching, do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves.”