Trump, czyli znak zapytania nad światem

What are the implications of a Trump victory? A Clinton victory?

The implications of a Trump victory are completely unknown; he’s proved to be an erratic candidate who is willing to attack Republican party leaders, question political orthodoxy on everything from free trade to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and—from the point of view of Poland—has spoken favorably of Russia and is purported to be close with Putin. Reports from the Clinton campaign are also that Russian hackers are releasing just information that is critical of Hilary Clinton, effectively trying to help Trump win the election (my understanding is that these reports are based on classified briefings made available to candidates—Trump has access to the same briefings, but denies the information of course). So basically, a Trump win is a big question mark—although people don’t really expect him to win. Republican leaders probably expect that they can control Trump once he gets into power, but who knows.

Conversely, Clinton has campaigned on continuing the Obama presidency, with tax hikes for the rich and new social programs in children’s early education. So that would probably be her agenda. A lot depends on if Democrats win the Senate (right now, the probability is about 50%). The American president is an executive office that can’t pass bills without support of the congress, and at least one of the two congressional houses (The House of Representatives) will be controlled by Republicans after the election who will try to block Clinton’s agenda. In short, not much will likely happen if Clinton gets elected—business as usual.

What will definitely happen no matter who wins (but especially in the likely case that Clinton wins) is a big fight over the future of the Republican party. Traditionally, the Republican party has been a pro-business, less-government party with some Christian conservative principles thrown in, but Trump is more of a populist and white nationalist…in many respects, much more reminiscent of the European far right than American politics. As I’ve tried to explain, this is because the Republican party is confronted with a basic problem: its base is a particular segment of the white population, but the United States is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. There are two solutions: try to appeal to minority voters (the Republican strategy during the 1980s to early 2000s—at least with Hispanics) or try to get further supports from whites. Trump clearly tried to do the latter with all his talk about the decline of American greatness, fear-mongering about outsiders, and so on. So if he loses, especially if he loses, the Republicans are going to have a big fight over the future of their party…do they try to double down on being a populist white-nationalist party or go back to the old strategy (which will be hard, because after this election everyone will see them as a racist party). This debate would still happen if Trump were to win, I think, but in a different ways. So in some ways, the election is as much a referendum on the two party system and the future of American politics as anything else.