Reported by Al Jazeera
The US midterms were a rejection of Donald Trump’s politics of division, but his legacy may be impossible to undo.
“I think it’s safe to say that we are tired of being pitted against each other. We are tired of being told to hate each other. It has been 10 years of this kind of politics. Politics as blood sport. Politics as trolling and owning. Politics as professional wrestling. It tears families apart. It ends friendships, and it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time.”
So said Senator-elect James Talarico in his victory speech on election night after he won the first United States Senate seat in Texas for the Democratic Party in almost 40 years.
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I don’t like Talarico or his policies, but I agree with him on one thing: The American people are tired of being pitted against one another. We need more uniters and fewer dividers in the Republican Party and US politics in general.
This is the conclusion many American voters seem to have reached after 10 years of Donald Trump dominating the right.
A decade ago, he forcefully entered the political scene with a radically different approach and provocative rhetoric. He won his first US presidential election by attacking his opponents with clever and cutting nicknames. Crooked Hillary. Low-energy Jeb. Pocahontas. Little Marco. Crazy Bernie. Lying Ted.
All were aimed at diminishing his rivals in ways that only a rapturous crowd of adoring MAGA fans could really appreciate. His attacks played well on social media and reflected an American culture that was far less deferential to the political establishment, far coarser in its language and far more interested in being entertained than being informed.
Trump’s attacks, performed live at his raucous rallies, had all the earmarks of a professional wrestling bout. It was blood sport at its most basic level. And Trump’s supporters ate it up, loving how he stood up to an elite that obviously despised them.
His opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, called half of his supporters a “basket of deplorables”.
Seven years before Trump formally entered the race…