The world is now ready for the new Trump term to begin on Monday January 20. In my opinion it is very appropriate that US flags should be flown at half-mast – even though that is a sign of respect for the late Jimmy Carter, the 39th President (1977-81) and not disrespect for Donald Trump who was the 45th President (2017-21) and will be the 47th from 2025 to 2029.
We have seen the first day of meeting of the 119th Congress on Friday January 3 – of which more below. We have also noticed that January 6 this year witnessed the peaceful transfer of power, as also occurred on January 6, 2017. As to why January 6, 2021, saw an insurrection to stop the peaceful transfer of power – that will be debated for many years, but my take is given below.
In the meanwhile, one set of statistics has been missing. So far, we have not been told the final count of the popular vote recorded for the November 2024 presidential election. I give it below, showing the equivalent votes for the 2016 and 2020 elections.
It is important that these statistics should be recorded because they enable reputable analysts to counter the propaganda of so-called “conservative” commentators (of which the most offensive have been Rowan Dean and Paul Murray) who insist that Trump won in 2024 by a landslide, even as they accept that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
Let me give the definition of “landslide” as found in my 1964 edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. In its figurative use landslide is described as “a great majority of votes, an overwhelming victory, especially in an election.”
On that basis none of the three elections contested by Trump could be described as a landslide. All the reputable analyst can say is that the biggest popular vote was given to Joe Biden in 2020. One can also note that Trump won the popular vote in 2024, but his win was smaller than that enjoyed by Hillary Clinton in 2016. A Trump admirer could also say that he won 63 million votes in 2016, 74 million in 2020 and 77 million in 2024, so his vote is on the rise.
In my Switzer Daily article posted on July 19 last year (“June 27 and July 13 gave Trump the 2024 election”) https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/malcolm-mackerras/june-27-and-july-13-gave-trump-the-2024-election/ I predicted that Trump would win the popular vote, and the opinion poll published with my pendulum on election day in the Sydney Daily Telegraph and the Melbourne Herald Sun also pointed to that outcome. Therefore, I am not surprised that Trump did win the popular vote narrowly in 2024. But note also something else I wrote in that Switzer Daily article. “Mark my words. The second Trump aberration will be just as bad for America as the first.”
What these statistics tell us is that the vagaries of the electoral college system presently favour the Republican Party. That being so those vagaries conceal the reality which is that the Democratic Party has been the natural majority party since the 1992 presidential election. For my defence of that proposition read below.
The chutzpah of Donald Trump knows no bounds, but his propaganda skills have been useful to his party. Looking at the three sets of statistics shown above it is incredible that the biggest victory (Biden in 2020) is the one described as “stolen” while Trump’s two narrow wins should be accepted as okay. In any sensible world all three would, without question, have been accepted as okay. All three results were decisive.
How, therefore, could this absurd situation have arisen? The answer I give is that since 1978 the Republican Party has been the one to play hardball. When the Democrats have responded in any way the Republicans have been able to pretend that it has been the Democrats who have played hardball. The reality is that the Republicans started this process, and I use the year 1978 because that is the year Newt Gingrich was first elected to the House of Representatives. Trump’s propaganda skills leave those of Gingrich for dead, but it was Gingrich who started this process. He was first elected to a Georgia congressional district in 1978 and was leader of the Republicans from 1995 to 1999 (and therefore Speaker) but took his throwing of bombs too far – so he became an embarrassment to the party and was displaced by a more moderate Republican.
The comments made above may well give the impression of me as a boastful man. To counter that impression, I now record that on 23 January last year my Switzer Daily article was titled “Trump will not get a second term” https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/malcolm-mackerras/trump-will-not-get-a-second-term/ My fallibility is demonstrated by my need to cancel that prediction - which I did in the July article.
However, notwithstanding its lack of wisdom that article it did contain some information which I now repeat regarding the 24th and 26th President, Grover Cleveland who served two non-consecutive terms, 1885-89 and 1893-97.
Now for a trivial detail. There have been 45 men serving as US president – but Cleveland and Trump are counted as two men. That is why Trump will be the 47th President.
Let me now explain why I refer to these four presidential terms in the way I do. The 1885-89 term was the first Cleveland aberration while the 2017-21 term was the first Trump aberration. The 1893-97 term was the second Cleveland aberration while the 2025-29 term is the second Trump aberration.
The point is that the two parties have never been equal. One or other has been dominant over different periods. After a shortish period known as “the era of good feelings” the American polity settled into “the First Democratic Era”. During that period Democratic candidates won in 1800, 1804, 1808, 1812, 1816, 1820, 1824, 1828, 1832, 1836, 1844, 1852 and 1856. The party of the right was then known as the Whigs. Its candidates won only twice, in 1840 and 1848, elections clearly described by historians as aberrations.
Historians are nearly unanimous in the opinion that Abraham Lincoln was America’s greatest president. His Republican Party re-aligned the party system, so we had “the First Republican Era”. In that period Republican candidates won in 1860, 1864, 1868, 1872, 1876, 1880, 1888, 1896, 1900, 1904, 1908, 1920, 1924 and 1928. Democratic candidates won only in 1884, 1892, 1912 and 1916.
Historians are nearly unanimous in the opinion that Franklin Roosevelt was America’s greatest president in the first half of the 20th Century. His Democratic Party re-aligned the party system again, so we had “the Second Democratic Era”. In that period Democratic candidates won in 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1960, 1964 and 1976. Republican candidates won only in 1952, 1956, 1968 and 1972.
Again, historians are nearly unanimous in the opinion that Ronald Reagan was America’s greatest president in the second half of the 20th Century. His Republican Party won massive victories in 1980, 1984 and 1988 in what is often referred to as “the Second Republican Era”.
I insist that the period from 1992 to the present day should be described as “the Third Democratic Era”. My basis for such an assertion has been to add up all the presidential votes from 1992 to 2024. The result is that 560 million votes have been cast for Democratic presidential candidates and 526 million for Republican candidates. Democratic candidates have enjoyed good wins in 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012 and 2020. Republican candidates have won the popular vote narrowly in 2004 and 2024. Republican wins of the presidency in 2000 and 2016 were due entirely to the vagaries of the electoral college system.
Very early in this article I gave the 2024 popular vote. I now give the 2004 popular vote – but I also give the same kinds of detail for the following election in 2008. I give 2008 because it constitutes a very good omen for the 2028 election.
There is a further detail in the above to which I invite attention. In 2004 Bush enjoyed a better popular vote win than did Trump in 2024, a margin of 3,012,171 votes compared with 2,286,335 votes for Trump. Whereas the Bush percentage of the two-candidate vote was 51.2 for Trump it was only 50.8 per cent. Indeed, Trump’s win in 2024 was the poorest since Richard Nixon’s first win in 1968.
On the basis of his pretences about the 2024 elections the convicted felon Trump will claim a mandate to make radical changes to American society. He has no mandate. In the House of Representatives, the 2024 result was only 220 Republicans to 215 Democrats meaning that when the 119th Congress first met on January 3 the Republican candidate for Speaker Mike Johnson collected only 218 votes to 215 for the Democratic candidate Hakeem Jeffries.
The Senate is better for the Republicans with their 53-47 majority. However, the US Senate is like its Australian counterpart in being unrepresentative swill. The House of Representatives has 435 members with each member representing some 700,000 people. It is truly democratic. The Senate is not. But the Republican Party will hold a Senate majority for the whole Trump term while losing its House of Representatives majority at the mid-term elections in November 2026.
It won’t take very long for the American people to realise how right they were to kick Trump out in 2020 and how foolish they were to restore him to the presidency in 2024. In the meantime, I have demonstrated the similarity between Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump. Each was a candidate for the minority party in an era of the opposite party being the majority party. That is why I describe their four terms as aberrations.