Trump, The Figurehead of 2024 – Watching America

The tycoon is now the linchpin of the Republican Party, which has fully evolved from a conservative party to a right-wing populist movement in the United States.

The 2024 U.S. presidential campaign revolves around Donald Trump.

Whether or not Trump is on the ballot, his name will appear in the election. Americans will still be casting ballots for or against Trump. “He continues to shape American politics more than two years after leaving office,” says political scientist Bill Schneider, author of “Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable.”

Schneider argues that Trump is now the linchpin of the Republican Party, which has fully evolved from a conservative party at the end of World War II to a right-wing populist movement defined by loyalty to the former president.

Loyalty to Trump can only be explained by his having put the right, literally of any stripe, in unprecedented positions of power.

Trump would certainly seem a poor candidate to lead a group that claims to be “Christian” and prides itself on following and upholding traditional moral and family values. Married three times, and the protagonist in a life full of personal scandal and questionable business ethics, Trump is defined simply as “an imperfect messenger” who, instead, helps advance the ideas of his followers.

For the right in the U.S., the dream was control of the Supreme Court and its potential impact on American lives, especially banning abortion. When the court reversed the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in 2022 and ended the framework that legalized abortion, it did so thanks to Trump’s appointment of three justices who formed an absolute conservative majority with six out of nine justices.

Trump is also a battering ram against the elite, be it economic or cultural. He is a billionaire who likes to boast about his wealth, but at the same time gives voice to the resentment of his mostly white, lower middle class or poor, middle to low-educated supporters who see themselves as socially and economically marginalized.

They are the group that feels affected by globalization and the flight of industrial jobs, that rejects the arrival of immigrants, and questions religious, ethnic and sexual diversity.

And they are certainly the group that believes Trump when he claims that by attacking him, by accusing him, his accusers are in fact attacking everyone.

That goes a long way toward explaining why the charges filed against Trump, charges that would be more than enough to end the career of a normal politician, instead seem to enhance and strengthen his candidacy, which today has the support of more than half of America’s Republicans.

And they are the ones who would rather believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent than accept the possibility that they are not a majority in the U.S.

And that is why Trump and his ideas are at the center of 2024.