Donald Trump has won in the Nov. 5 general (popular) election for the presidency of the United States of America, to serve a four-year term from 2025 to 2029. He will be proclaimed the 47th President of the United States of America on Jan. 20, 2025, after formal election by the US Electoral College on Dec. 17 this year. (Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.)

The popular vote determines which slate the electors will vote for — Republican, Democrat, or a third party.  Each of the 50 states are given a number of electoral votes proportionate to the population density in each state.   Candidates must secure 270 electoral votes, a majority of the 538 at stake, to win the presidency.  In most states, it’s winner-take-all — whoever gets the most votes in the state wins all of its electoral votes. There is no Constitutional provision or federal law that requires electors to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged, though they almost always do.  “Faithless electors” are rare, since the electors are selected by the parties (cbsnews.com, Nov. 5, 2024).

Five presidents in the history of the US have won the presidency without winning the popular vote — the most recent was Donald Trump (Republican) in 2016. His opponent that year, Hillary Clinton (Democrat), won over 2.8 million more votes than Trump nationwide, but she lost enough key states to be defeated in the Electoral College, 306 to 232 (Ibid.). In a 2023 Pew Research poll, 65% of Americans said the president should be elected through the popular vote, not the Electoral College. But legislation to change the system is difficult because proponents say it keeps less populous states from being underrepresented (Ibid.).

And so, this year’s popular elections point to Trump’s being effectively already officially elected by the Electoral College, as he has secured 301 electoral votes, breaching the 270 needed to win. His opponent, Kamala Harris (Democrat) garnered the equivalent of 226 votes. Trump is the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote since George W. Bush two decades ago. But why, and how, did he trump the game so cleverly?

Trump is the first president in American history to be impeached twice, and the first to run again after impeachment. Trump was first impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress due to his attempts to coerce Ukraine to provide damaging information on Biden and misinformation regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections by withholding military aid (NPR, retrieved May 31, 2024). Trump’s second impeachment by the House occurred on Jan. 13, 2021, for “incitement of insurrection” owing to his role in the Jan. 6 United States Capitol attack.  As Trump was acquitted by the Senate in both cases, Trump was not barred from seeking reelection to the presidency in 2024 (FiveThirtyEight, ABC News, June 1, 2024).

Trump was elected despite persistently low approval ratings, four criminal indictments and a civil judgment against him for sexual abuse and defamation. In May, Trump became the first former US president to be convicted of a crime when a New York jury found him guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.

Trump’s political career appeared over after his false claims of election fraud led a mob of supporters to storm the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed bid to overturn his 2020 defeat (against Joe Biden). His efforts to reverse his defeat led to two separate indictments, though all the criminal cases against him are expected to end after his victory (Reuters, Nov. 7, 2024).

“It clearly paid off to aggressively push to delay these cases as long as possible,” said Jessica Levinson, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School.  A judge in New York is set to sentence the former president later this month after holding off on handing down the punishment ahead of Election Day to avoid any appearance of affecting the outcome of the presidential race — though Trump’s lawyers are expected to ask the judge to put off the sentencing now that he’s the president-elect (Reuters, Nov. 6, 2024).  Very clever!

Mainstream media unmasked “The Donald” (his “funny name,” as ex-wife Ivana referred to him). After he announced a White House bid for 2024 (CNN, Nov. 16, 2022), newspapers and TV had no qualms about putting him down. “News Analysis: Trump seeks to reclaim spotlight with old playbook of lying, talking smack to media,” the Los Angeles Times said (Aug. 24, 2024). “Trump has a bunch of new false claims. Here’s a guide” (The Washington Post, March 15, 2024).  “With false ‘coup’ claims, Trump primes supporters to challenge a Harris win” (The Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2024). “Trump calls Biden the ‘destroyer’ of democracy despite his own efforts to overturn 2020 election” (Associated Press, Dec. 15, 2023).

Trump’s style and behavior, including his embrace of far-right extremism (New York Times, April 16, 2024) “broke with traditional US political norms in an unprecedented way, marked by a rhetoric they described as authoritarian and dehumanizing toward his political opponents, likening it to populist movements and some drawing parallels to fascism” (ABC News, May 30, 2024). In July, President Joe Biden condemned the videoed, televised assassination attempt on Donald Trump, calling on all Americans to denounce such “sick” violence (BBC News, July 14, 2024).  Was it real, anyway, or staged, as some cynics thought?

Still, Donald Trump won the elections and will be president of the United States of America for a second term. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said on the day after elections to a roaring crowd at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in Florida (Reuters, Nov. 7, 2024). As if to applaud and cheer — “major stock markets around the world rallied following Trump’s victory, and the dollar was set for its biggest one-day jump since 2020” (Ibid.).

Analyses in mainstream and social media focused on why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. Most were similar to analyst Jon Sopel, who wrote that “the most pressing issues that decided Harris’s defeat were that Biden had been perceived as a failure by the American public; these included the fact that, as part of the global 2021-2023 inflation surge, inflation went up by 20% and real wages had not adjusted to match, as well as the state of the Mexico-United States border. By embracing the Biden agenda, (Harris) was simply tying herself to his unpopularity.” The Democratic Party was out of touch with the popular mood in the US, pointing to its lack of action on illegal immigration, its lack of attention to the economic state, and the majority of Americans’ lack of interest in the Biden administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts,” Sopel said in, “Kamala’s catastrophe: How it all went so badly wrong,” The Independent, Nov. 7, 2024.

The fatigue and disappointment with the government (i.e., the outgoing Biden administration) has caused widespread “anti-system” sentiment, some socio-political analysts say. And, in the anxieties of the aging Baby Boomers (the US median age is now 38.023 years in 2024 according to database.earth) — income, poverty, and health are critical issues.  Life has been difficult, dragged down by the long-staying COVID pandemic that started in 2020. The impatience for relief and deliverance has peaked — perhaps a bad-ass strongman fascist president like Donald Trump can get things done, and fast!

P.S.:  Does it not all sound so familiar to Filipinos — that sometime back it was thought that “a bad-ass, foul-mouthed, brusque strongman (bugoy, in Filipino) might be president and solve the problems of the country”?  To our American friends:  It didn’t work out!

Amelia H. C. Ylagan is a doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.

ahcylagan@yahoo.com