US Elections

us elections After eight years of Democratic presidency at the White House, a Republican wins the presidential elections.

It all came as a tale of the unexpected. After eight years of Democratic presidency at the White House, the Republican camp surprisingly placed their bets on Donald Trump, which proved an inspired choice, as Trump eventually won, in the wake of a campaign marred by controversies and scandals.


Portrayed by her opponents as a person of the system, Hillary Clinton had to answer questions about the way she had received funding for the foundation she jointly owns with her husband, the former US president Bill Clinton. Also, Hillary  had to answer for the way she reacted as a Secretary of State when the US Consulate in Benghazi was attacked. Also as a Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton used a private email account, which triggered an FBI investigation, but which eventually failed to find any real grounds for her indictment. In the opposite camp, with no political experience and failing to prove, in the three debates that brought together the presidential candidates, that he had the required knowledge on key issues of the state, Donald Trump made all sorts of controversial declarations throughout the campaign, which made all the difference for Hillary Clinton's challenger. His main promise concerned the building of a wall along the Mexican border, to stop immigration. Another controversial proposal was that of temporarily denying Muslims access to the US, a declaration Trump subsequently reconsidered, stating some of the details needed rethinking.


Also, Trump was involved in a scandal regarding women and the way he treated them.  Nonetheless, shortly after his win was announced, Trump made an appeal to unity and vowed to place Americans' interest over and above anything else. He said: "Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division, have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. We have a great economic plan. We will double our growth and have the strongest economy anywhere in the world. At the same time, we will get along with all other nations willing to get along with us. I want to tell the world community that we will always put America's interests first." 


For many, Trump's victory was surprising, all the more so as his challenger was credited with great chances of winning, up to the very last minute. But how can we explain the way the Americans voted ? Here is foreign policy pundit Vladimir Socor attempting an answer:


 "I can explain it as the outcome of the dissatisfaction of the American middle class, in particular of the white middle class, since the racial factor played a key role. This is how I can explain Mr. Trump's victory. For quite some time now, the middle class, but also the working class, that of industrial workers who traditionally made the Democrats' electorate,  have switched sides and joined the Republican camp. This trend of outsourcing the fixed capital invested in the USA, to countries where the workforce is  a great deal cheaper, such as China, Mexico, states in South-East Asia or even Latin America had a devastating effect on the middle class and the American working class. In this way, the traditional American workforce, highly-skilled in terms of technical competences and well-paid, ended up being thrown into some sort of common pot where they found themselves competing against the poorly-paid workforce of third-world countries, as a result of which the living standards in the US stalled and even declined. The income gap between the well-to-do or the rich class and the middle-class, the working class, has dramatically deepened. And that partly explains the massive transfer of votes from the Democrat to the Republican Party"


No less important is the issue of migration. Vldimir Socor belives that the liberal circles, which have held sway over politics and, more importantly, over US mass media in the past years, have overtly opted for the transformation of the USA and its population, into a some sort of reflector of the world's population. To put it differently, because of uncontrolled migration, an acceleration process occurred, with the percentage of white people across the USA diminishing, and the percentage of non-European population increasing. Candidate Donald Trump specifically addressed such worries of the vast majority of American voters and managed to voice the anxiety of that emerging majority. These are in brief the factors that led to Trump's win, Vladimir Socor explained. Are there any changes likely to occur as regards American security policy in Europe? Could the commitments made by the US at the NATO summit in Warsaw this summer possibly change?  According to Vladimir Socor, the Pentagon has enough political leverage to influence the decisions the North Atlantic Alliance may take, in order to carry through the initiatives adopted at the summit in Warsaw. On the other hand, a dysfunctional America cannot but make the West more vulnerable.


According to political expert Iulian Fota, what we need is an America capable of understanding Europe's specific problems. A recent guest of one of Radio Romania's programs, Fota has said that president Obama had at least promised Europe support in its bid to sort out the serious problems it was facing and it is extremely important that president Trump carries on with this course of action in the US foreign policy.



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Publicat: 2016-11-11 13:20:00
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