(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Zege Trump dwingt links Amerika én Europa tot cultuuromslag)
The resounding victory of Donald Trump, with majorities in the Senate and (possibly) the House of Representatives, was barely known before the Democrats fell into a deep depression. How could the electorate be so ungrateful for the blessings of president Biden and his intended successor Kamala Harris? Wealthy ‘celebrities’, such as Sharon Stone, Cher, Taylor Swift, Barbara Streisand, threatened to leave America.
And curiously: the former American ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder (64), threatened (AD, 3 September) to give up his American nationality: he did not want to live in a country where a fascist was in power. After 30 years he wants his Dutch passport back. That requires an ‘integration course’ in which the KNM component (knowledge of Dutch society) can be a notorious stumbling block. Daalder still has some cramming to do.
In the American media there were the usual crying fits such as at CNN and MSNBC, while the regular jokers such as Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel literally had tears in their eyes. It became clear that the cultural elite lived with their heads in the clouds.
Gnashing their teeth, the better-knowing class had established that the ‘working class’ in the swing states had come within Trump’s reach. He transformed the Republican party, previously mainly a party of ‘country clubs’ and after that of ‘social conservatives’, into a workers’ party. Thus he rummaged in the base of the Democrats. In 2016 with success. This year an extra grab was added: Trump appealed to minorities that the Democrats had counted as the hard core of their own following. Trump scored very well among Latinos, black men, Catholics and Jewish Americans. On this the Democrats, with Harris in the lead, fell through the floor.
Trump’s landslide (312 versus 226 electors) produces a reshuffling of the political field, as Ronald Reagan had done in 1980. A political-cultural shift with far-reaching consequences. The Democrats preached identity politics for years. They divided society into separate little groups: white women, black men, young white men, Latinos, Catholic Americans. They spoke of non-binary gender policy, with ‘men’ in the changing rooms of women. ‘Woke’ became a method to silence people, to make opinion-forming uniform. It became a culture war with ‘cancel culture’ as the stick behind the door. That identity politics, however, caused an identity crisis among Democrats.
The Democrats have to reinvent themselves, and that will take time. The ‘blame game’ has already begun. Nancy Pelosi (84), who was re-elected for the 20th time to the House of Representatives, laid the blame on Biden who, according to her, had stayed on too long. His mental condition was presented too rosily for too long. Biden himself did not notice, and the debate with Trump, which became his downfall, he had also requested himself. Biden is angry at Pelosi because he feels pushed aside, while he himself got in Harris’s way. Such as describing Trump’s voters as ‘garbage’. These are the usual rituals of a lost election. Substantive reflection must follow, and new faces at the top of the party.
It is striking how much the European left is in that same pit. Ideological emptiness through identity politics, though people are less generous with the name of ‘Hitler’ to blacken opponents. Terms like ‘fascist’ or ‘racist’ suffice. This vocabulary serves to hide the substantive emptiness. What does the European left stand for? Above all for climate policy. Just like the Democrats, progressive Europe has little eye for the consequences of immigration and the economic problems of the common man. What was once the core of the ideology is now a side issue and replaced by identity politics and a woke agenda.
The merger problems of the PvdA and GroenLinks mark that; of all things around the conflict in Gaza that completely divides the two parties. The Democrats employed two talking points on Gaza: one version for voters in the Arab community and another for the Jewish community. That balloon did not hold up for long. The cultural shift through the election of Trump puts the European left up against the same wall as the Democrats. Moreover, the turnaround in America will accelerate the turnaround in Europe.
Starting in Germany. The premature fall of the government of chancellor Olaf Scholz produces an acceleration. Germans yearn for stability but that is falling away. The elections for a new Bundestag are not far off. The German left, the social-democratic SPD and the Greens, are in a bad position. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is the far right-wing outsider, while the party of Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) is a surprising newcomer. Towering above all this is the CDU/CSU of Friedrich Merz. But his problem is: with which party does he form a government? The AfD is excluded. The rest mostly limp along.
Merz is a capable politician who spent years in quasi-forced exile because chancellor Merkel pushed him aside. From parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag he was demoted to backbencher, left Berlin and settled in Düsseldorf as an asset manager for the American BlackRock, with its headquarters in Manhattan. Only after Merkel’s departure did he return to Berlin. Merz is familiar with America, useful for the relationship with Trump.
Germany is sinking into economic malaise. Where Volkswagen goes, there goes Germany, and later the Netherlands too. Germany is strangling its economy with a failed climate and energy policy, and as the crowning touch the closing of the nuclear power plants. Germany is de-industrializing because energy costs are too high, much higher than in America where they are actually becoming lower. One of Trump’s first decisions is to allow fracking and to drill more oil under the motto ‘drill baby drill’.
Trump widens that gap with Europe. He is leading climate policy – in his own words the ‘green scam’ – to the slaughterhouse: America leaves (once again) the Paris Climate Agreement and reduces the regulatory burden, while the energy supply is increased. This puts the expensive European climate and energy policy under enormous pressure. European competitiveness shrivels.
There is then no other way out than to recalibrate climate and energy policy. The European Green Deal costs 1,570 billion euros annually in ‘investments’ that are paid by companies. The consumer ultimately gets the costs on his plate. Europe must be 90% climate-neutral by 2040; 100% by 2050. Companies that have to make strategic decisions in the coming years will quickly do the math: investing in Europe does not pay. In America it does.
Germany, once the leading industrial country in Europe that is now going backward, will be the first to have to change course. With that a European article of faith goes overboard. It is crucial that the elections in Germany take place soon and Merz becomes chancellor quickly.
In America climate is barely a point of contention; for only 7% of voters. Purchasing power and immigration come first. That is not much different in Europe, but ‘progressive Europe’ is barely interested in that, no more than the Democrats in America. They have now had their lesson. A too-expensive climate and energy policy disregards purchasing power and the financial costs of large-scale asylum migration. That endangers the survival of companies and with it the livelihood security of citizens.
Instead of going hard against that current with an unattainable and unaffordable climate policy, Europe would do better to liberalize the green planned economy with more market principles, more real competition and fewer subsidies. The Green Deal turns the civil servant into an entrepreneur and the entrepreneur into a civil servant. That is an upside-down world. If Europe does not correct itself, America will do it. And in Trumpian fashion.
Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.
