hen election results started pouring in, in 2016, I was an undergraduate student in the US in my sophomore year. On election night, I was surrounded by a group of like-minded friends. We were studying at a university where the student body mostly had uniform liberal views on social and cultural issues, in a state that leaned heavily towards the Democratic Party.

Like those around me, I found it hard to believe how so many Americans could vote for someone like Trump, given his record of racism and sexism. The values I cherished, and I believed America stood for, were not represented by the party that wanted to ‘make America great again’.

The ideological homogeneity of my surroundings, coupled with the naivety of a young impressionable mind had blind-sided me into not realising that the narratives propagated by the Democratic Party were convenient political ploys.

For quite some time, the Democratic Party has been focused on aligning itself behind popular stances on prominent sociocultural issues. They have chased opinions instead of forming any. Performance on issues that actually mattered to the American public has either been ignored or relegated. Nowhere was this more blatantly obvious than the convenient flip-flop by Kamala Harris on key issues of gun ownership rights, fracking and immigration, after she was written in as the Democratic candidate when Joe Biden dropped out. This disingenuous change in positions was done to attract moderates and undecided voters. Her stance on these issues during her failed 2020 presidential bid was quite different.

The American public has felt lied to by the Democrats. The results of these elections should not come as a surprise. The writing was on the cards for a long time. Even during the Barack Obama presidency, the Democrats were accused of being aloof. The 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, was seen as a representative of the elite and detached from mainstream America. The American public continued to grow disillusioned with the Democratic Party. The sentiment culminated in outright revulsion in these elections. America chose, instead, to elect a convicted felon, who has been impeached twice and accused of by several women of sexual offences. Despite these factors, in Donald Trump the American public saw a representative. Resentment towards the disinterested attitude of the Democrats played a decisive role in these elections, particularly in the key swing states.

This election should be viewed more as an indictment of the Democratic Party, than a victory for the Republicans, Trump or the MAGA movement. Moderates who voted for Trump did so because they had had enough of the self-righteousness, insincerity, hypocrisy and entitlement of the Democrats.

The 2024 election results should be viewed more as an indictment of the Democratic Party, than a victory of the Republicans, Trump or the MAGA movement. Moderates who voted for Trump did so because they had had enough of the self-righteousness, insincerity, hypocrisy and entitlement of the Democrats. This is evidenced by the fact that Kamala sought the Muslim vote, knowing it would prove to be critical in the battleground states, despite the fact that the administration she represents, advanced a stance fundamentally contrary to that of Muslims on the one issue that mattered to them the most: the ongoing war in Palestine. Democrats expected Muslim support simply because Trump had once proposed a ‘Muslim ban’. Such entitlement proved futile.

The Democratic Party will has to realign and find its centre. They need sincere practical leaders, of which there is currently a dearth in the party, not career politicians or snobbish virtue signallers. They cannot continue to run their politics on high nosed moral accusations and fear mongering. The latter is a trait they have consistently accused Trump of for close to a decade now. But the Democrats run their entire campaigns on projecting Trump as a threat to American and foreign institutions, while self-declaring themselves as defenders and saviours of the same.

As for the next four years of America under Trump, I do think the office of the president tends to encourage restraint. This was evident the last time Trump became president. Campaign sloganeering and speeches are never the same as presidential politics. But at the same time, the system that created such inhibitions during his first stint as president is now more pliant to his will. In 2016, Trump was an outsider; in 2024, he is a mainstay.

I still find Trump’s views inacceptable. In some ways, I believe, he represents the worst instincts. But painting his supporters with the same broad-brush stroke, as Hillary did in 2016 by calling Trump supporters a ‘basket of deplorables’, and Biden did in 2024 by calling Trump supporters ‘garbage’, is insulting their intelligence and humanity. Such arrogance has cost the Democrats two presidential elections in eight years. Time for introspection is now.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore, and the Fakhruddin G Ebrahim Fellow at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.