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MAKING sense of Donald J. Trump’s victory in the recently concluded US Presidential elections is likely to be a long drawn out and tortuous exercise. No matter how difficult to admit, few of us anticipated this possibility, in part because we saw the Republican candidate more as a showman and reality TV star, ‘a caricature out of Mad comics’, as sociologist Shiv Visvnathan writes, than a serious politician espousing thought through coherent policy positions. Incidentally, in a rare reflection of ‘consensus’, the views of the op. ed. pundits were corroborated by an overwhelming majority of opinion polls. It is not often that both the pollsters and the experts get it so wrong.

In part this may be a reflection of the infirmities of polling – the sample design, the questions, the mode of canvassing opinions, the algorithms governing the aggregation of data and so on – particularly when it comes to elections/referendums. The Trump-Clinton contest is only the latest, possibly most spectacular, example of polling failure. Not too far back, we were equally confounded by the results of the Brexit referendum, or closer home, the 2004 victory of the UPA or the margin of victory for the BJP-led NDA in 2014.

Whatever the perceived shortcomings of the forecasting profession, it is clear that many of the basic assumptions deployed in understanding American politics, possibly politics everywhere, no longer carry the same degree of conviction. It is otherwise difficult to comprehend how so many failed to discern the undercurrent of support for Trump, or more likely, a hostility to Hillary Clinton. More than the infirmities of our techniques of analysis is a cognitive failure, reflective of a conflation of value preferences with analytical understanding. It appears that the liberal establishment is so convinced about ‘truth and history’ being on its side, and about the moral superiority of its cherished values, that it remains oblivious to the possibility that significant sections of the population do not buy into its vision of the world; worse, resent this presumed superiority. Possibly this is why there is such a widespread distrust of any advice given by experts.

Perhaps, the results of the Brexit referendum should have provided fair warning. For many years now different parts of the world have been rocked by a series of unusual anti-establishment protests – against increased global integration promoting freer flows of capital and labour; technological change creating redundancies and unemployment, particularly amongst strata that find it difficult to adapt to the altered work environment; against policies of multiculturalism and pluralism – all reflective of a growing distrust in existing leadership, institutions and processes widely seen as captive to elite interests.

Alongside is a growing trend towards xenophobic nativism, a hostility to those seen and classified as different, and a harking back to an imagined, simpler past when the ‘other’ had not polluted the pristine environment. This politics of resentment, hate and pride has helped propel a range of authoritarian figures, mainly male, to power. Be it Shizo Abe in Japan, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Erdogan in Turkey or our very own Narendra Modi – each of these leaders have successfully tapped into this undercurrent to win and consolidate their hold on power, often to ‘not so beneficial’ ends.

Of course, many commentators will seek to normalize the event, foreground the ‘innate wisdom’ and ‘essential decency’ of the people as also the modulating power of institutions, hoping that despite the ugliness of electoral rhetoric, politics and policy making will return to normal. Possibly, but the underlying demons let loose in and legitimized by the electoral discourse may prove difficult to contain. Equally, those who bought into Trump’s rhetoric – about disciplining the Washington establishment; placing new restrictions on immigrants, both Hispanic and Muslim; renegotiating trade agreements to bring jobs back to the US and make America great again – are unlikely to take kindly to any attempt at backtracking and compromise.

Forecasting the fallouts of the Trump presidency may well prove as slippery as forecasting the elections. Nevertheless, one trend is clear. If the liberal democratic establishment fails to rethink, and modify, its basic assumptions about the economy, polity and society and bridge the trust deficit between the citizens and the institutions of governance, the political culture in our societies is likely to experience severe regression. At stake is not only the career of specified politicians or parties but our understanding of equality, justice, dignity and fairness which, at least at the normative level, have helped shape our institutional imagination. Whether or not, as many fear, that the recent US Presidential elections may have consequences as far-reaching as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it is likely that we are in for ‘interesting times’.

Harsh Sethi