The United States is looking ahead in the aftermath of the 2024 national elections that ended with Donald J. Trump winning the White House over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Republicans also expanded their control by taking the Senate and political pundits, analysts and the country are once again facing a level of national dissatisfaction that propelled the former Republican president over the heavily endorsed Democrat.
President-elect Trump had secured 312 electoral votes, and 74.6 million popular votes compared to 226 and 70.9 million for Vice President Harris. At Final Call presstime the balance of which party will control the House of Representatives was still unclear with several races still undecided but with the GOP in the lead.
According to election analysis, Mr. Trump received nearly the same numbers in the popular vote he garnered in the 2020 election. According to NPR, issues such as the border and the economy were key concerns of voters. In an article on npr.org titled, “Why Trump won—9 takeaways from the 2024 election,” a few of the key factors that propelled Mr. Trump to victory included:
White voters went up as a share of the electorate from 67 percent to 71 percent for the first time in decades, helping Mr. Trump. And, women turned out as a higher share, but not enough for Vice President Harris to win. Mr. Trump also expanded his coalition the article noted.
“Trump won an astounding 46% of Latinos in this election. That’s the highest ever for a Republican, even higher than George W. Bush in 2004. But that was driven by men. He won a majority of Latino men by double-digits over Harris, while Harris won 60% of Latinas,” NPR reported.
According to the Associated Press, while most of Mr. Trump’s voters were White who make up the majority of the American electorate, Black voters increased their support.
“Trump was able to make slight inroads with Black voters nationally, who made up about 1 in 10 voters across the country. Nationally, about 8 in 10 Black voters supported Harris. But, that was down from about 9 in 10 in the last presidential election who went for Biden.
Trump about doubled his share of young Black men—which helped him among key Democratic voting group. About 3 in 10 Black men under the age of 45 went for Trump, roughly double the number he got in 2020,” AP reported in a Nov. 7 article, “How 5 key demographic groups voted in 2024: AP VoteCast.”
Mr. Trump also won all of the swing states.
Professor Eric McDaniel, of the Department of Government at The University of Texas at Austin, and co-director of the Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab, agreed that the majority of the American people spoke loudly about their unhappiness with the general direction of the country, as reflected in both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
He said it is important, however, for young people in particular to become politically astute, and be aware of local, national, and international issues that will directly and indirectly affect their current and future quality of life.
A breakdown of what he called “Black civil society” has contributed to low levels of turnout, a lack of awareness of what’s going on, and also of people developing, expressing or believing anti-Black biases, Prof. McDaniel explained to The Final Call.
Prof. McDaniel also said there could be a rude awakening for those not paying attention to the time, what is going on around them, and failing to act accordingly by not using the tools available to properly educate themselves.
“Getting a person elected is the easy part, but getting a policy through, that is the hard part,” Prof. McDaniel said. “It’s not a sprint. This is an ultra-marathon and the thing about democracy is it requires you to be engaged all the time. This is not a part-time thing,” he said. “If you want a part-time thing, you’ll get a dictator.”
Illusion of the American dream
The nationwide political discord and acrimony during the 2024 election season bore witness to the divine insight and guidance taught by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam. While America’s two primary political parties work to gain power, Black people and the poor continue to come out on the short end.
“How much good have the two parties (Republican and Democrat) done for us for the last century in the way of freedom, justice, and equality? Regardless of what party wins, the die is always set against us (the Black people in America),” the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote in his book, “The Fall of America,” in the chapter, “The National Election.”
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, referred to the American dream as an “illusion” for Black people.
“We are going to have to be separated.There is no future for us in trying to make the American dream—which is an illusion—work for us. God wants to separate us and give us a land of our own, with Him as The Ruler.
The scripture teaches, ‘For unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given, and a government shall be upon his shoulders, and he shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Prince of Peace, The Everlasting Father, and of the increase of his government of peace there shall be no end,’”
Minister Farrakhan stated in a message titled, “Come Out Of Her My People: A Declaration Of Independence,” delivered at the 21st Anniversary of the Million Man March and Holy Day of Atonement, October 16, 2016, at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia.
“So, toward this end, we have to take over our own neighborhoods; we have to take over the educationbecause we cannot make our community a decent and safe place to live under White Supremacy teachings. You need a new education, an education of self and others. So we’re going to have to prove that we are worthy of self-governance by taking our communities over.
We need to set up our own political machine, the Justice Or Else Party. No more ‘Democrat,’ no more ‘Republican.’ Let all of those who want justice, whether you’re Black, Brown, Red, Yellow or White:
Come on out of her (Jeremiah 51:45, Revelations 18:4), and take control. Start vetting people (politicians who want our vote); that we must tell them, ‘We are sending you there to work for us. If they corrupt you, we’ll make an example of you,’” Minister Farrakhan said.
While Vice President Harris was defeated, in other areas of the country Blacks were elected to various political offices. Tulsa, Oklahoma, elected its first Black mayor in Monroe Nichol, 103 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre.
And, for the first time in history, there will be two Black women serving simultaneously in the U.S. Senate as Angela Alsobrooks (D-Maryland) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) were elected. In Atlanta, District Attorney Fani Willis won re-election while in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed was defeated.
Regarding the contentious issue of division, highlighting much of the rhetoric and gridlock in American politics over much of the last 16 years, Dr. Ray Winbush, research professor and director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Told The Final Call that there has always been some form of racial division in the United States and to deny its existence is to deny a historical truth that has been in plain sight since the inception of the country.
“White folks were alarmed when Obama became president, and they set in place and paved the way for what happened last night (November 5),” Dr. Winbush said of the perfect storm of events leading to the second president since Grover Cleveland, to win two split terms in office as President of the United States.
“When they saw Obama beat McCain and then after that Romney, they really started making plans, primarily at the state level, to take over state governments so that they could ultimately take over the federal government,” he said.
“Project 2025 was in the works years ago and the result of it is Donald Trump,” he said. “Based on exit polls, the only demographics that voted more than 50 percent for Kamala were Black men, Black women, and Latina women. Every other group captured under 50 percent of those groups,” Dr. Winbush noted.
Dr. Winbush noted that while the election season did contain elements of an illusion of inclusion for all, for party elites, it’s still a question of capitalism and who will be exploited.
“They’re going to get rid of Obamacare, even though millions have benefited from that system of healthcare,” Dr. Winbush insisted. “White people and unfortunately a lot of Black people don’t understand that that has helped people, but that’s the nature of capitalism, to give the illusion of inclusion that we can all start a business if we want to, you’re free to expand, the market is neutral, and all of it is a bunch of myths.”
Noting that Conservatives have vehemently resisted the imposing of tariffs as being bad for free trade in the global marketplace, Dr. Winbush also said President-Elect Trump made the taxing of foreign imports a major position of his campaign platform to promote American jobs in manufacturing.
“If he follows through on his idea of tariffs, which ironically the Republicans have always been against, that’s a tax on Americans, so if he says all Chinese products are going to get a 20 percent tariff, the only thing the Chinese are going to do is say no problem, we’re going to raise the price of everything by 20 percent and the American consumer covers that,” Dr. Winbush explained of the additional price hikes that could follow.
Different parties, same agendas?
Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, political scientist, analyst, and radio talk show host, told The Final Call that he saw little difference between agendas behind the two candidates regarding foreign policy regarding the likelihood of war and rumors of war on the global stage.
“To me one of the reasons why Vice President Harris lost is because Donald Trump stayed true to his constituency; (and) Kamala Harris ran from her constituency,” Dr. Leon said. “Seventy percent of Democrats want an end to the war in Ukraine;
They don’t want a war with China over Taiwan; they don’t want the United States sending more money to the Zionist settler colony called Israel. So, she ignored her constituency in two manners; one: her message was contrary to what they were demanding and two: she didn’t give a plausible explanation as to why she was ignoring them,” he continued.
“She would have done much better engaging with Palestinian activists; she would have done better aligning herself with Code Pink and aligning herself with anti-war alliances than with Dick Cheney and with (promoters of the Iraq War),” he said. “She chose to tie herself to right-wing neocons instead of anti-war activists.”
Regarding the economy and America’s national debt, Dr. Leon said that when the Biden administration speaks of how well the stock market is performing, they are speaking of Wall Street issues, not Main Street issues.
“If you have a 401k in this country, then you’re pretty happy with the direction that your retirement program is going, (but) the real economy is hurting and the real economy is the manufacturing side of the economy, the salary side of the economy, the hourly wage side of the economy, that’s not doing well at all,” Dr. Leon insisted.
“One of the reasons why Harris had the problem she had is she couldn’t square that circle,” Dr. Leon added. “She could say the economy is doing well, but when you are paying $3.50 per pound for tomatoes, and you’re working three jobs just to be poor, when you leave your job at McDonald’s to go drive for Uber and then go clean office buildings at night, you’re not doing well,” he said. Political leaders regardless of party affiliation tend to be out of touch with the masses of the American people, Dr. Leon explained.
On the subject of “de-dollarization” through the rapidly expanding BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alternative to the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and counterbalance to the unipolar world led by the United States at the end of the Cold War, Dr. Leon cautioned Americans to be mindful of how implementing sanctions against so many nations has nearly led the United States to paint itself into a corner.
“The world is moving in that direction and no monetary or fiscal policy or foreign policy, whether it’s the Trump Administration or whether it would have been a Harris Administration, they cannot turn that one around,” Dr. Leon said of the inevitable and cyclical rise and fall of empires and nations.
Like his teacher the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has warned Black people about placing their hopes and dreams in the ballot box. For decades, Minister Farrakhan has taught that voting will not change the reality of the condition of Blacks or the poor.
“This country talks about so-called democracy, but who are we trying to vote for, as though voting is going to change the reality of the wickedness of American life. We should vote for Christ and the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth because in His Kingdom there will be peace, joy, freedom, justice and equality,”
The Minister stated in the message, “The Beginning of Sorrows,” delivered March 5, 2006, at Life Center Church in Chicago. His divine guidance is just as relevant and applicable today as it was nearly two decades after his message.
“I want to see the Kingdom of God established on earth, like the Lord’s Prayer recites, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth.’ What is the Kingdom of God?
The Kingdom of God is a government, wherein the people live under the rules and laws of God. We cannot be a true disciple of Christ and be loved by the world. Most of us want to be loved by the world, the governor, mayor or president. I want to be loved by God and His Christ,” Minister Farrakhan added.
(Final Call staff contributed to this report.)
