Trump later accused former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, of “treason” because of an investigation that uncovered Russian interference in that election. PHOTOS COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA

Around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 6 last year, Donald Trump celebrated his second election victory with a 25-minute speech in which he said, “It’s time to put the divisions of the past four years behind us. It’s time to unite.” The president-elect promised that “we’re going to help our country heal. … And, every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future.”

That may have been meant as a nod to the fact that, while Trump won the Electoral College vote decisively, 312 to 226 for Kamala Harris, his margin of victory in the popular vote was only 1.5 percent and it would be politically advantageous to rise above partisanship to reconciliation and unite his rural base with the urban core.

Instead, in a Times commentary on July 4, Yale history professor Greg Grandin accused the president of “waging war on his own citizens” and using the word “America … not as a symbol to invoke unity but as kerosene to keep the home fires of our culture wars burning. … The fight over the meaning of America reveals MAGA nationalism for what it is: the latest expression of AngloSaxon supremacy — a desire to dominate the world but not be held accountable by the world.”

Grandin was commenting after the 47th President, in his inauguration address in January, did not hold out an olive branch to those whom he defeated. Instead, he declared, “For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair. … My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and, indeed, their freedom.”

Trump later accused former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, of “treason” because of an investigation that uncovered Russian interference in that election.

In between, on his first day in office, the president pardoned more than 1,500 people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory. In his first 100 days, he signed 143 orders, several of which critics have said ignore or violate federal laws, regulations and the U.S. Constitution. Time magazine and Bloomberg Government reported that nearly two-thirds “mirror or partially mirror” Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for radical rightwing governance.

The president also surrounded himself with partisans who quickly began implementing policies that further divide the nation. Tens of thousands of civil servants are being fired, and their replacements will likely be mostly Trump loyalists. Rules are being changed to make federal agencies less friendly to those who need federal support, including, the Associated Press (AP) reported, more than 60 “obsolete” workplace regulations “ranging from minimum wage requirements for home health-care workers and people with disabilities to standards governing exposure to harmful substances.”

The president “has brazenly used his official powers to carry out a retribution campaign against his perceived enemies” and “has threatened perceived opponents with state sanctions,” The New York Times’ Charlie Savage claimed. “He has urged the Federal Communications Communication to remove the licenses of broadcast networks that have covered him in ways he does not like. He has signed executive orders signing out law firms that employed or represented people he considers opponents. He has signed presidential orders that target former officials he dislikes for ‘reviews’ by the federal government, in search of any evidence that could be used to prosecute them.” Further, “his weaponization of law enforcement power for revenge may be most aggressive move of all.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party leadership still seems to be lost in a political wilderness nine months after losing Congress and the presidency. The party now has its lowest rating among voters in 35 years, at 63 percent unfavourability, The Wall Street Journal’s Aaron Zitner reported last month, citing a poll by the paper.

The leadership seems unwilling to engage fully with younger leaders, many of them are on the left, along with a century-old refusal to fully embrace its progressive wing. Coincidentally, both considerations have crystallized in the person of Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the 33-year-old Muslim born in Uganda, a naturalized citizen and democratic socialist who defeated Andrew Cuomo to win the June Democratic primary for New York City mayor. Cuomo, who resigned as New York’s governor after several women accused him of sexual harassment, is running as an independent in the mayoral general election against Mamdani in November and the old guard could endorse him.

That issue dates back to at least the 1920s and Eugene Victor Debs, a staunch labor activist who had been a Democrat in his early days and ran for President five times as the Socialist Party of America candidate. Debs went to prison for his activism, including a 10-year term. In 1920, he won 914,191 or 3.4 percent of the popular vote -while campaigning from his jail cell.

Now, Mamdani, too, is being snubbed. But so is another, stalwart, democratic socialist, 83-year-old Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s Independent senator, who has endorsed Mamdani. Sanders, an admirer of Debs, ran for president as a Democrat in 2016 and 2020, placing second both times.

Sanders has been holding “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies in states loyal to the President, accompanied by yet another democratic socialist, the 35-year-old New York Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez. News reports indicate that large crowds have been attending the meetings. Not all of them may understand what “oligarchy” means but they evidently agree with Sanders’ argument that the country is falling further into the hands of “the billionaire class” to the detriment of everyday working people.

Also, Democrats still have to acknowledge that they helped elect Trump in 2016 and 2024 because of the policies which they implemented – or did not – and the rhetoric of disdain. The president rode the anger among some Americans, especially his Make America Great Again (MAGA) wing of the Republican Party, who have been complaining for decades about being neglected by Washington. Democrats have had several opportunities to win them over and not only failed to do so but, in fact, gave the perception that they did not matter and so were not deserving of the same attention as, say, inner-city residents.

Obama, for instance, stated, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America. There’s not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.” But, during his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said residents of small towns in Pennsylvania, where jobs had disappeared 25 years earlier, had become “bitter” and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

During the 2016 campaign, Clinton stated that “…you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.”

Ed Rogers of the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri commented in 2016, “The Democratic contempt for what used to be salt-of-the-earth, bedrock, middle-class citizens is a matter-of-fact part of today’s political equation. This might sound a little harsh but it is the natural conclusion to draw after analyzing the Democrats’ campaign message over the past few campaign cycles.”

It is unlikely that the Democrats will finally embrace Sanders’ democratic socialist agenda or the “progressive capitalism” or “economic patriotism” which another progressive, California Rep. Ro Khanna, espoused in an interview with Vanity Fair’s Joe Hagan. Khanna, whom Sanders mentored, is also on a road trip promoting his idea of “a kinder, gentler version of Trumpism” that includes “economic prosperity for the heartland.”

But whatever they do, Democrats must get their act together quickly because, judging from various reports, the nation is in danger not so much from the MAGA extremists after Trump leaves the scene as it is from the super-rich. They include the new breed of wannabe autocrats who have emerged from the technology world to hover, like vultures, over the body politic. They believe that their wealth entitles them to rule the United States – and the rest of the world – as they alone see fit.