Trump's victory will breathe new energy into the most reactionary alt-right around the world, including Poland. The Republican's success will revitalize PiS, demoralized by successive defeats and Kaczynski's leadership crisis, giving the party hope of putting up a fight in the presidential elections.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
It seemed that in 2024 the choice between Trump - running with a message that is extremely radical even for this politician - and any elementarily competent competitor should be obvious. As it turned out, it wasn't. Trump won, achieving better results than four years ago, including in states considered bastions of the Democrats. There are many indications that he will not only win a majority in the electoral college, but will also win the popular vote - something the Republican candidate has managed only once since 1988, in 2004, when George W. Bush defeated John F. Kerry. The Republicans will regain control of the Senate, and will likely retain control of the House of Representatives as well.
What happened? Democrats will be debating the issue for a long time. Several theories are already emerging in the public space. The defeat of Harris has been blamed on the sexism and racism of the American public, the polarization of the electorate around cultural issues and factors such as gender and education, the Democrats' ignoring of the topic of migration and high prices, their inability to defend the economic achievements of Biden's presidency, Harris' excessive shift to the left, but also too strong a course to the center, the outgoing administration's stance on Gaza, Elon Musk, the workings of social media, the Democrats' campaign's focus on attacking Trump rather than presenting their own positive proposals, Biden's decision to run for a second time, Kamala Harris' lack of charisma.
Some of these explanations contradict each other, none of them entirely explains Trump's victory, although there may be some grain of truth in each of them. But before we delve into analysis about how we got into this situation, it's worth considering what it means. And it means, simply and briefly, that things are not good. Trump's second victory creates a very unfavorable political conjuncture: for the United States, Europe, Ukraine, Poland, the world.
Fatal news for Ukraine
Trump's success is primarily bad news for Ukraine. Even before the Republican's victory, Ukraine was in a very difficult situation, now it may be put against the wall. We don't know what Trump's decisions will be, how seriously the Republican took his assurances that he would end the war in 24 hours. However, it cannot be ruled out that Ukraine will simply be blackmailed by Trump into accepting peace on Russia's terms in 24 hours.
Future Vice President J.D. Vance has even outlined a plan for what such a peace would look like. Ukraine comes to terms with the de facto loss of Crimea and Donbas, and a demilitarized zone is created between the areas it and Russia control. In exchange for a security guarantee, Ukraine is neutralized and left permanently outside NATO and similar alliances.
This would be a fatal end to the war for Ukraine. The Ukrainians would not only have to accept the loss of territory, but would also lose the right to freely form alliances. Such an end to the war would radically strengthen Putin and his regime internally. It would give Putin's Russia time to regroup its forces and launch another offensive in a few years' time - possibly directed against one of the countries on NATO's eastern flank.
Time for a strategic awakening of Europe
Especially since we don't know what the US approach to the Alliance will look like in Trump's second term. In the worst-case scenario, Europe will face a rapid retraction of the US security umbrella and a concentration of US attention in the Indo-Pacific.
While even with Trump this is not the most likely scenario, it is very possible that the new president will play the countries of Europe against each other, offering American security as a bargaining chip, treating it as a luxury service available only to the countries that get along best with the president. Fortunately, in Poland today we have a government that is unlikely to be played off in this way by Trump - unlike the Law and Justice governments, which would enthusiastically engage in such a game of European division.
Trump's second victory should be an alarm bell for Europe. Europe must start taking more responsibility for its own security. Negotiate with Trump for the slowest and most predictable reduction of American involvement in our continent's security, so that it has time to build up its own defense capabilities.
Especially since Trump's presidency could mean even more turbulent times than the last two years. Trump boasted in the campaign that no wars have broken out in the world during his reign, but a second term for a Republican may look very different. The Biden administration's policies toward Israel deserved criticism - but Trump's will be even worse. Netanyahu will gain a completely free hand starting in January, which could end up escalating the conflict in the Middle East even further. We also do not know how "hot" the Sino-American rivalry may become in the context of Trump's second term.
The American left is in for some tough times
Trump's victory also means a massive political problem for the American left for two reasons. First, it is returning to the situation of 2016-2020. Instead of fighting to implement progressive, equality solutions within the broad Democratic coalition, it will now have to fight within it to stop Trump's most destructive drives.
And Trump's second term looks really dangerous in this regard. Project 2025 includes a plan to remove as many systemic fuses limiting the president's power as possible. Musk and other technomillionaires dream of a radical Javier Millei-style libertarian revolution that slims down the state. Trump wants to use the state to take revenge on his opponents. Allied with him, the reactionary, anti-liberal right, led by J.D. Vance, wants to use power to impose conservative values on citizens - especially female citizens - that are rejected by the majority. In a worst-case scenario, Washington will become a combination of Milea's Beunos Aires and Orbán's Budapest - and the left will have no choice but to fight together with a very broad coalition, including even neo-conservatives from the Bush jr. administration, to prevent this black scenario from coming true.
Second, as Tomasz Markiewka has already written about, there are many indications that theleft will be blamed for Harris' defeat. The Biden administration was the most left-wing, most friendly to organized labor and the left wing of the party since that of Lyndon B. Johnson. Soon there will be claims that Harris lost because the Democrats moved too far from the center.
These voices will be reinforced by Harris' defeat in Pennsylvania. Even before the election, voices were flowing from the right side of the party that Harris had made a mistake by choosing Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate, rather than popular Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Shapiro represented the more centrist wing of the party, and was also difficult for the party's progressive wing to accept because of his stance on the Middle East conflict. Soon we will hear many voices saying: "if Kamala had not capitulated to the radical left, we would have won this."
The shock of Trump's first victory created a favorable conjuncture for the progressive wing of the Democrats, such important figures for the Democrats as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in Trump's first midterm election. It is possible that Trump's second victory will have the opposite effect - it will shift Democrats to the right, leaving less and less room in the party for the progressive wing.
Weather for Chernarus
Instead, Trump's victory will breathe new energy into the most reactionary alt-right around the world. Including in Poland. The Republican's success will revitalize the PiS, demoralized by successive defeats and Kaczynski's leadership crisis, giving the party hope of putting up a fight in the presidential elections.
Trump's victory will also strengthen the most radical forces in PiS. In other words, on Wednesday morning we woke up much closer to the Czarnek 2025 scenario. On the other hand, if Trump begins his time in office by imposing a peace on Ukraine that Poles will perceive as posing a threat to our security as well, an overly "Trumpian" candidate could also hurt PiS's chances.
Certainly, Trump in the White House and the associated increase in global uncertainty will make Polish politics even more focused on security issues. Which increases Sikorski's chances of being nominated by KO.
This is also bad news for the left in Poland. The Left today is unlikely to have a candidate or candidate capable of presenting a competent and leftist vision of security policy in a presidential campaign. Focusing the discussion on security will naturally relegate important issues for the Left to the background.
Bottom line: after the third decade of the 21st century began with a pandemic and war in Ukraine, it seemed that things couldn't get any worse. It turns out that as we enter the second half of the decade, looking back at the first, we can still say "it was better already."
