Nov. 5, 2024 looms large for the "fate of the world."
The Economist published a story in its annual The World Ahead 2024 series (with an illustration of the 45th president's silhouette swallowing most of earth) and tees up next year's election for the White House as pivotal for the nation and indeed the entire world where it will come down to "tens of thousands of voters in just a handful of states."
At home, a second Trump presidency would entitle him to believe he is empowered to rule without bounds.
"Having won back power because of his election-denial in 2020, he would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation," according to the piece. "In pursuing his enemies, Mr. Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice."
The publication writes that voting the former president back into the Oval Office portends drastic results.
Abroad, he will play the wrecking ball by shaking up policies and stirring up chaos, the piece argues.
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But he will also make potential adversaries rest easy.
" China and its friends would rejoice over the evidence that American democracy is dysfunctional" and Russian President Vladimir Putin "would have an incentive to fight on in Ukraine and to pick off former Soviet countries such as Moldova or the Baltic states," according to the piece.
Moreover, a second term for Trump would degrade the country's "moral authority."
Victory would confirm his most destructive instincts about power. His plans would encounter less resistance. And because America will have voted him in while knowing the worst, its moral authority would decline."
It drives home the one critical point: that the "fate of the world" rests on Americans deciding who will lead the free world at ballot box.
And the influence and stature that America has achieved with Trump back at the helm would be dropped, according to the article.
"America would become just another big power."
