How one of the worst political mistakes in modern history handed Donald Trump the keys to the White House

The first casualty in a political career is often your self-awareness. That is why when you are heading for the very top in politics you should take care to have someone with you who can be trusted to tell you when it is time to go.

Four years ago, when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, he already looked like a one-term president. I have no idea how he viewed it but many on the liberal left and political centre saw this as the final noble act by someone who already had a long and distinguished career of public service.

A sensible progression would have seen a declaration in good time, that he had done his bit and was ready to leave the stage again. If he was not able to see this for himself, then others should have explained it to him. That lesson has been hard learned today.

Failure of party management

To elect Trump a first time could be seen as an aberration but for him to win a second time – a convicted criminal who tried to overturn a democratic election and incited a violent mob to attack the US Capitol less than four years ago – surely demonstrates a top-to-bottom failure in the US political system.

It is amongst other things a failure of party management for the Democrats. Biden should have been managed off the stage in time for the party to have proper primaries, introducing a new generation of Democratic party politicians to the American public.

Instead, the president clung on to the point where only Kamala Harris could realistically be the nominee. She was left having to campaign as a “change candidate”, trying to define herself as a new face while also defending her government’s record, including both storm clouds on the international stage and the legacy of inflation on the domestic front.

Perhaps in a contested primary Harris would have still won out as the nominee. She would also have been better tested; that is how the system is supposed to operate. Coronations rarely work in a democracy. If you don’t believe me – ask Gordon Brown or Rishi Sunak.

Many targets for blame

Even in a presidential system you still have parties, and parties need to function properly to make politics work. They need internal structures in which people can challenge and speak truth to power, to point out when the emperor has no clothes and raise the alarm when leadership is going dangerously off-track. That is true both in the United States and here in the UK.

In the disaster that is the second election of Donald Trump, there will be many targets for blame, but the failure of the Democratic party to grasp the nettle years ago and actively facilitate a contested succession to President Biden has got to be one of the worst decisions – or indecisions – of modern-day politics.

After all, this is the point of the liberal democracy we are supposed to be defending from the likes of Trump – institutional checks and balances, mechanisms to prevent disaster.

The checks and balances that should have come into play for the Democrats long ago have failed. Now the entire liberal democratic system is going to be tested to the point of failure once again.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland