With just over four days to go for the election, much is at stake for the United States and the world. The numbers are confounding, and the race painfully close. If it’s abortion for Harris, for Trump it’s immigration. Two subjects the Pope is displeased with (as the Pope expressed last month . the former more so than the latter. He exhorted the Catholic faithful to choose the “lesser of two evils.”
While it may seem inarguable that many would want someone prudent helming the White House, voter choices go beyond mere testimonies of competency and sound policies. Donald Trump may be all wack and rubbish to the dispassionate observer sitting afar on the other side of the globe. But to his domestic conservative-leaning audience, he’s a messiah. Somehow he has mastered the art of discerning people’s fears and putting them in sensible*, digestible terms even if it may sound stupid. GDP, growth, figures, indices etc are important in governance but they matter less when it comes to the behavioural influences that make up a voter’s mind. It’s easy to blame the economy’s woes on the people who don’t look like you, even if it is neither rational nor ideal — concepts that matter little to those running the Republican campaign. A quick-fix solution by throwing sand on people’s eyes. These are the classic tricks and manoeuvres every demagogue has up their sleeve.
Trump has the uncanny ability to translate the banal to one that pricks the collective conscience, like in the case of Haitians allegedly eating pets. His simplistic rhetorical style, that could only vie with that of a middle-schooler, void of any turn of phrase, something similar to rambling, IS for all its shortcomings, appealing to voters. It appeals to the average red-neck American who looks at the glitzy Democratic National Conventions with a feeling of derision and envy. He may be a tycoon, but his assurances speak to countless working-class Americans, home-makers, unemployed youth and reflect their deepest concerns.
It would be hard to deny there’s also a tinge of sexism at play here albeit in indiscernible ways since Harris took over. An increasing number of African-Americans, Latinos, even Indian-Americans too have been flocking to the Republican camp.
As much as one may haver on about the economy, what voters irrespective of their education or financial status immediately understand without any subject-specific prerequisites and might have an opinion about are social issues. The age of wokeism has begun receding and people are becoming more conservative in their social outlook. Had this been only a phenomenon observed in boomers it would have been less a cause for concern. But data suggests that young men are moving to the right (while young women are among the most progressive cohorts). A polarisation in worldviews across genders and age-groups await us.
All of which points to why a second Trump presidency is not unthinkable. Harris is also seen as being light on policies and harping on the abortion narrative excessively despite its growing irrelevance for a fair share of the women population. Contrary to conventional thinking, abortion rates have declined since Roe v. Wade in 1971. Nor are all women hinged on the liberal women’s rights outlook. The sneer at ‘childless cat ladies’ has found favour among many middle-aged women in the US, Swifties’ lamentations regardless.
A second Trump homecoming was touted to be dark and dangerous for the future of the country during the start of Harris’ campaign, and given how she had catapulted into fame after the gigantic convention at Chicago, Trump 2.0 seemed like an impossibility. Now the world is looking at the face of the very same darkness and danger that Americans seem to have unabashedly embraced. MAGA may not have seen its time yet.
The Unsaturated Reader 