by Miceál O’Hurley
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Donald J. Trump’s first term of office and his campaign to return to the White House have given the world ample reason to be concerned. Trump’s tendency to engage in rambling rhetoric lacking any semblance of clarity and speaking on every side of every issue until he finds one that resonates with voters are part and parcel of his populist appeal to the hoi polloi. As Americans head to the ballot box today polls show a neck-and-neck race between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, whom, if elected, would be the first female President of the United States, and Donald J. Trump, whom, if elected, would be the only other President since Grover Cleveland to serve 2, non-consecutive terms in office.
Most Americans and observers of US politics understand the choice for American voters to be stark. The politic views and global understanding of each candidate are starkly different, Unsurprisingly, American voters are deeply divided on their choices.
One of the most interesting aspects on that division rests on the educational level of the American voter. Americans with a 4-year college or university degree support Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris 57% to former President Trump at 38%. Voters lacking a 4-year college or university degree support Trump over Harris 52% to 42%. Consequently for Trump, America’s future may rely on his ability to turn-out the vote of the nation’s least-educated voting bloc. He does this by appealing to their sense of frustration for their lot in life, hefting generous amounts of blame of immigrants, political opponents, the media and others who disagree with his policy or exist as vulnerable targets.
Accordingly, the next American President, should it be Trump, will be the product of appealing to the disillusioned by spewing hostile rhetoric and mumbling vague plans rather than projecting considered policies.
This is not to say that a better educated American electorate would result in Americans making better choices when electing their President. Since the founding of the State, fitness to serve as President had primarily been adjudged through the prism of comparisons to legends the likes of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Each of these Presidents had starkly different styles of leadership, management and held disparate political views. Still, Americans historically held them out as models to emulate when considering a candidate’s fitness for office. That era has clearly ended after almost 250-years.
To be fair, Trump understands the American electorate far more so than most give him credit. After all, he constantly boasts being a “High IQ individual“. For years, Trump has pandered to nation’s sense of idealism in economic matters to exploit the idea that if Americans weren’t prospering according to their personal expectations the fault must lie elsewhere and with others. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) mantra harkens back to an ideal that never truly existed, except maybe for the privileged class. The America that Trump touts as a benchmark for Americans to return to was one of low wages, poor housing, limited opportunities for women, minorities and the disadvantaged. Overt racism kept millions of naturally-born Americans from casting a vote and too often saw them hung from trees with locals selling photo-postcards of the lynched victims at roadside petrol stations and shops. This was not the American ideal as the founders intended – or Americans experienced it – unless, that is, if you were white, wealthy and Protestant. It is not inconsequential that older Americans have significantly high negative views of Trump – after all – they lived through this era and know the truth. Nor is it unsurprising that younger voters cling to the appeal of the MAGA movement as their inexperience and ignorance blind them from historical reality.
Consequently, when Trump seeks to relieve a huge voting-bloc of Americans from any personal responsibility for their lot in life by demonising immigrants, in particular non-Caucasian immigrants from Western and Northern Europe, castigating those with social outlooks other than his own, and lashing out at establishment politicians like Harris and the Democratic Party is plays well with the shrinking American middle-class, particularly those lacking a college or university education or stuck in dead-end jobs in America’s ever-growing ‘rust belt’. As Tony Soprano so eloquently put it in his soliloquy in the opening episode of the HBO series, The Sopranos, “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, and I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over”.
Trump knows that sentiment resonates with many Americans. Of course many with that view look to displace any personal or corporate responsibly for their state in life, or the condition of American discourse and democracy. Hence, those who feel most alienated from the American dream and look to blame their government, immigrants, foreigners – anyone but themselves – find solace in Trumpian rhetoric.
It is undeniable, therefore, that the real threat to America is not Trump himself but the American voter.
Americans are already arriving at early voting stations to discharge their franchise and elect their new Chief Executive. Their choices are stark – an institutionalist like Kamala Harris from the Democratic Party or the Republican Party’s candidate, Donald J. Trump, who wants to dismantle the institutional guardrails that safeguarded American democracy, security, defense and economic success since the State’s foundation. For those who feel like Tony Soprano, that they “came in at the end. The best is over”, the idea, if not promise of dismantling American institutions and foundational safeguards, gives ample reason to support Trump. Few Trump supporters have adequately considered what, beyond dissolving America as they know it, might mean for their future and that of their nation.
So it is that the American people are themselves the greatest threat to continuing the legacy of ‘American exceptionalism’ and relative economic stability amidst a world of increasing chaos. The failure of Americans to “look in the mirror” and take stock of themselves to consider why their lives are what they are, and otherwise refrain from embracing simple solutions that appeal to the easy path of blaming others, lies at the heart of what ails America. Wasn’t it Socrates that said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”? If Trump is elected, the life of any remnant of American democracy and its Republic may disappear in much the same way as Trump has done away with a recognisable Republican Party.
The fault is not Trump’s. He is the by-product of political and social sloth. Still, Harris and the Democrats seem to have lost their way as well. The Democratic Party has ceased to appeal to large swaths of its political base and offer a genuine and credible alternative to confront the challenges Americans face or encourage the nation to reach its full potential. So much effort has been spent in trying to appeal to disenfranchised segments of the population that the party has alienated their once stalwart base. When Democrat John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, he did so by challenging workers to be more productive in order to obtain better pay and benefits; he provoked the imagination of millions with his dream to “put a man on the moon in this decade” and confront racial discrimination while seeking to extend the franchise to those who were effectively barred from civic participation because of ‘Jim Crow’ laws; he encouraged educational advancement; created volunteer opportunities in underserved areas at home and abroad and continued the previous administration’s investment in infrastructure and more. Harris, by contrast, has had difficulty in distancing herself from the politics of President Joe Biden and an America unhappy with the state of the American dream – and this includes a majority of Democrats.
Today, labour union members increasingly vote with Trump and the Republican Party. Black Americans, Latinos and other Americans of diverse racial backgrounds no longer feel the Democratic Party to which they once largely adhered represents their interests. Consequently, despite Trump’s Madison Square Garden celebration which included outlandish insults to Latinos by calling Puerto Rico a “floating garbage pile”; the overt the macho-love-fest railing against minorities; and alienating women by proclaiming, “I’ll protect you whether you like it or not”, these voters are still not flocking to the Democratic standard as one might expect. At its core, Trump voters don’t support him because he has their interest at heart. They support him because he is a clear alternative to the establishment and institutional politics which has left them disaffected.
If America elects Trump it will undoubtedly hurl the nation into the path of an ever-growing train-wreck of domestic and international affairs. And, if by chance Harris is elected, it will mostly likely be by the thinnest of margins thus making her chances of healing a divided nation as challenging as that which confronted Lincoln at the end of the U.S. civil war – and we all know how that has worked out for an America which is still grappling with its ills over 150-years later.
In the final analysis, Americans must engage in self-reflection, individually and corporately, to decide if they will be worthy heirs of the Republic which was founded for their benefit. It might be worth recalling the lesson of American history when the delegates of the Continental Congress emerged from the consideration and vote on the issue of independence. Elizabeth Willing Powel’s asked of Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a Republic or a Monarchy”? Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it”.
This election may well determine if America can keep their Republic or be doomed to follow in the footsteps of another republic, Rome, who gradually fell into disarray and decay due to corruption, sloth and political indifference.
