Tuesday 5 November 2024. The date has been staring us in the eye since almost two years ago it became clear that Donald Trump was still not politically dead and buried, but staggered back into the manege. And announced that he was a candidate.
It was only days after he had been defined as an American for the second time history. As done, as past. Candidates for the mid-term elections in November 2022 who had danced too closely with the former president were severely punished by the voters. The right-wing forces in the states and in Washington were rejected at the polls. People had probably had enough of lies about the election results in 2020, enough of attacks on women’s rights. Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, and now he had lost again.
Even the Trump-sympathizing Wall Street Journal was merciless: “Trump is the Republican party’s biggest loser − he has now flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022”. He had failed in three elections and the uprising on 6 January. If you add that the guy got fewer votes even when he won against Hillary Clinton in 2016, it was the picture of a political loser. But Donald J. Trump may still have the last laugh. And the best.
We are facing more of a culture war than a presidential election
It’s even likely. Because when the fateful presidential election is now only a few days away, he is the one who wins. Opposing candidate Kamala Harris’ advantage in the summer has slowly turned in Trump’s favor. So-called US experts, commentators and number crunchers now consider Trump the favorite to become the next US president. The legend Nate Silvers Gut feeling is Trump.
What is the loser Trump succeeding in now? He is obviously weaker both mentally and physically than he was in 2016. But he is even more shameless, and an expert at underpinning the masses’ experience that everything was better before. It doesn’t matter what the numbers – the facts – say about the economy the voters live their lives in, if at all feeling that things have become much worse. You deserve betterTrump tells people in his own way. Who wouldn’t agree with that? Who in the US, who in any modern country, would say they feel valued enough and shouldn’t be better off?
He fishes like no one else can in troubled seas, and he manages, like demagogues before him, to correct the fact that people are not as well off as they think they deserve courage “the others”. He points to his political opponents, President Biden, Harris and the Democrats. And he points to immigrants, as the source of the crime and violence that everyone naturally fears. Just a week before the election, he promised as an election campaigner to deport 11 million of them. Selfishness, racism and fear work. The message works in the US, it does in Norway. And it resonates around every lunch table in a whole world that fears the future and cultivates the past.
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Not since the Civil War in the 1860s has the United States been more divided. It is therefore more of a culture war than a presidential election before us. Before, leaders could win the entire United States. When Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, he won 49 out of 50 states. Richard Nixon did the same in 1972, while Franklin D. Roosevelt won 46 out of 48 states in 1936. All the states were, in principle, swing states. In 2008, Barack Obama managed to win Indiana and Virginia, states where the Democrats had not had a majority in 44 years. In 2020, there were 13 states where the outcome was not given. Now there are only seven states up for grabs: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The other 43 states are either red or blue, decided without an election campaign. And the number of undecided voters is only a few percent. The United States is cemented in two camps. In an us and a them. And the chasm between is only getting deeper by the hour.
This has become a universe where the best argument no longer wins. Which political clan or culture you belong to determines your vote. The American two-party system is about to threaten the future of the republic. Still, it could be that the few voters who have not yet made up their minds will be decisive in what looks set to be the smoothest presidential election ever.
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Therefore, these last days with the circus could be absolutely decisive. How does it turn out when at a Trump event people joke about Puerto Rico as an island of garbage, or that Kamala Harris calls Trump a fascist? It is certainly not good that a visibly aged Joe Biden takes a gamble and counters by calling Trump’s supporters “rubbish”. Trump responds by presenting himself as garbage for the press. This is the tone of the world’s most important democracy on the run-up side.
Is it good for Harris that Trump dominates the headlines, that he is the one being talked about, that he is leading in the polls, so that it mobilizes the Democrats? Or does it fire up Trump’s followers so he can stay ahead? Who wins from chaos and a historic rhetorical low?
“That’s why Kamala wins” is written at the very top of this text. It is of course just spray. It’s wishful thinking. The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain. It is so smooth that no theories are convincing, no numerical models are credible. But I put my faith in this: More women than men vote in the United States. The abortion issue mobilizes. There are many new voters, young people, who do not want 78-year-old Trump and whom the pollsters are unable to capture and weight in the models. The Democrats are better organised, and must be more skilled at campaigning at the grassroots level. It is also a point that the majority in five of the seven swing states only two years ago wanted to be led by a governor from the Democrats. And finally, common sense dictates that any sober, thinking person understands that Donald Trump – a man who has opposed the peaceful transfer of power – is not fit for the job.
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The cliché is now becoming true: Every single vote can really count when the future of the United States is decided in a handful of states. That’s how smooth it is. It’s also terrifying. Because the longer it takes – last time it took four days it is expected to take longer now with a record number of advance votes – and the smaller the majority of votes, the harder it can be to accept defeat. It is not election night that becomes nerve-wracking, but the days of waiting. With grumbling, speculation and pressure building up. Trump has done everything in his power to undermine confidence in the electoral system and respect for the result.
In five of the seven swing states, the governor is therefore from the Democrats “the others”. Should Harris win, there will therefore be ample grounds for cultivating conspiracy theories, for crying out about injustice and a stolen election. And take charging grip.