Harris closed her campaign with a rally in Philadelphia on Nov 4. —Reuters
I WOULD like to go on record predicting a victory for Kamala Harris in the US presidential elections.
Polling predictions seem to still be within the margin of error and perhaps I’ve been fooled by an excess of left-wing propaganda, but I stand by my call.
I posit three main reasons for this prediction: Trump’s age and (lack of) mental acuity; how women will vote; and the internal Republican revolt against Trump. I would argue that each of these factors are unprecedented, with regards to American political history.
Before jumping into these three factors, it is worth stating that the potential for error with regards to a prediction is especially noteworthy given how many were shocked when Donald Trump first won the presidency in 2016.
This victory caught many by surprise, including his opponent Hillary Clinton – who many in retrospect considered overconfident. She probably simply could not believe in her heart of heart that this reality TV buffoon actually posed a real threat.
I think it was Pete Buttigieg who quoted a friend of his remarking: “We made the mistake of taking Trump literally, when we should have taken him seriously.”
Clinton’s underestimation of Trump may have caused her that election. Is Harris making the same mistake?
One oft quoted example of Clinton’s overconfidence was the fact that she never even campaigned in the swing state of Wisconsin.
In contrast, Harris has been on the campaign trail relentlessly. She has been especially persistent and tenacious in all the swing states, keeping to a gruelling schedule.
She has even made numerous campaign stops in states that many would even consider not in play, such as Florida and Texas.
Harris also seems to have taken a decidedly different strategy for her campaign as compared to Clinton, especially in terms of how she handles questions of identity and gender.
Long story short, she seems to have learned from many of Clinton’s mistakes, and is indeed taking Trump seriously, in terms of not underestimating him as an opponent.
The rest of America however, may have some trouble taking Trump seriously, in a different sense – bringing us to the first of the three factors identified above.
Trump was 70 when he first won the presidency, and is now 78. Joe Biden is 81 now, and 77 when he ran for President. Trump is now the oldest person to stand for president in America.
For both men, there seems to have been significant and noticeable ageing since they first ran for president – especially in terms of cognitive abilities and mental acuity. The key word here is perhaps “noticeable”.
When Trump first ran in 2016, he was a fresh, new outsider running against a candidate that was associated with the establishment. He brought a novel brand of campaigning with some shock and awe elements that had basically never been seen before in American politics.
In my view, things that are fresh, new, and exciting always have an edge when it comes to political campaigns - especially when it is up against something old.
Trump had this exact advantage when he was still running against Biden, who was appearing to become more and more decrepit before our very eyes.
When the candidate switched from Biden to Harris however, suddenly it was Trump who looked like the bumbling old fool - some weird old guy who kept muttering the same old stale stories everyone had heard a hundred times before.
Where once might have stood a mighty lion, there now only remained a sickly, frail old cat.
In my 2016 naivete, I thought Trump was a goner for sure when the tape was released where Trump talked about how he would just “grab women by the p*ssy”.
Since then, I’ve developed my own theories on what an electorate will and will not tolerate.
My feeling is that perhaps on a subconscious level, voters are willing to “forgive” all kinds of behaviour that might otherwise be considered socially or even politically unacceptable – as long as it conveys a sense of “strength.”
The word “strength” here may perhaps also be called “old fashioned notions of masculine strength”. Perhaps Trump’s record with women subconsciously resonated with latent elements of male sexual aggression.
A similar principle applies to all the criticism about Trump being a strongman, a dictator, and a threat. Part of our brains may process these as “bad”, but other parts may process them as “dangerous, but in a good way”. Or again, old fashioned notions of masculine strength.
I’m not saying these things make Trump strong. I am saying that this type of behaviour can be subconsciously translated to many voters as signalling a kind of “strength” that resonates with some part of them.
From the perspective of political communications, I thus would never advise focusing on this line of attack against Trump.
Instead, I would focus on one element that I think voters truly cannot tolerate or forgive in a potential leader: weakness and frailty.
The most effective attacks against Trump have painted him as a weak, rambling old man, who is yapping incoherently about sharks and electric batteries – a man who wears too much makeup, and cannot distinguish between his ex-wife and rape victim in a photograph.
I don’t think Trump will lose because he spread lies about immigrants. I think he will lose because the particular lies he chooses to spread make him sound like a crazy old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn.
There is an oft quoted line about how if your grandpa talked and acted like this, you would take away his car keys, to prevent him from hurting himself or others.
The data suggests that voters can “forgive” a strongman dictator, but they cannot forgive a senile old person spouting nonsense.
The second major factor that will likely bring Harris to victory is the women’s vote.
Trump’s misogyny is the stuff of legend; but that didn’t tank him among women as badly in 2016.
In 2024 though, on top of all the vanilla misogyny, we now have the overturning of the Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling. The slew of abortion bans that followed in various states have created a political uprising that has not been seen in quite some time.
One key issue here is that where abortion is concerned, a line was crossed - from ideology to people’s very lives. This issue became, in the most literal sense imaginable, a matter of life and death.
This was no longer an argument in the abstract that was merely about people’s beliefs. It was about pregnant women dying in parking lots because they could not access the medical care they needed – right there, in the most powerful country in the world.
The third unprecedented factor we are seeing in this election is the internal revolt among Republicans.
I would say nowhere in the entire history of America, has a nominee for president been denounced by so many within his own party.
Trump has managed to alienate and make enemies of scores of former and even present Republican elected officials. He has been denounced by countless members of his cabinet and administration.
Most importantly, normal everyday voters who have identified as Republicans their whole lives have come out publicly to say that for the first time ever, they are going to vote for a Democrat, because of how much they just cannot stand Donald Trump.
We’ve seen Republicans vote for Democrats before, and we’ve seen Democrats vote for Republicans before; but I’m quite sure we’ve never seen anything remotely resembling such a massive, public, and organised “Republicans for Harris” type of movement ever before.
All in all, these factors persuade me that it’s looking good for Harris. I may be wrong, and who knows what will happen on election day, but I do think we are finally going to see a strong, black woman shatter America’s last glass ceiling, and turn the page on America’s era of that strange, sad, orange clown.
Nathaniel Tan is a strategic communications consultant who works with Projek #BangsaMalaysia. He can be reached at nat@engage.my. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
The race is on: Residents of Dixville Notch in New Hampshire cast their ballots at midnight, marking the first votes in the US election. — AFP
