Kamala Harris was, to my mind, a clear winner of the first debate between herself and Donald Trump. As things stand, however, I reckon that Trump must be still regarded as the favourite to win a majority of the state electoral college votes, and thus become the next president. I hope I am wrong, but on the evidence as I see it, including regular tasting of a fair sample of American perspectives, this is an election still capable of serious surprises.
This is not as I would prefer it, but a good many people eager to see their prejudices satisfied are operating with tunnel vision or confirmation bias. They interpret every piece of news that is good from Harris’s point of view as a sign that America has come to its senses. They see every fresh verbal atrocity, or outrageous statement by Trump as a sure sign that everyone is now laughing at him, and that his power and pretensions have been exploded. By and large the Australian media is playing it straight, which is to say giving the market what it wants. It is by no means certain that Australians are being told what they need.
Debates, and advertising, and sometimes even rallies, can be very important in presidential elections. They can persuade voters to change sides. They can persuade people initially uninclined to vote to go to the polling booth on election day feeling that supporting their chosen candidate will make a difference. (After a lacklustre debate, of course, the number of voters who decide not to bother can increase – perhaps because no candidate is thought worthy a trip down to the polling booth, getting the business from officials and undergoing the pet eating test.)
But most of those likely to vote have long made up their minds and are unlikely to change them based on the opinion of commentators about who was the more impressive performer at a fairly artificial set-piece debate. One or both of the debaters may have come up with a memorable line, and one or the other, or both, may have been less impressive in dealing with a campaign issue. But all Americans have been hearing ceaseless ads in all media about the candidates for more than six months. They know both the best things that can be said about the people they are inclined to favour, and absolutely the worst about them as well.
The importance of rallies and advertising, and debates on television is in influencing the minds of those who want to vote, but have not decided whom they favour, or, more importantly, need persuasion about wanting to vote, and about who they want. The electorate is full of people who don’t care who wins, figuring that it will not make much difference to their lives. Indeed, just the sort of people who need to be nudged hard to go vote are least likely to watch a television debate.
It also contains people who need to be reminded that they have a stake in the outcome, one that will affect their future. Thus, Democrats are warning interest groups and the general working class that the Republicans, if taken at their word, mean to seriously reduce federal spending on health care, education and the social security system. Republicans are warning that voting Democrat means higher taxes for almost everyone in the top 40% of income levels.
The election is supposed to be about America’s decline into being not great anymore
The Republican Party is, at the moment, very much the party of the candidate, and he is pitching himself both as the leader for the working man (much less so the working woman), and the candidate of old-fashioned conservative moral values, of the sort he so richly encapsulates. He is a natural polariser, who campaigns rather more against things (immigrants, the sneers of liberals and insiders in politics) and is less attached to specific detailed policies than to feelings and opinions about whose fault it is that the United States is a nation in economic, social and cultural decline. It is still a defence, manufacturing and technological powerhouse, and is still providing unimaginable wealth for some Americans. But he plays on the uneasy feeling — indeed the uneasy fact — among most Americans that they are not enjoying that prosperity, and that standards of living, economic security, and perhaps even physical security are in decline.
How much the sort of ideology that Trump represents — particularly with open intentions about dismantling the state — is responsible for that decline is for another time. So is the argument that the very policies that Trump actually implements (stripping programs and controls over abuse of power) will make core Trump constituencies the biggest losers. What’s important, it seems, is that Trump has articulated the feeling, and that confidence, self-belief and optimism — so sadly lacking under the Biden tyranny — among his core followers can get the economy and the society back on the right track.
Democrats seem somewhat embarrassed to campaign about who made America not great anymore. They share the guilt, not least about the export of jobs abroad. Nonetheless, the installation of Harris has given them an opportunity to remake a flagging campaign, and an enormous budget to push her message.
It is quite clear that the faith is in Trump, rather than any particular form of economic theory, other than, vaguely, smaller government. Under Trump, the Republican Party cannot be regarded as the party of business and individualism, focused on creating the conditions under which entrepreneurs will invest, including in new jobs, and their success will cause economic growth with the wealth shared around.
Trump has been more the speculator than the investor, and openly looks far more to very big business, including natural monopolies, for his campaign finances. It can no more be said that he encapsulates the commercial or community ethos or values of the entrepreneurial class than he does their moral values and traditions. For all of that, however, he has seemed to be able to have the natural allegiance of the middle class, even as he has created fresh constituencies among working Americans, including, improbably, among black voters, and among Latinos. He has been conspicuously less successful in attracting support from women and from those with college degrees.
A popular majority assured, but the electoral college system is on a knife edge
Barring catastrophes, Kamala Harris can be expected to poll at least five million more votes than Trump. But that does not give her the election. The question is whether she can win a majority of the Electoral College votes, which are allocated to the states according to the numbers of districts of the House of Representatives, plus two for the senators each state has.
The electoral college system is undemocratic. It can produce results by which one side (in recent times invariably the Democrats) wins a majority of the votes, but loses the presidential election because the combination of EC votes for the minority candidate exceeds the EC votes achieved by the candidate with majority support. This is why Trump was so keen to get political officials to “adjust” results or “find” fresh votes before the 2020 result was announced.
Candidates without popular majorities have become president by winning (sometimes with the help of deeply partisan courts) a majority of EC votes. This happened in 2000 when the Supreme Court ruled batches of votes overwhelmingly Democrat invalid, and declared that the minority candidate, George W. Bush had won the state, plus an overall majority of the national EC vote. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won an absolute majority of votes, but Trump’s strategy saw him win a majority of the EC. This was also Trump’s strategy in 2020, but Joe Biden narrowly won an absolute majority of EC votes, even after unsuccessful Trump shenanigans. Trump refused to accept that he had been beaten fair and square, though he was unable to demonstrate electoral fraud.
(Australians cannot feel too superior about the undemocratic nature of the electoral college. We borrowed from the American example with our constitution. First, like the US, each state has the same number of senators, though some states are more than 10 times the size of others. Second, less populous original states have a minimum five members of the lower house, meaning that Tasmanian MPs represent many fewer voters than MPs in NSW and other states. The system is supposed to stop small states being dominated by big states such as Victoria and NSW.)
Although Harris has, at the moment, a narrow lead over Trump in total votes, her position is not so strong at the electoral college level. Some of the states appear to be swinging back towards a narrow Trump victory. Trump has virtually abandoned campaigning in states he expects to win, and in states he knows he can’t win. All of his focus in on the half-dozen states which are very close.
In general terms, Harris will win if she can achieve big voter turnouts at, or close to, record levels. This involves organising transport and numbers, and in persuading supporters to come. Getting the vote out turns on organisation and persuasion. It had become clear that Biden, once an expert in getting out the vote, was failing to inspire his side. Harris has shown an ability to do just that, but the evidence suggests that she is not taking votes away from Trump so much as getting alienated or apathetic voters who are usual Democrat voters when they can be bothered to vote at all. Her best chance may be in bringing out higher numbers of women, since polls suggest abortion is the main issue for them.
There is definitely a rump of once-Republican, perhaps even once-Trump voters, who are now disgusted by Trump, whether because of his record, his criminal convictions, the 6 January 2021 insurrection, or new actions or policies. Some once in his corner because they were motivated by his old actions against abortion (primarily stacking the Supreme Court) are now bitterly disappointed by his equivocations on national abortion bans. Partisan Christians, including Catholic leaders, have been well disposed to the Republicans on moral grounds, and completely unconcerned by the want of personal example on morals shown by Trump. But they are unlikely to move to Harris, who makes no bones that she is committed to abortion on demand. Instead, those who are disappointed enough will sit the election out, refusing to lift a finger to help Trump. Some, of course, will vote for Trump through gritted teeth.
We do not see Trump as Americans do
Australians are as interested in the election as Americans. They may end up with as much stake in the outcome, though they will not have a vote until Anthony Albanese, or Peter Dutton, has successfully petitioned for statehood, probably during the first submarine delivery celebrations in 2095. Most Australians see American politics as bizarre, and regard Donald Trump as being a crook, a fraud and a dangerous narcissist. They cannot understand his support, especially among the working class, nor the way in which Trump sects have succumbed to conspiracy theories, dreams of authoritarian, frankly fascist government and fears of threats to the survival of the white race. Trump’s personality has done more to shake Australian perceptions of the US than any other factor. Win or lose, there will be social convulsions, with some of his supporters unlikely to accept they have lost the “game”. American presidents have come and gone, but most over the past 120 years have been predictable and fairly similar to their predecessors. Surviving another term of the would-be one, or his tantrums if he loses, may bring the union as we know it to an end.
The American political landscape is so polarised that Democrats and Republicans scarcely speak the same language. They do not read the same media, do not any longer share much the same view of either the permanent or the ephemeral facts affecting their citizenship and their social and economic situation. They are far more affected by social media than by the declining newspapers or television.
There are strong social divides in Australia – some, including over immigration, being aggravated by Peter Dutton. But these differences are not of the order of those in the US. The American effect, and the smorgasbord of news, analysis and passionate conviction has not increased the sum of knowledge in the US, nor wisdom and its degree of civilisation. Even less has it contributed to social stability or peace, order and good government.
Most Australians, even those of a disposition to prefer a Trump, are not being assailed by the Trump view of the world. They casually see Trump material, but it’s not aimed at us. They may see perspectives such as in the rants of some reporters and many commentators from The Australian, or Sky News. But both the political and economic class mostly belong in a different, more mainstream, conversation.
The Murdoch family may aspire to set the national agenda, with a script borrowing from the material generated by the family’s enthusiastic embrace of Trumpism in the US. Even Labor politicians may pander to them, but it is far from clear that they have the local influence they claim. The irony may be that the more they are indulged, the more likely that Australia will end up with an atomised political environment on the Trump model.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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