After the debates

The last presidential debate in the US was won by Hillary Clinton like the two previous encounters. However, Donald Trump represented the elephant in the room, trampling whatever decency was left in this overheated presidential campaign. He added more acrimony and slander rather than focusing on issues.

Trump made a shocking, though not unexpected, remark by asserting that he might not accept the election result. That has raised the prospect of an unprecedented scenario on November 8, by the time families across the US sit down for supper. With the first exit polls of the 2016 presidential election showing Trump to be losing, but him rejecting the outcome saying that the election was rigged against him all along.

Trump may have plans to press on charges of rigging if he loses. According to him, the establishment and the media are behind the conspiracy to steal the election from him. “Millions of ineligible voters are being registered”, he pretended. A member of his inner circle, Roger Stone, has warned of “widespread civil disobedience” if Trump loses the election. Some of Trump’s followers are plotting to engage in voter intimidation on Election Day, saying they will be right up behind suspicious-looking voters.

This has brought back memories of the 19th century practice of white people intimidating non-white Americans to keep them away from the ballot box. If Trump’s militants indeed try to obstruct the polling that would amount to reversing the progress made in race relations in the past 150 years. The aggravating factor would be that the notion of ‘non-white threat’ now encompasses the Latinos and other latter-day immigrants.

The epitome of non-whites gaining broad acceptability was reached with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 as the first African-American US president. Eight years of his rule is hardly a failure when compared to the performance of his predecessor, George W Bush. But it was the straw that broke the back of white supremacists like Trump and made them realise that power was slipping from their hands.

Viewed in this context, Trump’s foray into politics represents the determination by old America that the Democrats should not get away with a third term and that too with a woman as president. The venom comes out clearly in Trump’s characterisation of Clinton as ‘such a nasty woman’ who should better be in jail.

It was striking to see closely the people who climbed on stage after the debate ended. Trump was surrounded by white people while a mixture of races was seen on Clinton’s side. The dice is thrown. The Trump candidacy is a daring attempt to revive white supremacy while Clinton represents the America of today, a rainbow of races, ethnicities and faiths.

Trump and his followers are in a race against time. Overall, his anti-immigrant stance, and his racist and misogynistic tirades have turned away many leading Republicans with some openly announcing support for Clinton instead.

Trump’s claims to be caring for the blue-collar workers whose jobs have been ‘stolen’ by Mexico and China sound hollow when all his tax plans are designed to serve the wealthy. While issuing warnings to turn the tide of globalisation and scrapping trade deals like Nafta, he conveniently forgets that the whole project was a brainchild of the West to let everybody else sweat to produce cheap goods, primarily to fill the coffers of large multinationals and trading houses.

Then came the realisation that globalisation had led to massive layouts in the West as industries were relocated to the so-called emerging markets. This was just another example of the West, notably the US, launching global policies without thinking through the long-term consequences. For instance, Trump must answer as to who rakes a twenty dollar profit on a shirt bought from a developing country for ten dollars?

Clinton is a confirmed loyalist of Corporate America but promises to spare some crumbs for the low income groups. While Trump has his head in the air about war and peace on a global level, while Hillary actually seems to relish the role of a warrior princess. Whether she brings peace to Iraq and Syria by intensifying wars remains to be seen.

In so many ways, Trump’s candidacy is a caricature of the traditional contest where the two major parties run their campaign on the virtues of their manifesto and weaknesses of track record of the adversary. Trump crash landed in the Republican arena without a day’s experience in public office. His boastful remarks about paying no federal income tax is anathema in a country that prides itself in recovering taxes from Americans including those residing and working abroad.

Hillary has a long record of public service that Donald likes to dismiss, passing immediately to accusations and innuendo, hissing and narrowing his eyes in a confrontational, rather aggressive mien. All that has not gone down well with the undecided voters – who are the main target of the presidential debates.

Despite so many negative points, Trump has managed to retain his core support. The gap between the two contenders in the latest opinion polls of voter intentions is around seven percent which is not insurmountable. The pundits are trying to fathom whether or not Trump can make enough progress to bridge this gap and emerge as an upset winner on November 8. An election is won decisively only on election day.

Email: saeed.saeedk@gmail.com