Hard for Harris to beat Trump

REPUBLICAN presidential candidate Donald Trump was dead serious, yet he brought out the biggest laugh on the debate stage with Democratic contender Kamala Harris.

During the 90-minute-or-so debate on September 10, Trump confidently declared, after bitterly complaining about illegal immigrants at the borders: “They are invading our country. In Springfied, Ohio, they are eating dogs, cats and even your pets.”

Harris burst out laughing.

But for Trump it wasn’t funny. Prim and proper intellectuals could laugh at him. But he wasn’t there just to debate Harris. He was there to speak to the American voters – a particular kind of voters.

Well, Trump’s “eating dogs, cats and pets” allegation got megastar and cat-lover Taylor Swift so agitated that she swiftly posted full support for Harris, thus helping to counter some of billionaire Elon Musk’s “big name” support for Trump.

Hear this propaganda piece: Trump said that many countries “are sending their criminals to the US so that while those countries are having less crime, we are having more.”

Trump is using two “fear-arousal” instruments – immigration and “America’s security weakness.”

Of Biden and Harris, he said, “They (China and Russia) don’t like you, they don’t respect you as they respect me.”

Trump does not see Harris’s Jamaican father and Indian mother as any reason for celebration, but one for political exploitation. Further, he again pushed the prejudice button by describing her Jamaican father as a “Marxist professor.” So what?

Trump criticised Biden and Harris for being “soft” on Black Lives Matter 2023 “riots,” while she blamed him for the January 6, 2021 protests against US Congress. Such cross-accusations will have different demographic voting reactions.

Among Harris’s big challenges, if she wins, are the complex Gaza and Ukraine wars. No doubt, given campaign financing and political undercurrents, she is yet to make definitive statements on either. Her political integrity will be tested here.

Trump’s vice president candidate JD Vance robustly makes similar racial statements to those of Trump.

Unfortunately, whoever wins, America will remain a sharply divided nation in need of political healing. Trump will not be able to do it.

While she is accused of flip-flopping on a number of policy issues, Harris’s “economic opportunity” and family welfare programmes look like reasonable, rational policies.

But Trump knows that politics is not an intellectual exercise. For him, it is about getting numbers and arousing buried prejudices. He went for it in 2016 and 2020.

So in a large sense, this presidential election is a political war between targeted propaganda and struggling reason. Now, fear is normally a survival instinct. You can be fearful of the deep, or of an earthquake or hurricane.

But to use rumours or propaganda without evidence to cause public fear for a partisan political objective is just malicious and should be called out.

The obstacle to this appeal is that a lot of politics is about disguised lies and propaganda. So can we really blame Trump for exploiting voters who share his prejudices? Such voters helped create Trump.

In US presidential elections, it is the electoral votes that decide. In the 2016 election, Trump won with 304 electoral votes and 46 per cent of the popular vote against Hillary Clinton’s 227 electoral votes and 48 per cent popular vote.

In 2020, Trump lost with 232 electoral votes and 47 per cent of the popular vote against winner Joe Biden’s 306 electoral votes and 51 per cent of the popular vote.

So court indictments, sexual assault charges, fraud charges or not, Trump is still an electoral force to be reckoned with, leaving people to wonder whether Harris can really beat him, never mind her large, waving crowds and million-dollar donations.

Trump understands the underbelly of America’s diversity politics. So he tactfully refers to Harris’s claiming to be “Indian” one day and “turning black” next day, etc. The American media condemned him for this falsehood, except Fox News television – which brings us to another level of this great presidential debate.

For example, MSNBC News ripped into Trump for falsehoods and inflammatory remarks; the station hosts celebrate Harris for her coolness and policies.

On the other hand, Fox News celebrates Trump for having more substance and economic sense. Fox posted the “25 Harris lies” told during the debate.

A lot of this boils down to the “non-committed” voters, especially since recent polls show “a tight race”: Harris 49 per cent, Trump 46 per cent.

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