Can Harris stop Trump?

Hardly. It’s difficult, I tell you.

“We will close the border on the first day. We will bring down prices. We will make America great again. She was the border czar. She didn’t do the job. She left our borders wide open. Kamala, you’re fired”, said Donald J. Trump at a rally in Georgia, last week.

Trump, the United States of America’s President from 2016 to 2020, appears to have gained momentum since his Democratic challenger, sitting Vice President, Kamala Harris, plateaued in the opinion polls. Harris replaced President Joe Biden unchallenged as the Democratic presidential nominee in this year’s election after his party had determined that he was not up to the job beyond January 2025. In withdrawing from the race after a disastrous debate against Trump in August, Biden had graciously endorsed his deputy.

Harris easily clinched the nomination, united the party behind her and chose Tim Walz, the Governor of Minnesota, as her running mate, all without rancour. Things were going well. In no time, Harris was able to rekindle interest in the Democratic ticket, branding her historic campaign as one of joy.

Party enthusiasm returned and hopes of beating Donald Trump by a younger person enveloped the Democratic Party. Opinion polls immediately put Harris ahead of Trump all across America and in the swing states as voters who had hitherto deserted Biden began to return home. This was the case up to and even after Labour Day. But since this October, Trump has appeared to have closed the gap and he and Harris have been running neck and neck with some polls even suggesting that he has taken a small lead.

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Issues 

The most important issues in the November 5, 2024 presidential election in America are the economy, inflation, immigration, abortion, protection of democracy, crime, etc. in that order. According to the opinion polls, more voters trust Trump to handle the economy better, rein in inflation and sort out the immigration crisis bedeviling America.

During the only debate between them hosted by the ABC in Philadelphia in September, Harris had mocked Trump as someone with a silver spoon in his mouth who declared “six bankruptcies’ despite being “handed over $400 million” by his father. The vice president said she was going to create an opportunity economy that would raise the standard of living for the middle class away from Trump’s tariff regime that would cost them another $4,000 a year per family.  Harris accused Trump of having appointed the Supreme Court judges who overturned the Roe versus Wade legislation which now criminalises abortion across America.

When it came to immigration, Trump accused the Biden-Harris administration of having left the borders open and allowing “these millions and millions of people to come into our country.” Harris pushed back by saying Trump would have to bear responsibility for torpedoing a bi-partisan immigration bill in Congress which would have addressed the issue, adding that the former president sabotaged the bill to enable him to make it a talking point in his 2024 campaign.

During the debate, Harris also taunted Trump as someone deserted and condemned by his former aides. She said Trump was weighed down by the number of court cases he was facing for election interference, national security and financial crimes and was therefore unfit to be president again.

Trump hit back by saying that all the cases were politically motivated. Harris was also tasked to explain why she changed her mind on fracking, mandatory government buy-back programmes of assault weapons and her support for decriminalising border crossings. There were also questions on foreign policy relating to Afghanistan and Ukraine.

All through the debate, Harris touted herself as a champion of the middle class, a prosecutor who had taken on sexual predators, transnational gangs and financial swindlers and won. Harris promised to maintain the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) which at the last count has offered healthcare access to more than 45 million Americans.

Harris will cut taxes for 100 million Americans, give start-up businesses $50,000 tax deduction, $6,000 child tax credit to families, $25,000 to enable first-time home owners to make a down payment, tackle price gouging, climate change, and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, Trump will impose tariffs on foreign goods, undertake mass deportations and seal the borders. He will also abolish the department (Ministry) of Education.

Opinion polls by the CNN showed that Harris won the September debate against Trump by a wide margin of 63% to 37%. Axios, a right-wing medium, reported that following that debate, Harris took a 6-point lead over Trump. The earlier debate in June had placed Trump as the winner on 67% against Biden’s 33%.

Sexism, racism 

Nonetheless, there’s palpable evidence that sexism and racism are playing a role in this presidential campaign. Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) is a dog whistle to skinheads and other White Americans that they are being supplanted by people of colour and will soon lose their majority. Fox News’s constant refrain that “the more Americans see Kamala Harris, the more they hate her” is a euphemism for saying Americans do not like an African-American (Harris is also half Asian-American) woman as their president.

Earlier on, Trump had attempted to ridicule Harris’ identity and question her colour. He said he didn’t know whether Harris was an Indian-American or African-American. Notably, Kamala Harris had an Indian mother and a Jamaican father but has always regarded herself as an African-American. Harris graduated from Howard University, one of the HBCUs or Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

There are many Americans who believe a woman president is simply unthinkable. Last week, the misguided small-nosed Tucker Carlson, a long-time conspiracy theorist of the so-called replacement theory (the belief that the Democratic Party is deliberately allowing migrants into America to dilute the population of White Americans), used a dark metaphor of hyper-masculinity at a Trump rally in Georgia to describe how a vengeful “dad” comes home and tells his daughter “…you’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way”, a reference to man (Trump) as head of the family and therefore deserving of presidential power ahead of a woman (Harris). You may recall that this was also part of the narrative in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost the election to Trump.

Other concerns 

Donald Trump has ridiculed people with disability, debased women (who he grabs by the p**y), disparaged the American military, disrespected his predecessors and disdained foreign allies. He has sullied and profiteered from the American presidency.

In the view of many Americans, Donald Trump is not a democrat. They point to how he motivated and incited a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol (seat of the American Senate and House of Representatives collectively called the Congress) to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Six people died and hundreds were injured including law enforcement agents as the mob descended on the congress on January 6, 2020 to perpetuate Trump’s rule.

Many Americans are worried at the prospects of a convicted felon becoming their president again, if Donald Trump is elected. Recall that Trump has already been found guilty of having raped E. Jean Carroll, a journalist, and fined $5 million for the crime.

Trump was also found guilty by a Manhattan, New York court, of all 34 counts of falsifying his business records to hide payment he had made to a porn star called Stormy Daniels, so she could keep quiet about the details of the sexual relations she had had with him before his presidential run.

Trump is also on record to have called American soldiers “suckers and losers” for putting themselves in harm’s way on behalf of America. Note that Donald Trump himself never served in the US army, having successfully dodged the draft during the Vietnam War.

In the last few days, details of Trump’s fascination with authoritarian leaders have also emerged. According to Marine General Mark Kelly, Trump’s ex-Chief of Staff, Trump, during his first term in office, praised Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany and questioned why US army generals were not loyal to him like Hitler’s.

Recall also that when a White supremacy rally dubbed “Unite the Right” and a counter one broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, the then President Trump refused to condemn the White Nationalists and instead said there were “fine people on both sides.”

Also in his closing arguments for this presidential campaign, Trump is reiterating his threat to use the National Guard and the military to suppress protests and demonstrations against his administration.

Trump is also talking about “enemies from within”, and has named former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Adam Schiff among them. Trump has therefore expressed his determination to bring retribution to them and others even if it requires using the National Guard and military.

Project 2025 

By far, the most serious concern many Americans have is about Project 2025 which aims to institutionalise Trumpism and seize and retain political power all across the USA. The first step in this agenda is to re-designate most jobs in the federal bureaucracy as political appointments and recruit thousands of conservative staff to replace non-partisan experts. The existing protections for these civil servants will be removed and those left will be completely beholden to President Trump. Once this is achieved, the new employees will drive the rest of the conservative policy agenda

Project 2025 will eliminate diversity in public life and shut out non-White employees. Project 2025 will scrap the Department (ministry) of Education and deny resources required by schools attended by children from low-income families.

Measures in place to combat climate change will be removed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the mother body of the National Weather Service along with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be downgraded and the current services of foretelling hurricanes and other adverse weather conditions will be a thing of the past.

Harsh immigration measures will be implemented and mass deportations will be activated all across the US. Limits will be imposed on visa programmes and generally America will shut down its borders, and especially so to certain category of people and countries (particularly Black people and Muslims); after all, the guiding principle of project 2025 is to preserve White supremacy in the US.

Trump’s project 2025 will also slash resources normally allocated to veterans’ affairs to cushion the effect of the disability suffered by many of the ex-service men and women. Elsewhere, Trump will as usual offer massive tax cuts to the tiny but wealthiest category of Americans so they can continue to revel in their hedonism.

Swing states 

The US presidential election is usually won by the candidate that amasses 270 electoral votes out of the 538 available. These are votes awarded each state based on census. A candidate that wins the plurality of the votes cast in a state automatically wins the electoral votes of that state. There are Blue states which reliably vote for the Democratic Party, e.g. the biggest of the states in US – California, with its 54 electoral votes (almost one-fifth of the 538 votes), New York (28), Illinois (19), Delaware (3), etc.

There are also the Red states which predominantly vote for the Republican Party, e.g. Texas (40 electoral votes), Florida (30), Indiana (11), Alabama (9), Wyoming (3), etc.

This year, there are seven swing states that will determine the outcome of the presidential election, namely, Arizona (11 electoral votes); Georgia (16); Michigan (15); Nevada (6); North Carolina (16); Pennsylvania (19) and Wisconsin (10).

Among these swing states are three – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – called the Rust Belt or the Blue Wall. These states mostly vote for the Democratic Party which is why they’re so called, blue being the colour of the party.  The states are fond of voting in the same direction and have voted for the Democratic Party in the last seven presidential contests. Although Trump won all the three in 2016, Biden reclaimed them in the 2020 election.

It’s this Blue Wall that Kamala Harris must preserve if she must triumph in tomorrow’s presidential contest against Donald Trump. If Harris sweeps the polls in those three states, it’s over for Trump. Trump and the Republican Party understand this and are determined to breach the wall, particularly in Pennsylvania because of its rich harvest of electoral votes. This state matters so much in this election circle that both Harris and Trump and their running mates have gone there to campaigns more than 50 times!

Trump though, sees an opportunity in Michigan where Arab-Americans have resolved not to vote for Harris owing to the inability of the Biden-Harris administration to rein in Israel and curtail its atrocious war in Gaza.

The other two states critical to the victory of each of the candidates are Georgia and Carolina, hitherto, reliable states for the Republican Party, but not in this year’s election. Mark Robinson, a Black man and the Republican gubernatorial candidate in this year’s election in North Carolina is unpopular and the Democrats are hoping that his unpopularity will hurt the fortunes of Trump in the state.

Harris also hopes that the 20% Black population in North Carolina will vote for her. President Biden surprisingly won Georgia in the 2020 election and Democrats hope that the same sentiment may see Harris prevail in the presidential election in that state. So, Harris will hope that she splits the White Georgian votes and then gets block votes from the 32% Black population.

Arizona, the home of late Senator McCain is a border state that sometimes looks doubtful for Harris. Trump is strong here on account of his extreme position on illegal border crossings. But Biden narrowly won it in 2020 and the hot button abortion issue gives Harris hope. The votes in Maricopa County hold the key to any win in Arizona.

Nevada is the smallest of the swing states and is home to Las Vegas, America’s capital of debauchery. Nevada’s massive hospitality industry has been ravaged by economic downturn and Trump’s pitch to its workers that he will abolish tax on tips has been matched by Harris.

Altogether, these seven swing states offer 93 electoral votes for Trump and Harris. Analysts say if Harris can win half of these votes, she’ll be home and dry.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has had a flood of endorsements from nearly three dozens of celebrities such as Barack and Michelle Obama, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, Magic Johnson, Samuel L Jackson, Stevie Wonder, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sarah Jessica Parker, Billie Eilish and Finneas, Cynthia Nixon, Spike Lee etc. and she certainly hopes that this will help her move the needle in this tight contest.

According to Harris, “I will be a President for all Americans”, something Trump will never say. Additionally, Harris has so far raised an impressive campaign war chest of $1 billion, mostly from small donors, which in itself is a sign of strong support for her candidacy.

Nonetheless, at the moment, the New York Times and Sienna College polls show Harris and Trump are in a dead heat, with both candidates tied at 48% nationally. Harris is buoyed by voters aged between 18 and 29 who support her 55% against Trump’s 43%, while Trump is favoured by 51% of voters aged 45 to 64 to Harris’s 44%.

Sitting down here in Nigeria, I’m unable to understand why someone like Trump, who opposed a peaceful transfer of power by mobilising his supporters to invade the Capitol and attempt to scuttle the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, which resulted in deaths and injury, should be elected president. Or how he said he bore no responsibility for the deaths of millions of Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another Trump presidency will see a regrouping of such weird characters as retired General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Tucker Carlson and even Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard. Another Trump win see the implementation of Project 2025, an extreme right wing agenda that will disrupt governance and give MAGA a permanent hold on the entire American economic and political life.

Frankly, I don’t understand why someone who has relentlessly sown hatred and division among Americans should be given the mandate to rule again. I can’t fathom how a convicted felon can combat crime. Donald Trump is a mediocre person and the most flawed Republican Party presidential flag bearer in my lifetime and I don’t see any reason why Americans should elect him into office in this competitive and complex world.

Trump has said he will be a dictator from day one if he wins and I believe him. I also believe that his fascism, his incompetence, his domestic agenda of chaos, division and dislocation will lead to bloody confrontations inside America and overflow around the world. Trump’s telling ego for example, will cause a schism inside NATO and an American/Israeli war against Iran and ultimately American decline.

Will the Blue Wall hold for Harris next week, or will it crumble? Can Harris stop Trump? I’m not optimistic.

But then, make no mistake, if Harris loses this presidential contest, it’s down to American sexism and racism and America and the world will pay for it.

Najakku resides at 19, Kofar Kola, Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi state (0807 711 2077)