Closing Thoughts
“Why is it always Hitler? Why not Mao? Or Stalin? Stalin killed a lot more people than Hitler did.” I was getting a golf lesson and the coach was clearly troubled by all the recent comparisons of Trump to Hitler. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond (he knew, or at least suspected, that I was left-leaning) — I mean, yes, Stalin and Mao were up there when it came to killing a lot of people- but if your main push back to being compared to Hitler is to suggest that we go with a different mass murderer if only because they don’t carry the stench of genocide, then you have a problem. I agreed that Stalin was indeed much worse than Hitler when it came to the body count and suggested that he might check out Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands.
It is almost midnight here on the west coast on election eve and we have finally run out the clock on this rollercoaster of an election campaign. There have been so many refrains of Donald Trump riding down the elevator in 2015 that it is easy to forget that that was two campaigns ago. It is safe to say that there has rarely been a day since then when something he did or said did not provide fodder for a national (or even international) conversation (more likely, a rant or shouting match). There was a palpable sense of relief when we surfaced after the four long days of counting in 2020 to finally have Biden declared the winner. A truly fleeting sense, since we were soon engulfed in election denials, court challenges, and of course, the horror of Jan 6th. And while Trump did leave the White House on Jan 20th, 2021, he has continued to hold the nation under seige. Will that spell be broken — for good this time — tomorrow?
Sholay, which premiered in 1975 was one of the biggest blockbusters of Indian cinema. Much credit is given to the stars and to the story and screenplay. But, Javed Akhtar (part of the Salim-Javed screenwriting duo), highlights the main villain character — Gabbar Singh- played by a then unknown actor, Amjad Khan. In the documentary Angry Young Men (Prime Video), Akhtar talks about how Gabbar Singh was somebody without any inhibitions — he did and said whatever came to his mind. His whims and desires were his morality and he couldn’t care less what anybody (“society”) thought about him. As Akhtar says, this gave him a magnetic quality. We are all intrigued by such a person because, at some level, all of us rankle at the constraints of being a good, moral person and doing the right thing always. The thought that immediately popped into my head was whether this also explained Trump’s enduring appeal. Unfortunately, Gabbar Singh is just a character in a movie, while a second Trump term would be a real-life nightmare.
There has been much liberal hand-wringing over the question of why Harris hasn’t just been running away with it? If Trump is such a manifestly terrible candidate, why are the polls so close? Matthew Yglesias writing in the New York Times asks, what is perhaps the more correct question, why hasn’t Trump run away with this? Whether you agree with the underlying reasoning or not, the Biden-Harris administration has very low popularity ratings and Harris has repeatedly declined to put any daylight between herself and Biden (her response, “I can’t think of anything” within the friendly confines of the View, when asked to name one thing she would have done differently than Joe Biden, was arguably one of her biggest missteps). As such, even with Harris on the top of the ticket, this election is largely a referendum on the current administration and when you are so unpopular, the incumbent tends to lose. Trump left office with a 34% favorability rating, but when people looked back to the Trump years after 3+ years of Biden-Harris, Trump’s favorability inexplicably jumped to 48%. An anti-incumbent sentiment is sweeping across affluent western democracies across the world and that trend would play right into Trump’s favor. The issues of border security, economy, and chaos in the international order have real resonance and a disciplined campaign by Trump (and a less terrible running mate) would likely have seen him with a substantial polling lead. But instead, he finds himself in a virtual tie with Harris and I think that speaks to how terrible a choice he really is and of course, the unexpected strength of Harris’s campaign.
The gender gap in the support for the two candidates has been highlighted for a while, but has come into sharper focus in the waning days of the campaign. Anecdotal evidence (and the surprising Selzer poll in Iowa) has been accumulating about women breaking for Harris in a big way and quite possibly making a decisive impact. The MSG rally also broke through the noise in a way very little has before and, I believe, will have a significant impact on the margins (which is where this election will be decided).
If Trump were to win, we would be in for (at least) four years of chaos and stress (to put it mildly), but if Harris were to be declared the winner, then we can be sure that Trump and his supporters are going to stir up violent protests — they have been sowing the seeds for this for a while now. So either way, we are in for some turbulent times. These next few hours may just be the calm before the storm. So, savor them while you can.
If biography were destiny, then Harris would have been a shoo-in. In 2016 (and in 2008 & 2012 before that), identity politics was the major driving force. Harris made the very strategic (and correct) choice to completely de-emphasize this aspect of her candidacy. One would be excused for reflexively concluding that the appeal of her multiple identities (first woman, first Indian-American, first Black woman) would be real assets, but in 2024, leaning into them would have been a mistake. But that does not erase the fact that a Harris victory would herald the dawn of a new day in America — we would have our first female president — and a multiracial and multiethnic one at that. That would be reason enough to be joyful, but more importantly we would have a decent and thoughtful person in the White House. As Monday slides into Election Tuesday, I find myself being optimistic, albeit cautiously, about the prospects for this historic election.
