Opinion | Trump Is On Top - Despite Everything

Giani Singh (name changed), 45, drives a yellow taxi in New York. David Brooks, 63, a New Yorker at heart, is among the most cerebral columnists of The New York Times. They may find little in common should they meet currently but will find themselves agreeing on the most vexatious question in the US today: who will win the Presidential election in November.

Gianni wants Trump to win. Originally from Ludhiana, he came to the US as a teenager and did all he needed to survive, including two local marriages. He finally landed a US citizenship three years ago. Today, he owns six taxis, drives one himself for a bare six hours a day, and owns a house in Queens.

"Immigrants Commit Crimes"

He voted Trump in 2020 and will do so again. Trump, he says, kept prices down. "Today, with 8% interest, I don't know how people live," he told us last week. Trump will be hard on immigration (he threatens to deport an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants). "I know I am one and I have my own stories but, Sirjee, these immigrants commit lots of crimes. We see it daily in New York. " And, finally, "Trump will be good for India".

Brooks, a Republican, does not want Trump to win. But in a recent column, he clinically listed the "five turbines of Trumpism" which told his head differently.  

One, Americans favour dynamism over compassion. The fastest growing US states - Texas, Florida, Montana - are ruled by Republicans; the slowest and the stagnant by Democrats. "The red model gives you low housing costs, lower taxes and business vitality. The blue model gives you high housing costs, high taxes and high inequality." Democrats want to expand the welfare state like in Europe. But voters tell pollsters that the economy and immigration are their top concerns and Republicans score better on handling those.

Democrats, The 'Elite' Clique

Two, in a reversal from recent history, Democrats have become the party of the college graduate elite and Republicans of the working class. "The biggest divide in the US today is the diploma divide," Brooks has often written. One of his most perceptive recent columns was on how the educated elite in the US unwittingly conveys its contempt for the majority not with a college degree ("Deplorables," Hillary Clinton infamously described Trump supporters in 2016). And the "deplorable" deeply resent that the Democrats are the party of the ruling class. 

Three, the less educated are in a funk because of growing social and moral immorality. As Brooks wrote: "The things that derail their lives are broken relationships, infidelity, out-of-wedlock births, addictions, family conflict and crime. When Republicans talk about immigration, crime, faith, family and the flag, they are talking about ways to preserve the social and moral order. Democrats are great at talking about economic solidarity, but not moral and cultural solidarity."

Four, the general mood in the US is of distrust and dissatisfaction. According to Gallup and other pollsters, only 25% Americans are satisfied with the direction of the country; 60% feel the country is in decline and the "system is broken"; 69% agree that the "political and economic elite don't care about hard-working people", and 63% agree that "experts in this country don't understand the lives of people like me".

Trump Knows How To Harness Unhappiness

In this mood, people are disinclined to believe the Kamala Harris promise of a better life based on a more caring state. They believe that irrespective of the promises the elite make, in the end, it only adds to their growing power. And Trump knows better than any other populist how to harness this general dissatisfaction.

Five, Harris has been unlike Clinton and Obama, both of whom won two terms by sticking rigidly to the centrist median on major issues. They made sure they were never seen as a representative of the progressives in the Democratic party. Kamala Harris let her progressive side lean on the critical decision of the choice of the Vice-Presidential candidate. 

Pennsylvania is likely to be the most critical swing state in this election. Harris could have chosen its popular governor, Josh Shapiro, to be her election mate, but Shapiro was seen as a moderate and Harris showed "over-confidence", says Brooks, in choosing a governor (Tim Walz) of a state she was winning anyway, Minnesota. 

This is, of course, prime time for election punditry in the US, and one of the reigning gurus in this field is Nate Silver, poker player extraordinaire, baseball-statistician-turned-poll-predictor best known for predicting Obama's scale of victory in 2012 (332 electoral college votes out of 538) when it was widely seen as a close race and for naming the victor in all 50 US states. Silver too is leaning towards a Trump victory at this time, because of the electoral college advantage of the Republicans, which effectively gives the smaller of the seven swing states (like Wisconsin) disproportionate weightage in shaping the final verdict, even negating the popular vote.

What Harris Will Really Need

Hillary Clinton polled 65 million votes to Trump's 62 million in 2016 but lost the electoral college vote by 227-304. This November too, it is not unlikely that the same fate visits Harris. According to Silver's latest prediction, Harris would need to lead Trump in the popular vote by more than 3% to have a statistical chance of getting 270 electoral college votes. Harris had a dream five-week run between Biden opting out on July 21 and the Democratic National Convention but the bounce has slowed down. According to the latest Real Clear Politics Nationwide Polling Average, Harris is only 1.8% ahead of Trump in the popular vote. More importantly, she has only a 0.8 lead over Trump in the seven swing states.

Repeated polling has shown that the two most important issues for the electorate are the economy and immigration and Trump continues to lead Harris on those issues, despite ground realities. Bipartisan economists have proved that Trump's plan to erect tariff walls on imports, with steep ones for Chinese imports, will raise prices and harm the poor. Trump stonewalled a bipartisan tough immigration in the Congress because it would have impaired his election rhetoric of deporting illegal immigrants, a plan that is logistically impossible and would wreck the economy. 

'Unserious' Trump

Trump is, as Harris famously labelled him, "unserious"; labelling him a narcissist is doing disservice to that word; he is a misogynist who has little support among young women;, everybody knows he does not have any values and beliefs except the most convenient ones, and the media knows he plays them because he craves publicity, positive or negative. And yet, because he is who he is, he can affirm contradictory beliefs and yet not lose any support. 

Abortion is one issue on which Harris has him on the run. The Supreme Court that overturned the constitutional right to abortion was put together by Trump. He has often crowed about the verdict, which has led to anti-abortion statutes in 22 states. One out of seven voters rate abortion as the third most important electoral issue. Seeing Harris' growing lead on the issue which looms larger each day he has flip-flopped. One day he weighed against a Florida initiative to dramatically shorten the period for a legal abortion but seeing the pro-lifers' blowback, promptly affirmed support for the initiative the next day. 

Media in the US has been replete recently with revelations that should have made MAGA followers wince.  A writer in The Atlantic profiled a key associate of Trump's presidency, Kashyap (Kash) Patel, who jeopardised the life of US Seals on a rescue mission in Nigeria by faking a go-ahead by Nigerian authorities for USAF planes to enter Nigerian air space. When exposed, Patel shrugged off his breathtaking lie with "Nobody got injured so how does it matter?" Trump acknowledges Kash is somewhat crazy, but says, "You need crazies". 

Nothing Matters For Trump Loyalists

The NYT carried a column on how the Federal Election Commission has little oversight on how the hundreds of millions of dollars ostensibly raised for Trump's election campaign are actually used. The monies are sat over by Trump's family, and it is a reasonable inference from the money trails that significant sums are diverted toward fighting his many legal cases. But for Trump bhakts, nothing matters. 

Allan Lichtman is a historian who has correctly called all recent elections, including 2016 and 2020, on a proprietary 13-point scale, weighted towards serious issues (like how the economy has done in the period between the two elections and how the US is perceived internationally), in which the character of the candidate matters only for two of the points. On that template, which also totally ignores election polls and surveys, Harris wins by scoring seven points.

'Prosecutor' Harris vs 'Bully' Trump

It would be fair to say that with less than 60 days to go, the election is too close to call. Much will depend on the debate on Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning in India). This may sound unbelievable, but Trump and Harris have never formally met. Never. Ever. Their first face-to-face promises to be gladiatorial. Will Prosecutor Harris put Convicted Felon and Bully Trump in the dock? 

White men, 40% of the electorate, favour Trump overwhelmingly. Should Harris stand up to Trump, or dominate him, she could give the lie to Trump's taunt that Putin and the like will chew up Harris. That could nudge the critical white male vote in not only Wisconsin (10 electoral college votes) but, perhaps, more importantly in Pennsylvania with 20 electoral college votes. 

(Ajay Kumar is a senior journalist. He is former Managing Editor, Business Standard, and former Executive Editor, The Economic Times.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author