In the Home stretch:
a US election upended

“Surprise will be normal.” That is how I titled a presentation on the oncoming Eighties to Pierre Trudeau’s Cabinet in Ottawa in November, 1980. Astonishing events have indeed occurred since, ranging from optimistic to ominous; the end of the Cold War, rampant globalization, 9/11 and the “forever wars” of Afghanistan and Iraq, and a global financial crash that undermined confidence in markets etc. The WHO estimates that 3 million people died from Covid-19. War returned to Europe as a resentful Russia went rogue. The global climate edged toward a destructive crisis. On the other hand, billions of people were lifted out of poverty especially by the rise of China, then India.

A black swan surprise emerged with the election of an oddball American nationalist as President in 2016. And Donald Trump’s sequel candidacy in 2024 confirms his ability to draw support from resentful swaths of Americans left behind by change and the indifference of establishment politicians. Political polarization washed over and through America, as Sergio Marchi recently described for Open Canada.

Organic change depicts American society. In channeling pushback against change, Donald Trump risks becoming the “backward-looking” candidate, while his new opponent Kamala Harris seems to embody the changes that have swept over the nation in the last four decades. 

While the 2020 US census was the first in which less than half of children under 18 identified as “white,” changes to American assumptions and discourse are as generational as they are racial. 20.2 million baby boomers and older Americans who tended to favour conservatives politically have died since Trump’s election in 2016. Meanwhile, over 40 million Gen Z and Millennial voters, who trend Democratic have come on to the electoral rolls. Until the astonishing events of this July, which led to President Biden’s withdrawal from the race, many of these younger Americans, unenthused by his candidacy, seemed unlikely to vote. A large majority of voters had indicated they wanted different and presumably younger candidates than Biden and Trump. Indeed, Trump’s principal opponent during the primaries for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, made the prescient prediction that the party which retired its elderly candidate first would win. In withdrawing his candidacy for a second term, Joe Biden and his support for the swift acclamation of his Vice-President completely changed the race. Her non-intuitive selection of folksy but canny Midwesterner Tim Walz as her running mate now appears brilliant.

The compelling national convention that nominated Vice-President Harris showcased the ways American social realities have changed. Back in 1980, fewer than 10% of Americans regarded inter-racial marriage favourably. Now, well over 90% are indifferent to it.

In 1980, gay marriage was a fantasy. Today, it is a widely-accepted reality, despite enduring objection in Christian evangelist quarters. As for abortion, it was legalized nationwide in the US in 1973 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade and 63% of Americans still favour that status, though the Trump Supreme Court seriously compromised reproductive rights for American women. The anti-abortion theme weaves throughout the conservative Heritage Foundation’s policy design for a second Trump term, Project 2025. But Democrats are heavily rewarded by support from American women eager to defend reproductive rights.

As to the all-important economy, it would have been a surprise in 1980 that economic expectations for younger Americans would drift downward, that the assurance of stable working-class livelihoods would evaporate along with a depleted US manufacturing sector. An opioid crisis revealed despair in “left-behind” communities, that added to the loss of confidence in political direction.

But relative party loyalties were already inverting. Reagan’s 1980 candidacy attracted growing numbers of working-class voters, especially young men. More educated voters leaned Democratic, making education a defining voter cleavage today, along with gender, as women trend heavily Democratic in voting choice. In the numbers game, while women are a clear majority, only 38 percent of Americans over 25 have a four-year college degree.

Of course, over those decades, technology changed the American way of life, in many ways for better, but politically, in the enabling of mass disinformation, for worse. 

The two national conventions, the Republicans in July, and the Democrats in August, were each exuberant. Having just survived an assassination attempt, riding high in the polls against a weakened incumbent president, Donald Trump was, as God claims in the Book of Revelation, “Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” in the by now personalist national party he entirely commands.

By contrast, the Democratic National Convention was organized to present the party’s new nominee who was still a blank slate for most Americans. The Convention was an impressive and entertaining pep rally, and political spectacle. It showcased pride in the changes that American society has gone through, vowing “We’re not going back,” betting that the greater number of Americans will recognize themselves in the Convention’s portrayal of diversified American society that centred on its ground-breaking candidate. But, while it reached each night over 20 million TV viewers (15 percent more than the Republican National Convention), these were to a large extent already committed to Harris.

Nevertheless, replacing Biden with Harris revived Democratic enthusiasm to a level not captured since Obama’s ascent in 2008. By the Convention’s end, she had surged to a lead nationally that is now beyond the margin of error, while pulling even in the battleground states whose outcomes will determine the winner in the decisive electoral college. 

With Real Clear Politics posting the betting odds as essentially even, a decisive factor could be on the respective abilities of the two parties to ensure turn-out of their own voters. Democrats in the remaining two months of intense campaigning will try also to extend their surge beyond their newly motivated base. Kamala Harris needs to project her competence and character convincingly to the relatively small number of swing voters, notably independents and Republicans disillusioned with Trump’s continued tirades.

For her part, Harris does not play the identity card, or rise to Trump’s insults, believing that more Americans, than Trump apparently imagines, recoil at his personal slurs. Indeed, several commentators are asking if the country is becoming tired of Trump and his outbursts of personalized abuse at the alleged character and competence of his opponent, who he calls a “communist,” and at her multiple identities that he implies make her insufficiently American. He also surmises she lacks the performative stature and ability to face up to foreign adversaries.

In a media culture that creates two bubbled solitudes, a large number among Trump’s base relish such personalized attacks. But as the post-DNC convention campaigns proceed, more Americans will hear from Harris a message that is coherent and consistently patriotic, that shows a pro-family middle class and centrist set of pragmatic leanings. So far, raucous dissident progressives in the Democratic congressional caucus are accepting the need to unify for this election Harris decrees to be uniquely important for America.

About the rest of the world, in her acceptance speech in Chicago, Harris was quite tough in her commitments to national security, and to American primacy, pledging to maintain the world’s “strongest, most lethal fighting force.” She valourizes the vital US role as global leader in the name of international order. She is all-in on Ukraine, and less prone than Biden to give this Israeli government the benefit of loyalty given the destruction in Gaza. She acknowledges the centrality of the immigration issue, and is protective on the border. She supports tariffs where required to protect American workers at risk, but adamantly opposes Trump’s proposed across-the-board tariff increases that would fuel inflation and trash stressed international norms, hearkening back to the 1930s and American isolationism.

Harris personally projects humour, what the Globe and Mail termed a new “joy” in politics, in contrast to Trumpian sourness and hostility, a “can-do” embrace of change, that competes with Trump’s “un-do” stance on US institutions and historical continuities. 

There also exists an interesting competition as to who will be seen as the “incumbent” in an anti-incumbent era in democratic politics everywhere. Harris is reminding Americans of the chaos of Trump’s first term. 

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, is trying to define Harris as successor to the unpopular (if substantively accomplished) Biden administration. By all accounts, Trump’s key advisors are urging him to diminish his personal attacks and focus on the issues where Republicans have an opinion edge: notably the “felt” economy at the grocery till and in housing; immigration; opposition to “woke-ism” that promotes identity entitlements; and standing behind a more nationalist, even isolationist, stance internationally. 

In the days and weeks ahead, Harris’s self-projection as the “change” candidate will gain traction, but only, as David Shribman argues, if she can “step out of (Biden’s) shadow.” US politics are necessarily performative. How Harris performs now in the pivotal post Labor Day home stretch will be decisive. She has to address substantive policy issues under scrutiny from interviews and press conferences. She has to take Trump on as the experienced prosecutor she was, especially in the much-anticipated debate showdown on September 10, but avoid demeaning his supporters, as Hillary Clinton had implicitly done.

But remember, anything can happen between now and November 5. We should continue to expect, one way or another, the unexpected in what will be one of the most fundamentally important elections, for them and us, in US history.