American presidential election | Champagne or cola?

Where will you be this Tuesday evening? Did you organize an election night? A pool? In Quebec, the frenzy is such in certain circles that extraterrestrials who arrive could believe that a Quebec referendum campaign is ending this evening!

Like everywhere, we followed this long campaign with passion and concern. It must be admitted that the position of the United States in the world, its hegemony, requires a certain interest. The atypical aspect of this race, filled with hatred, bordering on indecency at times, means that the eyes of the world have been turned towards our neighbors for many months. A few hours away, everyone hopes, from a convincing result, here are some final thoughts on the campaign, on the United States, and on us through it.

Trump, first.

His candidacy was not a surprise this time. The tycoon, the convicted Teflon criminal, the disturbing character was going there for revenge. His voters know Trump. Know what he is capable of. He has nothing to lose. More delusional and determined, with a scarier agenda. Obviously, this doesn’t bother his admirers. In his first term, he attacked a “completely rigged system”, defended the downgraded of globalization, wanted his wall to stop Mexican immigration and promised to repeal Obamacare.

The Poynter Institute considers that he only kept 25% of his promises in his first term. His renegotiation of NAFTA did not bring back lost manufacturing jobs to the United States, he withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord and added… 3 miles to the border wall.

But in 2024, its program is more radical. He wants to deport immigrants, cancel automatic soil law, revise women’s reproductive rights, impose tariffs on all imports, “drill like crazy” and pardon those convicted for invading the Capitol on January 6, 2021 .

This obviously doesn’t bother me. Half of Americans have tried it and are ready to hire it again. All this speaks of a different state of mind than that of 2016, which was made of anger and bitterness. This time, there’s bravado. Many sincerely believe that it was better before, and that this past future must be attempted. They’re not all crazy.

Last summer, I drove 4,000 miles across the Southwest, in deserts and highlands, big cities, backwaters, Democratic and Republican states alike. We felt the population divided. Even as Highway 40 remained unruffled across the landscape, the states were more different than ever from one another. I literally saw the name of the country: United States, but potentially disunited.

Unity is only superficial. The country is young, the past, never far away. The nationalist muscles remember all that. The sovereign individual is for many Americans much more important than the central state.

This country is fractured everywhere. Cities versus countryside, North versus South, East versus West, mega-rich and downgraded peri-urban areas, racial divides, etc. But during this campaign, a new front opened: that of women against men. This polarization was symbolically embodied as soon as Kamala Harris began the race to replace Joe Biden, when she imposed her position on women’s reproductive rights.

From that moment on, Trump “recast” his favorite role, that of America’s misogynistic alpha male. Make America Great Again : let’s rediscover the simple and obvious virility of another time.

There is a part of the vote that will come down to privacy. There is among Americans, as among many Western men, an insecurity, a loss of bearings in the face of which Trump’s outrageous virility resonates. The rise of masculinism plays out in parallel with that of Trump. The divide is visible among young men, among racialized men who, losing power, adhere to the Trumpist model.

Donald Trump doesn’t even need to speak. It appears and unites a majority of men. I’m not saying the United States isn’t ready for a female president. Only that the war of the sexes is insidious there, and that it has found a political outlet in 2024.

And us?

We will have followed this campaign as if it were our own. Our media covered the smallest gathering, dissected the particular issues of Pennsylvania, listened to the cowboys of Wyoming.

We were polled as if we had the right to vote in the United States. It is true that this election will have unprecedented and lasting repercussions on our economy and on the question of immigration.

I wish we now had as much passion for OUR policy, given what will potentially happen to us in a few weeks or months. Let us delve deeper into Pierre Poilievre’s policies, explain to us the issues and choices in Alberta, the particularities of British Columbia, and even those of Quebec.

American politics is sexy and unpredictable, ours, flat and conventional. There is something a little colonized about us. What awaits us is certainly less serious for the planet, but on our scale, it will be an important paradigm shift. I hope we will be just as interested in it…

In a few hours, we will be glued to our screens for a very long evening. Quebec is very pro-Kamala. But very smart who can predict the result as the two candidates are neck and neck. I might still plan something more trivial than champagne this evening…

What do you think? Participate in the dialogue