Joe Biden thought he would reconcile a divided United States of America. “Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.” These were his words on January 20, 2021, the day of his inauguration. Two weeks earlier, Donald Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol. American democracy had been shaken to its core. Yet, on a day that represented the mirage of a return to normalcy, the new president spoke of “respect” and “unity.”
Nearly four years later, as American citizens prepare to elect his successor on Tuesday, November 5, these words sound like a distant dream. America is teetering on the edge of a precipice. Full of bitterness, Biden has been relegated to the uncomfortable seat of spectator. It’s now up to Kamala Harris to take up his mission: To save American democracy and the rule of law from a new Trump presidential term, which his own campaign pledges have promised will be a devastating and more extremist one.
Nine years after the billionaire made his sensational entry into politics, riding down an escalator in New York’s Trump Tower, the struggle’s prolonged duration reveals Trumpism’s deep roots, the power of its identity-based rhetoric, and America’s fragmentation. The new frontline is the gender gap, the unprecedentedly large disparity between the male and female vote. White men with no college degrees have been Trump’s captive audience since 2016. However, if studies are to be believed, more and more Hispanic and Black men are joining them. The Democrats, meanwhile, have been holding onto the hope of their lower turnout rates when compared to women.
Criminally charged and convicted
On the lawn of Washington’s Ellipse Park, on October 29, the Democratic candidate warned that her rival was “someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.” Trump is now an unrestrained, ragged, criminally charged and convicted man, who promised to use the army against his political opponents, to purge the federal state, to place the justice system under his direct control. Above all, for over a year now, Trump has been planning an unprecedented operation to contest the results, should they go against him, right from their publication on election night.
Read more Subscribers only Donald Trump is once again ready to do anything to challenge the outcome if defeated
The year 2024 began with the bleak scenario of another duel between Biden and his predecessor, who has yet to concede his defeat in the last election. A vast majority of Americans, exasperated by this stagnation, showed little enthusiasm for the coming campaign. Then running in the Republican party primaries, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, warned: “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election.” In the end, she was powerless to challenge Trump’s absolute domination of the party. The fervor of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) loyalist base turned the nomination race into a formality.
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