Kamala Harris wins against Donald Trump, an American gamble

At least 2016 taught us restraint. Your servant was then among those who stupidly wrote that we were “playing at scaring ourselves” with the hypothesis of Donald Trump winning the American presidential election. I came back to it later, making my mea culpa, to explain how what is called a cognitive bias, too favorable to M^me Clinton, had burdened judgments, led to ignoring warnings. We do not see what we do not want to see, the air is known.

This year, caution is still required, six weeks before the vote. Institutes, pollsters, analysts of all stripes will repeat that “nothing is decided” between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. It’s close, that’s what is announced. Five or seven swing states undecided voters will at the last moment place their electors in the blue, Democratic camp, or the red, color of the Republicans.

But I have a cognitive bias again, I recognize it this time in advance. As with many people, or simply with those who prefer wisdom to anger, dialogue to belching, questioning to threats, I think it would be better for everyone, there as well as here, that M^me Harris wins.

This is because I believe, regarding the United States, in the idea of ​​the antidote: here is a terrible country and so legitimately criticizable, but often capable of inventing the disease and a vague way of recovering from it. The horror of Vietnam, but also Muhammad Ali. Puritanism, but Presley. That liar George W. Bush, but the emergence of Barack Obama. Obama, the president who made the most violent conservatives in America so vengeful, to the point of serving, in spite of himself, as a launching pad for Trump eight years later.

I hope that Kamala Harris will be a possible antidote to American divisions. Because by constantly comparing her to her opponent’s delusions, cats eaten and babies murdered at birth, we no longer measure the extent to which her election would be a revolution: a woman, yes. Of mixed origin, Jamaican-Indian, yes. Aged 19 years younger than her male opponent, a white self-tanned carrot and dyed red.

Yet it must be admitted that this remaining bias makes me read with benevolence the polls that appear favorable to the Democratic candidate. These studies, however, remained balanced in the opposite direction by the bookmakers’ odds. Betting sites are indeed very serious business there. They are not the type to joke about money, sentiment or cognitive subtleties. Yet they persisted in predicting more chances for Trump.

But here’s the thing: they too have changed their minds this week and are now giving Kamala Harris the probable president of the United States on November 5. So it will be close, ok, but what’s the bet?

Christopher Passerborn in Fribourg, has worked at Matin Dimanche since 2014, after having worked for Nouveau Quotidien and L’Illustré. More info

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