Why Harris will win the US election
US Election Prediction time: Kamala Harris will win the popular vote by a massive amount – in the vicinity of 15 million votes. She could even break some records. This will lead to an electorate college win which includes most of the swing states and also some unexpected states – like maybe Florida, Alaska or Ohio.
This prediction is not based on an analysis of polls but on a simple rule of politics: the winner is the person who owns the future.
That is to say, it is the person best perceived to steer the country through future challenges, grasp opportunities and provide a better future for the country, collectively and individually.
In Australia, where our politics can a bit boring (which is good), the person who owns the future is often the person or party considered most likely to be more competent going forward– the better manager of the economy or most administratively capable.
In the United States, owning the future often comes down to controlling narratives around fear and hope. This might be due to voluntary voting and the need to rely on stronger emotions to actually bring people to the ballot box as much as to influence what they mark on the ballot.
The winner on November 5 will be the person who can give voters the most hope of a better future and/or generate the greatest fear about what will happen if their opponent wins.
This comes down to perceptions that are largely determined by existing prejudices and preconceptions and shaped, at the margins, by character, experience and competency of the candidate and policy positions.
Trump’s campaign is entirely fear based.
In 2016, he had a positive agenda of sorts – he was an outsider who was going to change the system. He was going to drain the swamp which presumably was going to be followed by a bright sunny future on reclaimed land.
You might like
Even in 2016, this was essentially a backward-looking vision premised on trying to regress to some nostalgic past. It was of a vision of limited appeal in 2016; he lost the popular vote by two million votes and would have easily lost the election in most functioning democratic systems.
Now Trump’s vision has become very dark and fundamentally nihilistic.
Even the personal charisma, the comfort in front of the camera, the ease of expression and any sense of fun that he once might have had seem to have totally disappeared.
Trump’s worldview is akin to the Hobbesian state of nature where in a dark, bleak world, the only value is self-interest. There is no space for hope. There is no space for any conception of the common good, or individual advancement for voters.
Often politicians can rely on the appeal to self-interest, by lowering taxes for example. With Trump, the appeal to self-interest is literal. His campaign is about exonerating himself from a vast array of criminal charges and seeking vengeance on those who have wronged him. This is not a political agenda.
The Democrats have successfully emphasised Trump’s incapability of looking beyond himself and contrasted it with Kamala Harris’s care for “you the voter” often delivered into the lounge rooms and onto the screen and devices of Americans straight down the barrel of the camera.
Even where Trump has had some success in highlighting current malaise, he has failed to take ownership of those issues for the future.
For example, the US has experienced very high levels of migration (both legal and illegal) and Trump has successfully tapped into what can be legitimate concerns about how this is changing American society and how so many people from very different cultures can be accommodated without taking away from those who are already there.
However, Trump is not offering a solution.
In fact, the Democrats have had some success in arguing that he actively stopped solutions by scuttling the bipartisan Immigration Bill – the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act.
A more skilled candidate, maybe someone like Nikki Haley, might have provided some policy solutions or at the very least spoken about the problem of immigration without simply reverting to basic racism and misinformation about migrants eating dogs and cats and provided assurance that that she could handle the issue going forward.
Trump’s only solution is mass deportations, without any explanation of how this would occur.
Stay informed, daily
The future vision Trump implies is millions of people rounded up and forcibly removed at gunpoint if need be and returned to dangerous or depressed places with no care as to how long they might have lived in the United States or what contribution they might have made. Aside from potentially collapsing large sections of the economy, this is a very bleak and brutal vision of what America will become, even for people concerned about immigration levels.
Trump has also successfully tapped into concerns about inflation and the cost of living. Again, however, he has not been able to offer any solutions – other than unsubstantiated assertions that he will cut gas prices and half electricity costs. He has highlighted the problem but has done little to convince he is the man to solve it.
His claim in the only debate with Harris that he has the “concept of a plan” to replace Obamacare has underlined how incapable he really is to shape the future. He has been promising a new healthcare plan since 2016.
Trump offers no hope and has had limited success in raising fears about his opponent. When Biden was the candidate Trump could raise legitimate fears about his ability to be president based on his age. Now the only very old man is Trump himself.
Saying Harris is incompetent or lacks the intelligence for the position just does not match with the reality of someone who has been a prosecutor, state attorney general, Senator and Vice President.
One can only hope that enough Americans have enough knowledge to know Kamala is not really a communist. The nastier racist and sexist attacks may resonate with some but largely repel women and non-white Americans (as well as a lot of men and white Americans).
In short, Trump does not have a lot going for him other than a core group of supporters who like him are filled with directionless anger and resentment.
Like Trump, they have no real solutions or targeted outcomes, just a vague hope that things will be better with a different sort of person in charge. These supporters have become so invested and intertwined with him they cannot see the reality of his failings. They have effectively become co-accused and have no choice but to share his fate.
In contrast, Kamala Harris offers a vision of the future where there is light and joy and people can provide care to others.
This future vision is not built on a set of policies but is largely a reflection of her personality. It is a vision of hope based on an approach, a way of being, rather than a set of articulated future actions.
There are some limitations to this approach as there are parts of her persona that may irritate some – she is like the fun aunt at Christmas who has possibly had one drink too many and might become a bit tiresome but at least there is a sense of joy and kindness.
Maybe Harris has not expanded on this vision because she has not felt the need to.
Why take risks of a larger target when your opponent is doing so much self-damage? She has run a virtually policy free campaign and done very little mainstream media, but as Napoleon would say: “never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake”.
Harris can also play on people’s fears about a Trump presidency becoming a Christo-fascist authoritarian regime that controls reproductive rights, persecutes minorities and undermines democracy simply by pointing to the things Trump says and has done.
Harris is the only candidate offering any sense of hope about the future and there is little doubt in my mind that the fears she has raised about Trump are more powerful than the fears he has raised about her. This should lead to an even bigger loss for Trump than in 2020.
Trump will of course claim the election was rigged but hopefully in time the Republicans will finally realise this guy has been a massive millstone around their neck for almost a decade and seek a different path.
America is ready for a Republican who holds core Republican values and can offer a vision of a better future.
Dr Dominic Stefanson has a PhD in politics and worked as a political advisor in the Rann and Weatherill governments. Dominic works in his own consultancy company based in Adelaide.
