The United States presidential contest seemed an easy choice when it was framed as the clash of the Prosecutor and the Convicted Felon.
This was in July when President Joe Biden, age 81, handed over the Democratic presidential ticket to a younger Vice President Kamala Harris.
The presidential race, which was concluded yesterday, wasn’t expected to be a dead-heat.
Not least after Biden checked out when his electability looked doubtful. Biden quit the race on medical grounds, thus denying Trump the age card.
He was now facing Kamala, who is 20 years his junior.
The Republican bully exploited Old Joe’s mental acuity and Biden’s immigration policy, to gain traction with Conservative voters.
The arrival of Kamala saw Republicans’ earlier excitement fall into a hysteria phase.
Talk show pundits called it a ‘freak out mood’.
Not any more as the race got tighter.
Trump’s toxic rhetoric got intense, and rabidly anti-immigrants.
He sees immigrants as criminals who sought asylum in America.
He promises to order mass deportations of ‘foreign criminals’ if he wins.
The reference to Asians in Springfield, Ohio, as pet-eaters, or Latino from Puerto Rico as ‘floating garbage’ have alienated immigrants, while drawing white male voters without college education around Trump.
This constituency has been brainwashed to believe immigrants have taken their jobs, while deepening their marginalisation.
There is something unusual about US presidential election 2024:
Why should an election pitting an 80-year-old convicted felon against a 60-year-old prosecutor be rated close to call?
The choice, as it turns out, wasn’t easy when most variables were considered.
Looks like the brains of about 50 per cent of registered United States voters are wired more on the racist incline.
Trump, who has been described as a “cult worshipping a felonious thug”, was neck-and-neck with the Democratic rival, disabusing the easy choice estimation of right-thinking people.
Times were when people of questionable integrity would not be anywhere near a public office.
A jury in a New York court early this year found Trump guilty of 34 counts of felony, after falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal.
He is awaiting criminal sentencing later this month.
Something has changed in Washington, the supposed headquarters of a world that cherishes character in public office.
The ‘land of the free’ seems to have a critical mass that adores folk heroes, who rekindle racial jaundice.
In spite of his hateful rhetoric, the former president still commands the support of many.
His promise to ‘Make America Great Again’ (Maga) sells among conservative.
Maga zealots are largely old white men and younger males without university degrees.
The constituency fell for Trump’s Maga propaganda in 2016, when Trump won the presidency.
It was the rallying cry during his first term between 2017 and 2021.
The Maga campaign unapologetically peddles homophobic, sexist, racist and inciting agenda.
The tight race showed the polarity of the US between liberal Democrats and the conservative Republican block.
Trump’s deceptively messianic message, of ‘America First’ ignores the diversity and changing US demographics.
The 2024 edition of US presidential campaign exposes the duplicity of the American electoral psyche:
Public perception sets a high, near-perfect standard for one candidate and a lower character threshold for the other.
They expect Kamala – the first woman of mixed racial descent to run on a major political party platform – to be flawless, while tolerating Trump’s lawlessness.
Trump is yet to concede defeat in the 2020 presidential election in a country where it’s decorous to do so.
The former president’s anarchic attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election is pepped over like it doesn’t reflect badly on Trump’s erratic record.
He swore the other day that he would lose election only if Democrats rigged.
He was raising alarm, without evidence, of electoral fraud in Pennsylvania on the eve of the 60th US presidential elections since 1789.
OKECH KENDO
University journalism lecturer and climate change local actions advocate
