With less than a week to go before polling day, an extraordinary US Presidential election is screeching to a close. I use the word ‘screeching’ advisedly because the rhetorical exchanges between the two camps have grown into verbal fusillades.
The Harris campaign has turned up the volume of its attacks on what it sees as Trump’s unfitness to serve in the White House again, while Trump and his surrogates have hurled increasingly bitter insults at Harris culminating at the controversial Madison Square Garden rally. Both sides have worked themselves into a state of consternation about the prospect of its opponent winning on November 5th. They see their rivals as an existential threat to their vision of America.
It will be difficult for the two sides to come down from the adversarial perch they currently occupy. That is not a good place to be for a democratic society.
Even at this late stage, it is impossible to be confident about who will win this race. Trump is currently the bookies’ favourite. That seems to be based on the assumption that pollsters are underestimating Trump’s vote just as they did in 2016 and 2020, but that may not be the case.
Harris surged in July and August when she replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket, but her momentum has since stalled. She has been unwilling to distance herself from Biden and unable to make a compelling case for herself on the big issues of the economy and immigration. Trump is feeding off of rosy nostalgia for the economic climate during his first term. He is winning handsomely with men while she is romping home with women voters. Harris draws strong support from college-educated voters while Trump is more popular with those who finished their education at high school level.
With America so deeply divided, and in light of what occurred after the 2020 election, it is natural that people are fretting about what might happen after this election result is declared, whenever that may be. In 2020 it took days four days for three days for the media to call the result and this election could be even closer. The capacity for tensions to spike is riskily high.
In past US elections, as soon as the writing was on the wall, the disappointed candidate invariably picked up the phone and, no doubt often through gritted teeth, congratulated the victor.
That did not happen in 2020 and it will clearly be difficult for Harris and Trump to unsay what they have so vehemently said during the campaign, especially as their more fervent followers earnestly believe the scary things they have heard at rallies and in hard-hitting TV ads.
Going on his record, Donald Trump is unlikely to accept electoral defeat and there will inevitably be legal challenges that could drag on. Activists will probably show up at count centres where tight contests are being decided, but I imagine that police services in potential flashpoint areas will have prepared themselves to handle such contingencies.
Do I think that we will see a repeat of January 6th 2021? No, because when history repeats itself, it’s rarely as a carbon copy. I don’t think that permission would be given for a rally in Washington to protest the outcome of this election.
Moreover, those who might be inclined to resort to violence will be aware that many of those who committed acts of violence in 2021 are now cooling their heels in prison. But with passions running high, unexpected things can unfold.
The key to defusing what could be a volatile situation in the event of a close call election result will be the behaviour of those in leadership positions. What will be badly needed on 6 or 7 November is graciousness in defeat – and in victory. Responsible politicians need to recognise America’s parlous condition on the back of political partisanship that has deepened so drastically in recent years, and seek to calm things down. They have a responsibility to conjure up a vocabulary of reconciliation capable of soothing the country’s divisions. That won’t easy and nor will such efforts deliver quick or guaranteed results.
Both sides routinely refer to the 2024 election as the most consequential in American history. I have just finished reading American journalist, Chris Wallace’s book about another consequential election, Countdown 1960: the behind-the-scenes story that changed America’s politics forever, when America was also divided down the middle, with many voters being deeply suspicious of JFK’s Catholicism.
In 1960, there were credible allegations of voter fraud and senior Republicans sought to mount a legal challenge to Kennedy’s victory. Richard Nixon would have none of it, even though Kennedy’s victory could have been reversed had his razor-thin margins in Texas and Illinois been overturned. In Wallace’s assessment, ‘Richard Nixon chose to do the right thing – what was best not for himself, but for his country’. Can victor and vanquished find a way in the coming weeks ‘to do the right thing’?
Daniel Mulhall is a retired Irish Ambassador to the USA and author of Pilgrim Soul: W.B. Yeats and the Ireland of his Time. He will speak about Yeats at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith on 5 December.
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