NO matter the outcome of tomorrow’s presidential election in the United States of America, the result will install fundamental change in the perception of what America means in the modern world.
This is not only because the psychological instability of one and the gender of the other major candidate is unprecedented, but also because the electorate has been thrown into an improbable foray of confused selection and choice.
Former President Donald Trump, an aspirant seeking a comeback has surprised everyone including a large proportion of his former loyalists by deciding to promote sentiments of outright authoritarian prejudice as the core impulse of his ideological attitude.
However, in doing so he has unearthed a large following of supporters among the American citizenry, and revealed that the popular vote in the American heartland which is characterised as the so-called “battleground states” could very well fall in his favour.
What this probability indicates is that the fundamental historical sentiment of racial superiority and manipulation which is responsible for America’s long-lasting imperial ascendancy is still a powerful element of populist sentiment in the polity.
Also, Former President Trump has decided to provoke or in fact to encourage this sentiment as the basis for the restoration of his ambition.
On the other hand Vice President Kamala Harris is pursuing the White House faced with former President Trump’s acceptance of the worst instincts of traditional political sentiment of the American system.
She is thus confronted with an uphill struggle in her endeavour to establish common sense values and the feasibility of female candidature as realistic and relevant to her own ambition.
We recall her complicated pathway to achieve the candidacy as compared to the trajectory of Donald Trump’s seizure of the Republican Party’s ticket. Her emergence as the favourite of the Democratic Party arose as a result of confusion over the age and suitability of the incumbent President Joe Biden.
That circumstance has confused the electorate in their wholesale assessment of her suitability and preparedness to take office. Because of this she decided to depend to a large extent on support from celebrity politicians and famous people from other fields of endeavour in order to match and compete with the public profile of her adversary.
The feasibility of this strategy being a winning one is dependent on the average voter’s perception of how the arguments of the candidates on issues of economic and social relevance affect their lives.
Unfortunately, when this decision is being made in times of political contestation in America, it has been observed that the voting public can be swayed by issues that are less important and the controversy that arose in 2020 after the last election revealed that Donald Trump is a master of the art of rendering the irrelevant relevant.
The victory of either side will install the kind of leader that America has never had before, Trump intends to change the trajectory of his leadership structurally to serve a very authoritarian tenure.
A Kamala Presidency, apart from her gender, will offer the very unique original perspective of her background. In either case the choice will have been made by a much divided electorate.