By Phakamile Hlubi-Majola
With 30 days or so left till election night on November 5, the US presidential campaign circus is only ramping up in levels of absurdity, unpredictability and entertainment. The candidates are polling neck and neck in a race, which in a few short months has provided endless fascination, especially for observers.
Let me recap for those who don’t know how we got here. US President Joe Biden, the erstwhile Democratic Party candidate, stepped down from seeking a second presidential term in July. As seismic as that moment was, it was simply Biden keeping a promise he had made prior to assuming office in 2019 that he would only serve for one term. Like many politicians who have tasted power, Biden seemed to have conveniently forgotten that he made such a pledge, hence his reluctance to step aside for a younger candidate.
The current US leader’s hand was forced by his catastrophic and catatonic performance at the first presidential debate against Donald Trump, the Republican Party candidate, whom Biden had defeated in the 2020 presidential election. Biden’s age and senility were laid bare in the Hollywood style spectacle that the ebullient US mainstream media, with their eyes firmly on the ratings prize (and seemingly unable to break Trump’s spell over the US public), had hyped up immensely.
In its aftermath, the substance of the debate was barely mentioned. The fact that both candidates pledged to continue funding Israel’s forever genocidal war machinery against Palestine, barely got a mention. The fact that both candidates pledged to continue to exploit America’s oil resources and ensure that the US remains one of the world’s leading polluters was barely a footnote in the press.
The spectacle of the duopoly
What mattered, and by design, was the entertainment value because the differences between the two parties that the candidates represented are minor. Many scholars refer to the US political system as a duopoly, which is an enforced two party system that blocks the emergence of any other political movement that seeks to exist outside of the current paradigm. The evidence of this are the numerous and clearly undemocratic steps that the Democratic Party, for example has taken during the current election cycle, to block the participation of third party candidates like Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Jill Stein and Claudia De La Cruz on the ballot. These third party candidates have one thing in common: They are proposing socialist alternatives as a permanent solution to a Capitalist system which continues to fail to create decent living conditions for the majority of people.
The goal of the American duopoly is to entrench the dominance of capital and promote the free market capitalist system. It exists to guarantee the wealth of the 1 percent. America’s global superpower status is due to a century’s long history of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. It has built its wealth off slave labour, and destructive imperialistic wars and the duopoly is not concerned with reversing the impact of this shameful legacy. The media in America participates in this by actively censoring alternative viewpoints and reinforcing the false idea that the American public only two choices - Democrat or Republican and that these are two very different options, when in fact, they are not. This is like being forced to choose between Satan and his ‘Lord of Demons’, Beelzebub. Either option means that life for the working class is hell.
The outcome of the first debate was significant. The doyenne of the Democratic Party, its leader Nancy Pelosi and former president Barack Obama convinced a reluctant Biden to step down, after he failed to assure them that he had a credible path to victory. On his way out, Biden endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris to replace him on the presidential ticket, as a last act of defiance. Biden did this even after Pelosi, Obama and other senior Democrats had professed their preference for a mini primary contest to select his replacement. Biden’s action perhaps might even prove to be a prescient act of revenge. No doubt, the November 5 election will determine this.
Joyful warriors, immiserated working class
Biden’s relinquishing of the candidacy changed the race for the Democrats by energising the campaign. The mainstream media reported high levels of enthusiasm for Harris and with breathless reportage from the likes of MSNBC, the polling shifted significantly in the Democrat’s favour. Harris’ campaign, which for more than a month had no published policy positions, was named “Joy” in what was a clear attempt to copy Obama’s “Hope” campaign, which had won him a sizeable victory in 2008 against Republican John McCain. This is liberalism at its best – sell the people something intangible like ‘hope’ and in this case ‘joy’, instead of addressing the dire material conditions that are negatively affecting them. It’s like feeding a hungry person crack. The impact is that they will be high and happy for a while but their hunger and suffering persists and remains unresolved.
Harris successfully rode the media and publicity wave for a few weeks after the launch of her campaign, and raised millions in funding as a result. In early August, she selected Governor Tim Waltz as her running mate. Waltz’s successful attacks against Trump on TV interviews had put him on the radar of the Harris campaign.
By the time the first debate of the new presidential race (now Harris vs Trump) arrived on the 10th of September, the Trump campaign was, for all intents and purposes, flailing, according to the mainstream media. The stage was set for another spectacle.
Harris was declared winner after performing better than Trump. She had the support and backing of the ABC moderators who only fact checked Trump. Harris’ momentum however, has been short-lived because the positive bump she had received from the debate has dissipated, leaving a race that is now, according to polls, too close to call.
Harris’s reluctance to conduct interviews with media that is not sympathetic to her campaign has been a source of criticism, and has been partly blamed for the tightening race, especially in the handful of states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. These are known as battleground states due to their historical predilection to shift loyalties between the two parties during presidential elections.
This shying away from tough interviews is seemingly shared by both Harris and Waltz. It recalls Trump’s hilarious characterisation of “Sleepy Joe Biden being wheeled out of the basement” at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic during the previous election cycle.
October surprises in a race too close to call
US presidential elections have previously produced an “October Surprise”. This is an event or a revelation that has an outsized impact on the race, and it often occurs during the last few weeks before the elections, when there is little any candidate can do to clean it up. The contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 is remembered for a number of October surprises that rocked both campaigns.
For Trump, it was the release of the Access Hollywood tape, which was a recording of the candidate using expletives to refer to women. For Clinton, it was the announcement by then FBI director James Comey, launching an investigation into the candidate’s use of a private email server for government communications. Both these revelations were seismic and are believed by many to have shaken the race and ultimately resulted in a Trump victory.
It can be argued that all there is to know about Trump is already public. Furthermore, he is a convicted felon, who is facing a number of other charges, including attempting a coup in order to cling to power on January 6th 2021 after he lost the 2020 contest to Biden, and yet he is in as good a position as Harris to win. It is difficult to discern where an October surprise that is detrimental to the Trump campaign could come from, but anything is possible.
For the Harris campaign, the surprises are coming in aplenty. Two events come to mind: the extension of the genocidal war by Israel Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Gaza to Lebanon, raining down thousands of pounds of American supplied bombs on the innocent civilians of another country, and the deadly impact of Hurricane Helene on the southern parts of the US, which has left in its wake destruction and destitution. How Biden and Harris’ government (she is still the current vice president) respond to these two events may yet portend the outcome of the election. Her allies in the media have been promoting the possibility of a Black female president, in the hope that this will be enough to persuade the voting public.
As things stand, the race is too close to call, and with 30 days to go, prepare yourself for a political spectacle like no other. However, be advised, that not much will change in the lives of the masses.
At least 37.9 million people live in poverty. Every day, an average of 7 children are murdered in school because of school shootings, which seemingly have become normalised. More than 100 million Americans have medical debt of some kind, which forces many people to choose between spending money on food, or spending it on healthcare. The result is that over 8 million people have no choice but to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Is this what they mean when they talk about the American dream?
These are some of the burning issues that are affecting families in America, but a Trump or Harris Presidency will not significantly change these conditions. I cannot help but remember Tupac Shakur’s incisive observation in his song “Keep your Head up”:
“You know, it's funny when it rains it pours
They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor
Said it ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is
It ain't no hope for the future
And then they wonder why we crazy.”
* Phakamile Hlubi-Majola is a Socialist and former Journalist. She writes in her own personal capacity
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.