The streets stay silent as America splits between Trump and Harris

From New York to Iowa City, the presidential race unfolds in controlled private spaces, suggesting a democracy run by elites rather than people.

Democratic Party presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris waves to the crowd during a campaign event in Chandler, Arizona, on October 10.  | Photo Credit: Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERS

New York; Chicago; Washington, DC; Iowa City; small towns in Virginia, Illinois, and Iowa; everywhere in the US that I have visited over the past few weeks, I looked for signs of the approaching presidential election, when the country will choose Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, a choice that will also have a far-reaching impact across the world. But there are hardly any signs of such a portentous event, apart from the occasional MAGA (Make America Great Again) cap or small placards endorsing Harris or Trump outside some suburban residences, stuck prettily in the endlessly green lawns that canopy American suburbia and require more piped water to maintain than entire populations of smaller Third World countries.

This is very strange to my eyes, used to elections in India and Denmark. The streets of India are rife with posters, graffiti, flags, banners—and blaring loudspeakers—before any election, let alone national ones. Deduct the public loudspeakers, and Denmark is far more like India than the US during national elections: multiple posters sprout on every electric pole and layer all vacant surfaces in public spaces. In the US, it appears that the action takes place in oases: private venues, halls, the occasional burger joint, and so on, which are carefully selected by the heavily paid teams that manage the campaigns of the main presidential candidates.

Less than three weeks from D-Day, public spaces in most parts of the US bear very few signs of the election, compared with the two very different kinds of democracies of India and Denmark. Even the American TV channels, despite Fox, are far less raucous, and you are more likely to catch a football or baseball match while surfing channels than panels of politicians and experts shouting at one another.

So, that is the first question I put to the Americans I met: What do you think of the coming election? The main response that I got was very different from what my friends (all university people) and family (all immigrants) had been giving me. My friends and family members were worried about the election. My university friends—many of them white Americans—are all staunch Democrats, and they detest the idea of someone like Trump representing their country. They are particularly concerned about its impact on democracy in the US and the climate crisis globally.

Former US President Donald Trump joined by Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla and Space X, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, on October 5.  | Photo Credit: Justin Merriman/Bloomberg

My family—and I have cousins and second cousins spread across the country, employed as teachers, doctors, in the IT sector, etc.—has traditionally voted Democrat, but they are torn this time. Coming from Muslim backgrounds, they cannot ignore Joe Biden’s disastrous policy in the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, but more than that they find it difficult to accept the fact that the Democrats, under Biden and when endorsing Harris, expressly silenced even moderate Palestinian voices in their own ranks. They see this as an undemocratic act and greet the Democrat rhetoric about the threat to American democracy if Trump is elected with a bitter smile.

Some are considering voting for the Green Party, not because they expect it to win but because if the party gets 5 per cent of the votes, it will be officially part of the ballot and get governmental funding for the next election. They feel, as do around 60 per cent of all Americans, that the US needs a third party officially. But they are also aware that it is a gamble, and their votes might be wasted, enabling Trump, with his maverick policies, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and racist ideas, to win.

In a recent post, Mehdi Hasan, the prominent British-American journalist and TV broadcaster, took direct aim at this dilemma and implicitly urged Muslim Americans and other peoples sympathetic to the Palestinian cause not to waste their votes. He suggested that they should vote Democrat, despite the fact, as he put it, that Harris and her people have done nothing to assuage their concerns. He also added a necessary addendum: If you lose, Hasan told the Harris team, do not blame it on Muslims or other ethnic minorities as they have consistently voted for you in the past and many will vote for you this time too. However, over the past few elections, Hasan noted, the majority of white Americans have voted Republican, and this pattern is likely to be repeated in 2024.

One starts to understand the relatively low decibel nature of the US presidential election when talking to ordinary Americans outside the above circles: Americans who are not university educated or who are not immigrants from South Asia, both (despite the growing Hindutva section among the diaspora) generally vote Democrat and are politically motivated. As an African American taxi driver in Cedar Rapids put it when asked about the election: “Man, this is way above my league.” When pressed, he did have a few opinions, but it was obvious that he was not going to vote.

This was also the position of a few young people: “What difference will it make?” said three different young men, in three different places, almost echoing each other’s words. There seems to be far more political consciousness in the bigger university campuses than in the smaller ones, but it is still unlikely that the vast majority of university students—most of them leaning towards progressive, and hence by default Democrat values—will pull themselves away from their iPhones to actually cast their vote. It seems to me that, despite some Democrat awareness of the problem, the low-decibel nature of the US presidential election is fashioned to discourage ordinary people from getting too politically involved. The 2020 turnout, at 65 per cent, was a record, but as late as 1996, it had dipped to under 50 per cent.

Highlights

• Despite signs of the turnout rising over the past three elections, it can fall this year, when there is much dissatisfaction with both the mainstream parties. 
• Politics is carefully kept off the streets in this country. Even areas within the same State are hard-dyed blue or red: they almost never change.
• Behind the scenes, US policy is influenced by various “power PACs [political action committees] and super PACs”, the reason why so many young Americans feel today that no matter who they vote for there will not be any significant change in US policies.

Despite signs of the turnout rising over the past three elections, it can fall this year, when there is much dissatisfaction with both the mainstream parties. The Republican voters I spoke to actually held out more hope for change—change that suits them (“Build the wall!”)—if Trump wins, than Democrat voters supporting Harris, who seemed to largely focus on the dangers of another chaotic Trump presidency. Trump also, despite Democrat attempts to dismiss it, is associated, rightly or wrongly, with cheaper food prices during his tenure, while Biden is associated with inflation.

As a nation, the US is deeply and equally divided, but the lines cut too cleanly. Republican voters caricature almost all Democrat positions, and Democrat voters are often unable to understand why some people would want to vote for Trump. Much of this division is educational and vocational. But it does not seem to lead to any real engagement between the two sides, as entire States are just expected to roll along and vote Republican or Democrat. Politics is carefully kept off the streets in this country. Even areas within the same State are hard-dyed blue or red: they almost never change.

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein at a rally in Michigan on October 6. Some are considering voting for the Green Party because if it gets 5 per cent of the votes it will be officially part of the ballot and get governmental funding for the next election.  | Photo Credit: Rebecca Cook/REUTERS

For instance, Iowa City will vote Democrat, while all around it, in the State of Iowa, people will vote Republican: predictably, Iowa will go Republican like the last time. Next door, Illinois is a safe Democrat State. There are only three or four “flip States” that will decide the election. This is very different from India, where any State can and does flip suddenly and entirely. In Denmark too, there can be significant shifts across the land.

In other words, for me, the political discussion is more vibrant in India and Denmark than in the US. This might not seem apparent as the processes of elections in the US are heavily institutionalised and the rest of the world loyally follows its institutional shows as broadcast on CNN, and so on, and then re-relayed by BBC and other TV channels. We watch a curated debate on TV between the US candidates, and especially in India, we are impressed by American democracy.

But has there really been a debate? Have the real issues even been mentioned? Did the concerns percolate down to the streets or percolate up from them? You can call what exists in the US a vibrant democracy, but it strikes me more as a kind of republican oligarchy—fashioned on the “republican” States of ancient Greece, where groups of powerful people ran the show, rather than on the more popular notion of power to the people as it evolved with the French Revolution of 1789. Maybe that is why the streets of the US are so bare of the signs of the upcoming election.

And yet, the nature of presidential elections in the US might be changing, and 2024 can mark a crucial change. We have long known that, behind the scenes, US policy is influenced by various “power PACs [political action committees] and super PACs”, the reason why so many young Americans feel today that no matter who they vote for there will not be any significant change in US policies.

US foreign policy especially remains remarkably consistent, focussed on preserving its financial interests and global clout despite the costs it may inflict on others in faraway lands. This is almost inevitable, as the power PACs are funded by American millionaires and corporations, and many of their financial interests lie outside the geographical limits of the US.

As against this existent base of power, civil society, represented by various minorities, has become increasingly active in recent years. This cuts across various levels: the Black Lives Matter movement revived remnants of the Civil Rights heritage, the pro-abortion movement has revitalised feminists, and then you have various other groups ranged around ethnicity, sexuality, among others. Many of these people are among the most politicised Americans. Trump knows this too, and he has worked consistently on creating a kind of “major minority” of disenchanted white Americans. He motivated enough of them last time to have them storm Capitol Hill when he lost to try to overturn a democratic verdict. The US penchant for “personal identity” helps in this kind of politics.

The question in 2024 might be which of these many “minorities” manage to influence that vast America—about 50 per cent—in the middle that, given the decorous nature of US presidential elections and the total capture of US democracy by vested power PACs, usually shrugs away its voting rights. This might be the change to note. 

Tabish Khair is an Indian novelist and academic who teaches in Denmark.