OPINION: US Elections: prepare for a Trump Battle of Bull Run

Last Updated on Sunday, 3 November 2024, 15:37 by Writer

By GHK Lall

It’s over. The talking and snarling and insulting, that is. The voting, too. Time for the new set of controversies and headaches of democracy to capture the headlines, suck in the courts, polarize Americans some more, and immigrants-in-waiting at the border to start walking backwards. Regardless of which contestant wins. The problem for Vice President Kamala Harris is that even if she wins, she loses. There are too many races that give every appearance of being squeakers. This one is. Sorry, but that will not do. Not with Donald J. Trump. To beat him one has to sweep him. Really sweep the man. Younger Guyanese in the local political fold should consult with one of the well-traveled veterans in the Office of the President about sweeping. If that party is willing to talk, and mind works straight, then there should be an education for them about the use of brooms and the call to street sweeping and sweep them out. All it takes is a walk down Guyana’s political memory lane, and there it was, and with what results…

Should VP Harris edge ahead by narrow margins in such head-to-head states as Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, the dogs will be let loose. I guarantee it. Cheat! The biggest cheater ever! Bigger than Joe Biden. There was January 2021. Get ready for 2025, all of it. A little birdie told me that Kamala Harris is not Al Gore. There is just too much of that legacy Jamaican spirit in her to yield to such a fine red-blooded American as DJ Trump. He can’t wait to start spinning and singing, come Wednesday morning, if not as early as late Tuesday night. This is serious stuff; nobody is talking about music, notwithstanding the reference to spinning and swinging.

For one, Mr. Trump is no one to go easy into the night, or willingly to pasture. What is there left for him to do? Wage an endless series of battles with debtors, the media, and enemies more imagined than real? As a practical matter, it is alarming that a society as mature and sophisticated as America could fall for a demagogue in the image of that one from 1930s Germany. All those educated people. All those constitutional scholars and watchdogs and checks and balances, and a character straight out of Loony Tunes could hold tens of millions of American voters captive. To his racist ideology. The code word is immigration. To his paroxysm of paranoia and dementia. Who eats their pets? It is not all play-acting. Let me be frank: America has its big, bad cohort of unreconstructed Confederates, some of whom are right here in Oil Guyana for the long haul. But not all of America is the deep backwoods of Appalachia, the one of moonshine and where Blacks, Jews, Roman Catholics, foreigners, and the Wall Street establishment are all children of the devil. In case my dear fellow Guyanese are wondering, I had the rare honor of four strikes out of five, which is why I hurried to find a resting place here. To my regret, I miscalculated, for I went from the devil to the deep muddy sea: for there is the trio of the PPP Government, Irfaan Ali, Anil Nandlall, and Bharrat Jagdeo. It is enough to push anyone to take up serious drinking. Seriously, and as a matter of individual safety, why would any still sane nonwhite person want to live in a Don Trump America? The mafia dons were bad, but they couldn’t hold a candle to this fella. But it’s time to tighten the talk on the US elections.

Too many pivotal states will be too close to call, and that is to Mr. Trump’s advantage. Rumors of fraud. Allegations of fraud. Dogged insistence of fraud, with no letting up, no stepping back. Not this time. There’s no Mitch McConnell to rise in the Senate, stand before the media, have his finest hour, and pull off a rearguard saving operation of democracy in America. Forewarned is forearmed, and there is no better precedent than Jan 6, 2021, in the USA, when the mobs ran rampant. Who is there to play the heroic role of Sir Lancelot? The once majestic US Supreme Court is mentally creaky, somewhat iffy, and a bit of a sleeper. Meanwhile, the people with the keys to the future, those in the Electoral College, are presently a mystery, leaving few with so much as a clue.

It is time to make a call. It will be a close one. A political Pandora’s box that will be unleashed into the proceedings. VP Harris should win the popular vote. But like one Hilary Rodham Clinton, she could still end up out of the White House and in the cold come inauguration day. Once all the loose ends are overcome, my prediction is that that is how the 2024 US presidential race will be decided. Too close to call in vital spots, will be the call that Kamala Harris fought the good fight but ended up second.