A united GOP under Trump – convicted felon and wannabe dictator – or an uncertain Democratic party and country unfamiliar with Harris, whose main message is ‘Stop Trump’ – the choice for American voters.
The US continues to endure serious, historic levels of turmoil in another highly contentious election year, with no clear end in sight. The superpower entered 2024 with a deep sense of foreboding, but the political class is lurching from one crisis to another. It now appears to be in the middle of a predicament resembling that of 1968 which led to the withdrawal of President Lyndon B. Johnson from the election. This followed the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr, and Senator Robert Kennedy who was running for the Democratic nomination, student uprisings against the Vietnam War, and the unflinching resistance of the Vietnamese people that inspired the Tet offensive.
2024 is arguably much worse. Widely acknowledged levels of domestic political polarisation or, rather, ‘factionalisation’, are almost unprecedented since the civil war era (1861-65). The US (and world) are still reeling from the Trump-led attempted coup and insurrection of 6 January 2021, the prosecution and conviction of the Republican nominee on 34 criminal charges, the recent failed assassination attempt on his life, and resignation of the head of the secret service. The fire has only been further stoked by the dramatic withdrawal of President Biden from seeking the Democratic nomination for a second term, and his replacement by Kamala Harris, with around 100 days until the 5 November election. Harris would become the first woman of colour to be nominated for president by a major political party. She is the daughter of an Indian-American mother and Jamaican-American father.
The already bloodied and bruised reputation of the US, the world’s lone superpower, continues to be battered by this recent turn of events. These signify the deepening of the ongoing political crisis of legitimacy that the United States has been embroiled in for several decades, but especially since the Iraq war and the financial crash of 2008.
