DOUGLAS KENNEDY ON THE ELECTION - LA TRIBUNE DIMANCHE - CHRONIQUE 8

27 October 2024

MY MAINE VILLAGE AND THE STATIC POLL NUMBERS OF KAMALA HARRIS

Autumn in New England. A constant, unclouded sky… its hue best described as Yves Klein Blue. Incandescent sunlight – as pellucid as it is radiant. The temperature hovers around six degrees centigrade most mornings – crisp, bracing. And then there is the foliage – the trees everywhere a riot of crimson red and auburn and muted gold. The absolute sublimity of this season draws me back every October to my home in Maine. Because seeing its wonders is a reminder: American Pastoral does exist.

Of course this autumn, every other house in my Maine village has a political sign out front, indicating candidate preference. The place I call home is a small place – just over 4000 inhabitants – the town boundaries stretching from the coast to about 15km inland. Politically Maine is a divided state. The coast is largely Democratic, the extreme north seriously Republican. Ditto the western expanses of the state. We are a state with few people (a population of 1.3 million) and much space. And though Biden carried the state in the last election the way our electoral vote system works meant that, given the closeness of the result and the fact that Trump won Maine’s northern district. two electoral votes were added to Biden’s column, one to Trump’s.

I mention all this because, given the absolute closeness of the result this year, it could prove very possible that that one northern electoral vote in Maine will determine who wins The White House – a thought which is, quite frankly, vertiginous (a word I have been using far too frequently during this perplexing election season).

Back during the Pandemic Election of 2020 half of my village voted for Biden, half for Trump – with Biden getting (if my memory serves me) around twenty more votes than the then sitting President. I wasn’t surprised at the divided result. Despite facing the water (the coast is usually Democratic) and geographically mid-state, the fact that half of my neighbors voted for such an extreme candidate wasn’t a shock. As I noted earlier Maine – like so many corners of the United States – is profoundly divided. We have a Democratic woman governor who is a model of sensible progressivism. Both our congressional representatives are Democrats. Our junior senator Angus King is a hugely respected, thoughtful man who runs as an Independent, but who lobbies with the Democrats. Even our other long-serving Republican senator, Susan Collins, used to be considered a moderate… but backed Trump’s extreme rightwing candidates for the Supreme Court (though she did vote for his impeachment the second time around). 

As such even our one Republican in Washington isn’t from the extreme right wing of the Party. But given Maine’s political centrism and social progressivism (we have gay marriage, we abolished the death penalty, marijuana is legal, abortion rights are guaranteed), the fact that over 40% of our citizens will still likely vote Trump in just over two weeks is a sign of our stratified times. A receptionist for a doctor I see whenever back home – I’ll call her June – told me that, besides being terrified of Trump’s return as President (“It will be the end of American democracy”), many of her neighbors (in a town just up the coast from my own) actually like his demagogic style.

“The fact that they are backing this bum is, for me, unbelievable. But the moment I try to have a conversation with them about Harris – and why she is the one thing keeping us from a dictator  – I get shouted down and told that I am a crazy leftwinger… whereas I’m a moderate like so many people in Maine”.

Even June’s boss, Dr Lyons (again not his real name), informed me during my checkup that he has always considered himself a conservative Republican… “but I simply cannot vote for a man who has been convicted of so many crimes and who truly endangers our Constitution”.

Would that more Republicans thought like Dr. Lyons. That is the secret hope of many Democratic strategists this year: that there will be enough troubled Republicans in key swing states who will follow the lead of former Vice President (and hard conservative) Dick Cheney and will decide that (though she might be miles away from their political agenda) Kamala Harris is the safer pair of hands.

But this, in turn, raises another key question about this most baffling of elections: given Trump’s lengthy lists of crimes and misdemeanors (including being found guilty in a civil trial of rape); given that he has pledged witch hunts against his opponents, that he tends to ramble and talk surreal nonsense in his speeches, and that even many in his own party believe him to be unstable and dangerous… why then does the race remain virtually tied? Why isn’t Harris – as many an American commentator has asked –running away with this election?

Two words might explain her inability to pull away from Trump in the polls: misogyny and racism.

Let’s deal with the second word. Though we did elect a half-African American President in 2008 and 2012 the fact remains that the triumph of Trump in 2016 was angry white America’s refutation of Obama’s two terms in office. Racism is part of the psychic bedrock of the United States. From its inception the South was a proud slave owning territory. Even after The Civil War it practiced a rigorous form of apartheid that continued well into the 1970s (despite federal legislation guaranteeing equal right for African Americans). The North was hardly a progressive paradise for Americans of color – as seen by their ghettoization over the years in almost all US cities. Even now, after the Obama Presidency, the extreme position of Trump and his MAGA supporters is underscored by a racist subtext – as can be seen in Trump’s manifold attacks on Harris… in which he has all but said: You know she is not just half-African American and half-Indian… but also (shock! horror!) a woman.

Which brings us back to the first word I cited as the key stumbling block to a Harris victory: misogyny. The Washington Post last week noted that unspoken sexism might be one of the central reasons why the race is so close, and cited a thirty-eight year old Las Vegas woman construction worker who hates Trump’s extremities and thinks he’s an all-American embarrassment. But she still said two things that were very telling: “[Trump] fights to keep us safe”… and “I don’t think I would ever vote for a woman to be President. Women are kinda all over the place”.

While there are millions of educated American women who would think otherwise (not to mention all the men supporting Harris – as she is now holding 47% of the total electorate), these rather sexist words from a working-class woman sum up a long-standing barrier in American politics: the belief that being President is ‘man’s work’. It’s a role so rigorous and overwhelming that it needs male assurance, gravitas and (when it comes to the tough decisions) actual cojones. More tellingly the President is the Commander and Chief of the US Armed Forces. Surely that is also, without question, man’s work. 

What is intriguing by this stance is that it runs contrary to the Republican Party’s adoration of Margaret Thatcher during her many terms as the Conservative Prime Minister of the UK. But Britain is a parliamentary democracy… and not one where the President is seen as the pere familias of the United States. Perhaps if a Conservative Republican woman was running this time – a Nikki Haley for example (Trump’s UN Ambassador who challenged him for the Republican nomination) – the Party Faithful would rally behind her… because she is not the feminist and pro-choice social progressive that Harris is.  And because Haley supports conservative family values.

Is it any surprise that a wholly capable, rational, highly intelligent, principled and tough candidate like Harris can’t leapfrog Trump in the polls? Misogyny and racism are - as they say in boxing - a one-two punch.