If there is one question the world cannot wait for an answer to, it is this: Clinton or Trump?
Polls, from the most respected to the not-so-well known, are keeping the Hillary Clinton and the Donald Trump camps on tenterhooks. And so too the rest of the US and the world.
After the presidential debates, polls gave Democratic contender Clinton a comfortable six-point lead. But now that is no longer assured. Republican nominee Trump is closer than anticipated. Will the world see the unlikely happen, as in the British vote to exit the European Union earlier this year — which beat most predictions?
Until polling day on November 8 no one can be sure. A wave of popularity saw Trump through the primaries. He has the support of those hurt by the economic crisis since 2008. For them, Trump’s rightwing conservatism led by the promise of “making America great again” holds out hope.
Initially, few paid attention to Trump. The media considered him a non-entity. As columnist Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker , the Republican party initially endured him, then tolerated him before finally turning that into blind, partisan allegiance. The Guardian newspaper even described him as a joker in the pack.
As the campaign progressed, Trump emerged ahead of 17 contenders. He struck a chord among the underclass dealing with unemployment and grappling with the prospects of a gloomy future.
Trump’s plans to end the open culture of immigration that has characterised the US for years, his intention to build a wall between the US and Mexico to stem illegal migrants, and his threat to stop Muslims from entering the country, to the surprise of analysts, endeared him to voters who have intensified support for his campaign. Thousands with pro-Trump views, on the margins and not generally consulted on their opinions, may be invisible to the media but that does not mean they don’t count.
Moreover, Trump cannot be viewed in isolation. His views are in tune with similar sentiments across Europe and Latin America. Many are veering towards a protectionist mindset. Jobs are drying up, the economic meltdown continues in various forms, some visible but mostly unseen, while xenophobia is encroaching on a culture of liberal tolerance. Britain’s shock vote to leave the EU, aka Brexit, in June this year was a pointer to the unease among local populations over the entry of outsiders who were perceived to be taking over scarce jobs.
Why BrexitThe reasons for the pro-Brexit vote was that the government in London was losing control, that all decisions were being taken at the EU headquarters Brussels compounded by the unchecked entry of continental Europeans into the country.
What was surprising about the Brexit vote, and similar to the situation in the US, is that the intelligentsia had taken it for granted that the referendum would favour Britain staying on in the EU. Brexit is a shock that Britain has not yet recovered from.
In Latin America, leftist governments in Brazil and Argentina are being challenged by a right-wing conservative resurgence. Post-Chavez Venezuela has seen President Nicolas Maduro in trouble with every chance that the successor government will be a conservative one. In France, in the 2017 presidential elections Marine Le Pen will be the right-wing candidate. Denmark, Hungary and Poland too have veered to the right, as also Greece and Austria. The current extended period of global economic crisis can be compared to the 1930s recession which saw the rise of ultra-conservatives in Germany, the fascists, culminating in war. As John Palmer says in The Guardian , the rise of far right parties across Europe is a chilling echo of the 1930s.
The current global situation is different compared to the 1930s but there is no denying that the world continues to reel from the effects of the 2008 recession. If Trump does lose to Clinton the US will still take a while to recover from the toxic election campaign.
The simmering anger among a sizeable section of the population against immigrants, the inability of the government to facilitate creation of jobs, and the failure to pump new life into many of the dying cities in the US cannot be wished away by Clinton.
The writer is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru and formerly an editor at Al Jazeera