Dear Editor,

On November 5 Americans will finalise their choice of president for the next four years. The two main presidential candidates on the ballot will be Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Political pundits seem to be in agreement that the race is too close to call. A few outliers are, however, predicting landslide victories for both Harris and Trump. These outliers are convinced that the polls cannot be trusted after the spectacular Trump victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Both candidates have been hammering each other on the issues of the economy, abortion, and immigration. Former President Trump, ever the master of hyperbole, would have the American public believe that the economy was the best it had ever been under his presidency.

Trump has also been ratcheting up his claims that the blood of the American nation is being poisoned by immigrants who are swarming over the southern border. Trump has also promised to put an end to critical race theory and curb aspects of the transgender agenda.

Vice-President Harris when asked initially if there was anything she would have done differently to President Joe Biden did not have to think long before replying that there was nothing that she could think of. Perhaps after giving the question the though it deserved, she later said that her presidency would not be a continuation of the Biden presidency. The fallout from her initial response might very well be reflected in the cold response she is receiving in the large Muslim population in the swing state of Michigan.

In an interview with Joy Reid of MSNBC, Michael Moore stated that the Democratic Party intended to bypass the Muslim vote in Michigan and seek instead to energise previous non-voters in the state to come out in support of Harris. Michael Moore’s humanity was on full display when he stated that he could not in good conscience ask Muslims who had lost friends and family members in Gaza to support Harris, who is as complicit in the atrocities in Gaza as is President Biden.

If the polls are correct and this is a razor-thin election, Vice-President Harris will only have herself to blame for not putting some distance between herself and the horrendous policies of Biden that have alienated Muslims and other sectors of the Democratic Party coalition. Vice-President Harris could have done herself a favour by hinting that she was willing to do what none of her male counterparts had the testicular fortitude to do vis-à-vis the settler colonial State of Israel.

On the lighter side, many of us are still trying to recover from the revelation made by Trump that illegal Haitian immigrants were eating the dogs, cats, and pets of the residences of Springfield, Ohio. The look on Vice-President Harris’s face was priceless. She gave Trump the same look an adult would give to a toddler who had just said or done something totally ridiculous. Vice-President Harris may be leading Trump on substance, but she is clearly trailing Trump on comedic content.

In a sane universe the outcome of this election would be a no-brainer. Vice-President Harris should win by a landslide if the American political landscape was sane. Americans already had four years to see what a Trump presidency would look like. President Trump imposed a travel ban on Muslims that caused Americans and people of other nationalities to stage protests. He mishandled the pandemic resulting in America leading the world in deaths from COVID-19, and his controversial wall at the southern border has failed to solve the immigration issue.

Trumped is on record stating that he wants to be a dictator for a day and that once he is elected Americans would not have to vote again. Trump is also on record saying that he intends to go after his political enemies if he is re-elected.

Mehdi Hasan and other journalists in America have pointed out that some of Trump’s rhetoric comes straight from the Adolf Hitler playbook. Even when Trump was challenged about some of his Hitlerian language, Trump doubled down and continued to use the same language.

There is an old proverb which says that when a man or woman tells you who they are you should believe them. In his first term, when some of his supporters suggested that Trump was joking about the wall, Trump contradicted his supporters and told them point blank that he was dead serious about building his wall. The American public has been forewarned about what a second Trump term will look like.

The election of Trump for a second term would serve as concrete evidence that the US is locked in a time warp with the segment of the Caucasian population that is hell-bent on preserving for themselves the control of the levers of political power in perpetuity. Should Trump win and proceed to trash the constitution and launch a reign of terror against immigrants and all his political enemies, America would have got exactly what that nation deserves, and as our great ancestor Malcolm X said, “The chickens would have come home to roost.”

The election of Harris will not mean that a state of nirvana will be realised by Americans after November 5. America will still have to battle with the demons of systemic racism and poverty. Additionally, extreme militarism, ecological devastation, and Christian nationalism will continue to create stress in the American ecosphere. It is hoped that Vice-President Harris, if she is elected, will bring to the table sufficient ovarian elasticity to tackle some of these vexing problems.

On a personal note, this is the first American election that I have a real stake in. Over a decade and a half ago I predicted to my daughter Kamalia that Harris would become the president of the United States. Her election to the position of vice-president, in spite of the odds that were stacked against her, further convinced me that she would reach the top of the political ladder in America. In just a few days I will know if my prediction was on target.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka

rodneynimrod2@gmail.com