Elections in the United States have been perceived as the gold standard, with millions of people across the globe tuning in to watch party primaries and the elections. It’s therefore not surprising that the global consensus is that the US is the bastion of democratic freedoms.
On the other hand, those of developing nations like Nigeria and many other African, Asian, East European and Latino nations have remained shambolic and fraught with all manner of despicable electoral heists and practices, such as vote-buying, voter-suppression, judicial intimidation and election denials.
It’s on this basis that opposition parties and civil society organisations (CSOs) supporting them tend to send SOS appeal letters to government leaders in the US, and other Western countries, to call “unruly” political leaders in their countries to order by either denying them travel visas or publicly denounce them.
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But, particularly in the case of the US, all this would seem to have changed with the electoral defeat of incumbent POTUS Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Trump and his lily-livered enablers and MAGA cult worshippers in the GOP have crazily maintained – much in the same manner as candidates in developing countries they love to denigrate as shithole – that he was rigged out and his mandate “stolen” by a gang-up of Democrats, judges, journalists and the “Deep State.”
In addition to the commonplace election denials by GOP candidates who lose elections, there’s a sleuth of undeniable proofs of rampant voter suppression and intimidation – along with gerrymandering of voting districts – embarked on by the Republican Party.
And now, the world’s richest man and owner of X, formerly Twitter, Elon Musk, who has been actively campaigning alongside Trump has been doling out $1m cheques to winners of a lottery of new voters who indicate a likelihood to vote for Trump.
Isn’t this the US high-tech version of vote-buying and how is it any different from what politicians do here? It isn’t surprising that the Attorney-General of Pennsylvania has sued him for running an illegal lottery.
But if you ask me, I prefer the N5-10k politicians dash many thousands of people in Nigeria to million-dollar Musk expends to buy the votes of few hundreds in the US.
But the real issue remains the grounds on which affected CSOs and opposition politicians run to the White House in vain attempts to interfere in Nigeria’s internal affairs. Shouldn’t it be appropriate to ask Nakedness what it is wearing before rushing to beg her to dash you a dress?
Trump is the GOP candidate contesting presidential election against VP Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party. To give Trump his due credit, he pushed Joe Biden to withdraw from the race and hand over the baton to Harris on the grounds of a terrible TV debate and highly successful stereotyping of the erstwhile Democratic candidate as “too old to be in office” – even though Trump is only three years younger and has now become the oldest Presidential candidate in US history; he also seems to be exhibiting the same signs of dementia Biden allegedly suffers from.
It speaks volumes of the paradoxical situation Trump finds himself in that despite the historically-high unfavourable 70+ rating of the Biden/Harris administration, Harris not only famously succeeded in projecting herself as the agent of change and a new way forward, but the race still remains tight and too close to call, implying that it would’ve been a walk-in-the-park for any other GOP candidate other than Trump.
It must also be remembered that while Trump has had many years to prepare his case, Harris had only three months to both staunch the hemorrhaging of the disillusioned and frustrated Biden-led Democratic Party and sell herself to millions of US voters. Never has this happened in US history.
And not only did Harris have time working against her, but she’s a woman, and the general mood of majority of US voters steadfastly holds that a woman doesn’t have the character and liver to safely steer the ship of the most powerful nation in the world in deep waters infested with monstrous carnivores like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
And when you juxtapose the foregoing attitude with how Hilary Clinton’s presumptive victory collapsed at the last minute against Trump in 2016, you can then begin to appreciate the exceedingly difficult odds stacked against Harris.
It should beggar belief that despite all the humongous excess baggage she’s forced to carry, Harris succeeded to blotting out the wide margins in poll numbers Trump chalked up over Biden, and the former must be ruing the day Biden dropped out of the race after initially reasoning that a woman with very little national name recognition (despite being incumbent VP) and tied to Biden would be a much easier prey to ‘devour.’ How mistaken they’ve turned out to be!
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The position is now so dire that despite his bragging about winning all seven swing states that will deliver more than the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win, Trump is already doing what he knows how best to do: preparing to confuse US voters if he can’t convince them!
Trump is already dusting the cover of the playbook he used in the 2020 election and it goes like this:
(1) Claim to be on a winning streak (already being done);
(2) Have polls issued by unethical polling organisations selected and funded by the Republican National Committee (RNC) to show Trump ‘leading’ by outrageously wide margins to support Trump’s audacious claim (already being done);
(3) Embark on voter suppression and intimidation through multi-faceted legal chicanery, with the intention to be fully backed by a GOP super-majority Supreme Court that has already conferred an unbelievable amount of immunity on Trump (already being done);
(4) Declare victory tomorrow night when in-person votes preferred by GOP voters are counted but mail-in votes and early voting preferred by Democratic supporters are waiting to be counted, just like he did in 2020 (work in progress, although the historically high early and mail-in voting by both GOP and Dem supporters this year might complicate things somewhat);
(5) Seek sympathetic Supreme Court’s intervention to approve his version of “actual” voting results compiled by GOP election deniers (work in progress).
There’s just one fly in Trump’s ointment. The VP constitutionally mandated to lay down the OFFICIAL Electoral College votes at a joint meeting of Congress in January 2025 is the SAME Harris who contested against him, and it remains to be seen whether a tit for tat will play out should Trump emerge victorious!
Truth be told, many GOP leaders believe Harris would be doing them a great favour by defeating Trump to gift them a golden opportunity to rebuild the party along TRUE conservative values from scratch, but they’re afraid to openly say so out of fear of reprisal attacks by the MAGA mob. At 78 years, Trump’s hold on the GOP would wane if he loses this election, but if he wins, the Republican Party he has built in his own image would remain for many years to come.
Now my last words:
The 2024 presidential election is less about policies and more about the direction in which the US is headed: Unity versus Division. Forward-looking versus Backward-looking. Bonding with age-old allies versus Being subservient to age-long enemies.
Given Trump’s dark messaging, many Republican voters will pinch their nostrils and vote for Harris, not really because they like her as just voting against Trump or they may opt not to vote at all.
Considering that female reproductive rights have snowballed into a cardinal issue even in deep-red states like Louisiana, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, North Carolina, etc., coupled with the debasing language Trump uses to address woman and his widely-reported sexual escapades, look to see many GOP suburban housewives breaking with their husbands and voting for Harris WITHOUT telling them the truth.
The earth-shaking poll in deep-red Iowa this past weekend released by a pollster with impeccable antecedents that suddenly showed Harris leading Trump by three points is a clear case in point
Based on the foregoing, I predict that Kamala Harris will beat Donald Trump, contrary to all the opinions I’ve been reading about the election in Nigeria. But please don’t rub it in if I’m proved wrong because I ain’t claiming to be a prophet!
*Okoye, a public affairs commentator, writes from the United States
