AS we enter the final stretch of a seemingly endless presidential election campaign in America, we can be thankful it happens only every four years. But even before the vote counting exercise begins, politicians are already eyeing the 2020 election. And so it goes in the land of the perpetual election cycle.

But this year has been a particularly sorry advertisement for American democracy. Neither candidate inspires; if anything, they are both singularly unattractive. Had I been an American voter, I would be hard-pressed to choose between the two. As so often in an election, I suppose it’s a matter of choosing between the lesser of the two evils on offer. Here, the majority of voters seem to prefer Hillary Clinton, at least according to pollsters.

I suppose it’s true that as an experienced politician, she offers the safer of the two options. All too often, Donald Trump comes across as an ignorant blowhard who has all the sensitivity and sophistication of a bull in a china shop. And his often bizarre and misogynistic rhetoric seems about to sink his candidacy. And yet, among his off-the-cuff rants, he does manage to say some sensible things. For instance, when he says the US invasion of Iraq was a disaster, and that Clinton had voted for the war, he’s not wrong. He has also come out against the Washington lobbyists and has advocated term limits on congressmen. His point is that some senators and members of the House of Representatives serve for decades, accumulating contacts that they then use when they become lobbyists.

Clinton, on the other hand, makes safe and sensible policy proposals. However, they cannot obscure the fact that she is extremely hawkish in her views. Had she been president instead of Obama, the US would almost certainly have gone to war against the Assad regime in Syria and probably bombed nuclear sites in Iran. And if elected, she will be, without question, the most pro-Israel American president in recent history. Her questionable links to Wall Street banks and corporations makes her pledges to help the working class ring hollow. Above all, her shifting positions about her use of a private server for official emails have made millions of Americans very suspicious of her.

So here we are with the two least popular candidates in American electoral history. Recently, the Public Broadcasting Service — an independent, non-profit American channel — aired a long documentary about Clinton and Trump, going back to their youth and the influences and experiences that shaped them. Clinton’s father was a harsh, domineering man who never praised his bright and high-achieving daughter. When she was first in class, he mocked the school for giving her such good grades. Thus, she learned early not to be open about her achievements and ambitions.

Trump’s father, a successful businessman, instilled the notion that the world consists of winners and losers into his son at an early age. Trump’s brother tried to carve out his own career as an airline pilot, only to hear his father sneeringly ask how his job was different from a bus driver’s. He took to drink and died early. As a result, Trump is a teetotaller and has developed a bullying, hard-driving approach to business.

There is a common misperception that the bulk of his support comes from white, working-class voters. According to received wisdom, these are the people whose lifestyle and aspirations have been crushed by the globalisation that has transformed the world’s economic landscape over the last quarter century or so. Thus, Democrats who plan to vote for Clinton, as well as most of the liberal media, look down on Trump supporters as ignorant rednecks.

However, according to a Gallop poll of 87,000 voters conducted last month, those who support Trump had an average income of $72,000, well above the national average. More revealingly, 44pc of them had college degrees, also well above the national average of 29pc. According to Sarah Smarsh, an American with a working-class background writing recently in the Guardian, liberal American pundits continue disseminating a factually inaccurate picture of Trump’s support base by blaming the working class for his rise.

And to be fair, much of the blame should be borne by the media that has given Trump free coverage worth millions of dollars because his blunt, and often offensive, remarks makes for higher ratings. Clearly, his support partly comes from whites who have been increasingly marginalised by the rising numbers of non-white Americans. Many men also feel threatened by the empowerment of women. Indeed, the death rate among working-class white American men is alarming, with many taking to drugs and alcohol. Suicides have reached unprecedented levels among this demographic.

Smarsh concludes her article on this telling note: “The economic gulf between reporter and reported-on has never been more hazardous than at this moment of historic wealth disparity, when stories focus more on the stock market than on people who own no stocks.

“American journalism has been obtuse about the grievances on Main Street for decades — surely a factor in digging the hole of resentment that Trump’s venom now fills. That the term ‘populism’ has become pejorative should give us pause. A journalism that embodies the plutocracy it is supposed to critique has lost the respect of [working-class people].”

Given the polarisation and the bitterness that marks the ongoing campaign, it is doubtful that this divide will be bridged with the election of the next president on Nov 8. The whole Trump phenomenon is the result of growing income inequality, and the reluctance of the political elites to address the hollowing out of the middle class. Sadly, neither candidate has shown the will to tackle the toughest problem of our times.

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2016

Opinion

Editorial

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