Why Kamala Harris Will Beat Donald Trump In US Presidential Election

By Tiko Okoye

Many eyebrows were raised when Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, given her very early exit from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. And throughout the last three-and-half years, Harris was generally dissed as a drag on Biden. But she unexpectedly and amazingly moved with the stone-cold deftness of a mafia boss to quell likely sources of opposition to her coronation by leaping like a charging bull from the starting line. And GOP aficionados, including Trump, who reasoned that she would be a much easier opponent are beginning to regret that Biden’s dismal debating performance opened the way for her emergence.

Nobody can honestly question the extraordinary energy, infectious camaraderie, effusive amity and tangible unity that have been the lot of the Democratic Party since the handing over of the baton to Harris in less than 30 short days – a period within which she has turned a majority of frustrated Dems, who were beginning to tearfully resign themselves to a Trump victory, into born-again believers and fighters in the process!

 

ALSO: US Election: Kamala Harris Promises To Be President For All

 

Of course, the United States is very peculiar in terms of democratic mores. Despite the one-man-one-vote mantra, the President is actually elected by an Electoral College skewed towards the GOP-leaning rural mid-America at the expense of the more populous and wealthier Dem-leaning states on the eastern and western coasts. Trump’s divisiveness and vitriolic vituperations have ensured that he isn’t a majority candidate, and will never be. He’s only counting on a sprinkling of MAGA extremists in targeted swing states to carry him past the finish line.

Recent polls show Harris leading Trump by 1-2 points in 5 out of 8 swing states. Even Trump’s home state of Florida that he won by 16 points in 2020 has suddenly turned purple with Trump currently ahead by 2 points, well within the margin of error, not to mention the highly intensive anti-Trump campaign ads that ‘Never-Trumpers’ and ‘Republicans-for-Kamala’ are running in the crucial swing states!

To give Biden his due credit, he isn’t a failed president as conservative and mainstream media organisations and GOP spin doctors would have us believe. Here’s a man who assumed office at a time the US economy was suffering a recession caused by Trump’s atrocious handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that caused more than one million deaths and closure of many businesses. Biden submitted economic recovery bills to the Senate – at a time Democrats still controlled the House – but not a single GOP senator signed on at the behest of Trump and VP Harris had to often hop across from the White House to the Senate to cast the tie-breaking vote!

What Biden achieved in 4 years surpassed what most other presidents did in 8 years. His policies – eked out like water from a hard rock, given Trump’s vice-like grip on GOP Congressmen – resulted in the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, expansion of Obamacare to include more impoverished Americans, capping insulin for seniors at the unbelievable price of $35, retooling America’s decrepit infrastructures and funding climate-control projects.

It is tempting to forget that the southern border situation worsened rather than improved during Trump’s 4 years in office, during which period he couldn’t even build the wall he had promised. A conservative Bible-Belt Republican led a bipartisan effort to crystallise an immigration bill that would pass muster, only for most of his GOP colleagues to develop cold feet when Trump ordered them to cease and desist because he wanted to make the border issue a campaign plank. The difference in the character of both men is easy to see. While alluding to the reason why he decided to drop out, in a speech at the Democratic convention, Biden conceded that “I love this job,” before quickly interjecting with “But I love my country more.” Trump clearly loves being president again far more than he loves his country, and voters will take due notice.

The real coco of the matter is the messenger, not the message. Despite all Biden’s achievements, GOP strategists successfully scripted a compelling narrative around the “too-old-and-too-senile-to-be-president” trolls. Which is very ironic considering that Biden is only three years older than Trump and the latter is notorious for his ranting and muddled-up identification of people, places and events, but one hardly heard mainstream and conservative media talk about them, as they conspiratorially attributed every misstep to “Trump is just being Trump”! A new messenger is on the block, and although the message practically remains the same, Team Trump is still searching for ways to effectively handle the Kamala-mania phenomenon!

Trump has made character assessment of candidates in a presidential election no longer relevant. It wasn’t too long ago when damaged goods like Trump were too ashamed to show their faces in the public arena and never considered running again for elective office. Voters would move to restore the dignity of the Oval Office and integrity of its occupant by voting against Trump. Forget immigration and nominal economics and the party that occupies the White House. Ordinary Americans are more interested in who will more directly impact their everyday wellbeing.

Harris, a product of a working family, has been harping about rebuilding the middle class as the way to economically empower majority of Americans to live out the American dream. On his part, Trump would opt for the old GOP tactic of significantly reducing taxes for the wealthy on the grounds that it would drive expansionist economic investments, despite this trickle-down economic theory never really panning out as being touted. But in actuality, Trump would just be seeking a way to profit his businesses and raise funds to cover his humongous legal debts.

It beggars belief that the very same analysts and commentators who lauded Generation Z voters, whose massive support for Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, broke the stereotypical mould that saw a candidate of Igbo extraction winning in the unlikeliest places, are the same ones claiming that Barack Obama’s electoral victories in 2008 and 2012 were mere aberrations, and that Americans are not yet ready to elect a female president – and another black one to boot. What will they think of next?

I can only sympathise with the “many Nigerian Christians” who have reportedly formed prayer groups to shamelessly support the return of a race-baiter, agent provocateur, convicted felon, misogynist, con artist, pathological liar, gaslighter, philanderer, serial-divorcee, blasphemer, election denier and fascist like Trump to the White House, simply on the basis of ostensibly being more favourable to “legal immigrants and anti-abortion policies,” because they neither understand nor fully appreciate what they are asking for. Let me first convey the bad news to such Nigerians that going by the “2025 Conservative Mandate for Leadership” – a 900-page manual that contains Trump’s talking points for a second stint – only White Christians from Europe will be eligible.

Completely shut out are Blacks, Muslims and Latinos from “shithole” countries. But nothing should surprise the rest of us because it is the same arrogant group of sanctimonious Pharisees who would rather holler for Barabbas to be released than do what’s right.

And I would love to know what these anti-abortionists would do in situations where their 12-year-old daughter or sister is impregnated by a close relative or a rapist or when the life of a close relative carrying a complicated pregnancy hangs in the balance. Talk is cheap!

Trump and GOP aficionados must be ruing the missed opportunity to nip Harris’s gravitas in the bud. Harris contested a state-wide election for the very first time in 2010, and was struggling to shed the same San Francisco far-left liberal label that Trump has resuscitated. But even back then, Trump, as a New York-based real estate developer seeking new opportunities in California, contributed the sum of $6,000 to her campaign. If only he had taken a deeper gaze in the crystal ball!

National Republicans foresaw the long-term threat a diamond-in-the-rough Democrat like Harris could pose in the future, and commenced a counter-strike against her. The gambit was codenamed “Killing Hercules in the crib” in their dirty tricks playbook, a reference to an ancient Greek folklore in which Hera, the wife of Zeus, the mythical king of the gods, knew that Hercules (original Greek version is Herakles) was her husband’s illegitimate son with a mortal female and tried every way possible to kill him as soon as he was born. Initially christened Alcaeus –after his mother, Alcmene – Zeus rechristened him, after foiling so many efforts by Hera to snuff life out of the child, Herakles, meaning “Glory of Hera,” signifying that he would become famous through his difficulties with the goddess.

The plan centred around a brutal testimonial of the mother of a slain police officer who criticised Harris as a far-left liberal who refused to seek the death penalty for the gang member who killed her son. Harris eventually emerged victorious in one of the tightest races ever in California. The moral of the story is that there’s no killing the beetle. If Republicans couldn’t do it when she was cutting her teeth in politics, they won’t be able to stop her ‘Big Mo’ going forward or kill a Hercules who has since overgrown cribs. Who knows, Kamala might just end up rechristened Trumpala after the smoke finally clears!

The 4-5 point post-convention bounce that would accrue to Harris would see her “honeymoon with Americans” extend all the way to November 5. After taking cognisance of both the temporal and spiritual angles, I’m fully persuaded that contrary to the very tight race most pundits are predicting, the election will be a blowout.

• Ichie Okoye, a Boston University Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow, investment banker, microfinance expert, newspaper columnist and public affairs analyst, wrote in from Abuja