In these agonising moments when, as Michelle Obama put it last summer, “we all have that deep pit in [our] stomach[s], a palpable sense of dread about the future”, there is one question that haunts me. Who will lead the opposition if Donald Trump wins?
Where will the resistance come from if Republicans retain control of the House and flip the Senate, granting Trump unfettered power until at least the 2026 midterms? Who will champion the majority of Americans who are expected to reject Trump, even if the antiquated system of the electoral college means he wins the election? What happens if Trump’s grip tightens and the TV networks are shut down, as he has already threatened, and America’s right-wing oligarchs use unbridled power to loot the land?
Democrat governors such as Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Gavin Newsom in California and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania will stand up to another Trump administration, but their influence is restricted to their states. I want to know who would rally Americans nationally against Trump’s onslaught on democracy, his mass deportations and the persecution of his enemies? It can’t be the outgoing vice president, Kamala Harris, because a defeated candidate doesn’t become the leader of the opposition in the United States. She would have no standing or office after January and, despite her brilliant campaign, would probably not have the credibility.
It seems extraordinary to be asking this question, yet we must. The man campaigning to be the most powerful in the world feels free to fantasise, while being interviewed on stage by his buddy Tucker Carlson, about former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney having nine rifles trained on her face. Cheney has endorsed Harris, and Trump was talking about taking revenge with a firing squad, something that he would be emboldened to order because of the Supreme Court’s gift of immunity to serving presidents. Trump seemed to enjoy the idea; Tucker offered not the slightest murmur of disapproval.
I keep thinking Trump and his allies are going to commit a terminal offence against American decency, but not even in the last week of his campaign, which included the openly fascist rally at Madison Square Gardens, has his behaviour caused the universal outrage it would in the past. Things have certainly changed, or rather he has changed them by screwing with everyone’s mind and making them lose their bearings.
So, who will raise the standard and save American democracy if the monster wins a second term? It might, indeed, be Liz Cheney; she has shown great courage since the 6th January insurrection, and there’s a good argument that a principled conservative who believes in the Constitution and is on the right of the party (in the old sense) is the person to break the spell of Trump, bring America to its senses and calm the anger.
Or might it be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Like Bernie Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont, she has talked for years about the systemic problems of American democracy and the influence of big money in the country’s politics. Despite his formidable intellect and energy, Sanders at 83 is too old to lead the resistance. AOC is nearly half a century younger and is one of the most articulate, charismatic people on the US political stage. Still, though a lot has changed during this speed-of-light election, her national standing may not have increased to the point where she can bring down a tyrant.
It is often said that Las Vegas exposes all of a person’s hidden failings and vices, because the city is so geared towards vice. The same is true of US presidential elections. For a brief moment, we see society floodlit like a huge stadium, its deep flaws apparent, along with the bad faith, dishonesty and malevolence of so many politicians and political actors.
The scene is much more depressing now than in November 2008, when I watched Barack Obama make his acceptance speech in Chicago. Not a year later, just as we were getting used to the surge of optimism, the essayist and novelist Gore Vidal produced what seemed like a provocative downer by suggesting that America was ripe for dictatorship and that one might even follow the Obama presidency. Trump’s first administration was chaotic rather than despotic, but history may eventually record it as the preparatory term for dictatorship. Vidal may well have been on target; he saw a transformation in America that many others did not.
Vidal, an occasional politician, leaned towards a kind of populism—he was chair of the People’s Party for two years in the 1970s—and he would no doubt have agreed with Sanders on the immorality of American inequality: its three richest men are now worth more than half the population.
To understand the anger, or at least the part of it that hasn’t been driven by Trump’s racism, sexism and compulsion to tell women what to do with their bodies, you need only understand this inequality, and know that millions are working two or three jobs to buy food and keep a roof over their head. Forget paying for health insurance and prescription drugs and saving for old age or to send children to college—these are distant dreams for many Americans.
I have been visiting the United States regularly for about 30 years, and lived here for a spell at the beginning of the Clinton presidency. During those three decades the working class, usually referred to as the middle class in America, has endured deindustrialisation, the Great Recession and Covid. Their share of the country’s wealth fell from 37 per cent in 1990 to 26 per cent in 2022, while the richest 20 per cent of Americans increased their share from 61 per cent to 71 per cent.
This is a direct transfer of wealth from the bottom of society to the top and if I have one big criticism of the Harris campaign it is that she hasn’t focused on this indisputable fact. She hasn’t told people, “There’s a reason you feel angry about your life: the rich are taking all your money.”
This shortcoming wouldn’t have surprised Vidal, who was critical of both parties for their failure to deal with perpetual inequalities of American life and who ended his days saying the Republicans and Democrats were in a conspiracy against working Americans. His analysis explains the rise of Maga populism, even if it can’t make sense of why such a large number of hard-up working people support a man who promises tax cuts for billionaires, suicidal tariffs and the deportation of 20m people, the combination of which will almost certainly collapse the American economy and bring ruin to them.
So, back to my question. Who will defend American democracy? Who has the moral authority to stand up to Trump and the sickness he spreads? (This weekend, he appeared to fellate a microphone on stage.) New leaders will emerge from AOC’s generation but I believe the answer, for the time being, is the Obamas: Barack, who has returned to the campaign trail, and Michelle, who grows in stature every time she speaks. They have an aura, and Trump will find it more difficult to touch them—though he will surely try. “She opened up a little bit of something,” Trump said, in response to Michelle Obama’s criticism of him. “Oh, she was nasty. Shouldn’t be that way. That was a big mistake that she made.”
In these last five weeks, Barack Obama has provided the rational case for Harris, mocked Trump’s hucksterism and dishonesty and made the Republican look stupid—all with great aplomb. When he leaves his prepared script to address particular Trump outrages, you see the Obama of 2008: tearing into Trump’s allegations that Democrats were sending emergency funds to migrants after the hurricanes that ripped across the southeast, appealing to Republicans to stand up to the lies and misinformation that were destroying lives. After the warm-up act at Trump’s Madison Square Gardens rally called Puerto Rico “an island of garbage”, Obama stormed, “These are Americans. They are people. That is the reason why this election should not be close. Here’s a good rule: If somebody does not respect you, if somebody does not see you as fellow citizens with equal claim to opportunity, the pursuit of happiness, to the American dream, you should not vote for them.”
Perhaps the finest speech of the campaign was given by Michelle Obama, in Michigan on 26th October. It contains a takedown of Trump, intelligent praise for Harris and a moving and candid passage on the importance of protecting women’s reproductive health. I feel sure this issue has never been articulated so well on the American stage. “See fellows, most of us women, we suck up our pain and we deal with it alone. We don’t share our experiences with anyone. Not with our partners, our friends, or even our doctors,” she said. Millions of women across America must have nodded.
So, if you want an answer to who will provide the greatest resistance to Trump—a man who is contemptuous of all intelligent women, openly threatens female public figures and is an adjudicated rapist—it will be America’s women. Harris’s campaign has appealed to people of all races, religion and gender, as it should. But there is a strong sense that it is run by and for women, from Harris and the chair of the campaign, Jen O’Malley Dillon, to the numerous women who have endorsed Harris, like Taylor Swift, have appeared on stage with her, like Jennifer Lopez, or have sung for her, like Gracie Abrams—down to the legions of women bussed at the weekend to swing states to canvass and knock on doors.
Veteran Democrat campaign organiser James Carville is impressed by what he has seen. “A week ago, they had three busloads of people going from Westchester, north of New York, to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Multiply that by a gazillion. I have never seen the energy differential like this between Democrats and Republicans, maybe perhaps in 2008.”
Carville is cautious, despite the Obama comparison, because unknowns—like the impact of the insults hurled at Puerto Ricans and Latinos at Trump’s rally and the extent to which Republican women will vote for Harris—could change everything. On the night, he suggested I watch closely the results from Bucks and Northampton counties in Pennsylvania, New Hanover County in North Carolina and Gwinnett in Georgia. All of them are bellwethers and will provide an early indication of what’s happening.
Late last Saturday, an astonishing poll bore out what Carville had said about surprises. The Des Moines Register reported a sudden reversal in Trump’s fortunes in the solidly Republican state of Iowa, with Harris reportedly leading him 47 per cent to 44 per cent. According to the newspaper, the poll shows that “women, particularly those who are older or who are politically independent, are driving a late shift to Harris”.
Soon we will know whether this was a one-off or a sign of a serious shift in the electorate which would do for Trump. Let’s hope it is the latter.
See you on the other side.
