Remember, remember, the 5th of November…

It’s election day — almost. Across the world, Americans will soon be waking up to do (if they haven’t already done) the thing everyone has been assuring them is the most important action they can possibly take this year: vote.

It’s a big day. Bigger than it was 4 years ago, when Donald Trump was voted out. Bigger than it was 8 years ago, when Donald Trump was voted in.

Today is the day democracy may die.

Do you remember what that was like, the first time? Hearing Trump had won, or watching it happen? Realising Hillary had the popular vote, but the keystone states had been lost and would not be recovered before the count was done?

My entire adult life, it feels, has become marked by the US election cycle. Every four years, the 5th of November becomes the date that will change the direction of the whole world.

That comes with a lot of build-up.

I’ve been asked a lot what it was like in America, being there right before the election, by a few different people since I got back. Honestly, outside of the news on my phone (something I would see at home anyway), and being absolutely inundated with overheard audio advertisements either attacking or endorsing some woman named Jackie (and those same sort of ads being run at a lesser scale about Kamala) there really wasn’t all that much talk about the election at all.

Some guy did catch me grinning at his alcohol-infused conversation with his friend across the bar in which he made a very convincing point that they wouldn’t let any of the regular everyday people sitting in the bar become president. But they’ll let him?

Another couple at a casino table told me cheerfully they’d be out of the country at that time — best to avoid the elections, they find. They always book their holidays for then.

It’s unerring, waiting for an outcome like this. An outcome that, whatever it is, will change everything.

But in some ways, the outcome of the election, which we will probably find out sometime tomorrow, doesn’t change anything at all. Whether Trump loses or wins, there will still be a bunch of very angry people on both sides of the divide. The right are angry that the economy isn’t booming like they’ve become accustomed to, and that makes the pinch of those corporate profits being sucked out of the economy squeeze even tighter. And the left are angry for the same economic reasons, though they at least know Trump won’t fix it, and they sort of know that neither will Kamala, though and Kamala is probably going to try to make it a little better. But neither candidate will really reverse America‘s decline. Neither candidate is actually willing to hold at bay neoliberalism’s steady march, let alone work to reverse it. Nor will they solve international conflicts like Ghaza, another situation voters on both sides want to see resolved.

The difference in this election is simply whether democracy continues. And that doesn’t leave much room on the ballot for anything else, even when the news and the candidates themselves pretend otherwise.

Kamala’s true intentions towards policy are a bit of a mystery, torn as she is between the people voting for her and the people funding her. Donald’s intentions are equally vague, though we do have his ‘deconstruct the democratic state’ bullet-point list courtesy of Project 2025, as well as his promises to start arresting everyone who’s ever spoken out against him peppered in between his lies about what he has and hasn’t said and some strange stories about a golfer’s penis size.

I’m reminded once more that weak political competition makes for weak politics. I fear that will be the outcome if Kamala Harris wins the presidency, as I predict and pray will happen. There is simply not a solid enough drive from the opposition to push her to fix America’s problems, for her to be the champion of the people that America so wanted Obama to be in 2008.

America’s first female president could reshape society. But history would indicate she will simply allow it to continue, perhaps with a haircut, a light trim, maybe a tidy-away of some split ends.

After all, the pressure on her is not to fix the country.

It’s simply to not be Donald Trump.