US democracy is under scanner

As the United States (US) approaches the end of its election, the world is on edge. Rarely has there been as disruptive a political force as the one represented by Donald Trump, with its promise of remaking the American State and the international order. Yes, Trump fought and won in 2016 and fought and lost in 2020. But the context has changed.

Trump today is the leader of a more coherent ideological movement and a more effective organisational machine. The movement is a broad coalition of groups that see themselves as American nationalists with different policy items animating them. The Christian Right wants abortion bans and more Christianised education. Economic protectionists want manufacturing to return to the US and see existing international trade arrangements as harming American interests. National libertarians want to dismantle the American regulatory tate. White supremacists peddle conspiracy theories about the changing demographic patterns and engage in anti-immigrant violence. National security hawks want a strong adversarial line on China but also a more focused US that retreats from Europe and realigns its relations with Russia. Crypto champions want State leniency. Elements of the tech universe and big business want less government intervention in some respects and more in others. Social conservatives want to make changes in the evolving pedagogy around sexuality and attack individual liberty. All these groups see in Trump a vehicle to pursue their ambitions.

But besides this radical agenda, Trump also brings to the table his own unpredictable personality and history of treating opponents as enemies, rejecting electoral outcomes, inconsistent compliance with the law, dismissing multilateralism, and viewing the world solely through very narrow American interests. If he wins the White House, the Republicans take the Senate and manage to retain the House, and with the Supreme Court already ideologically aligned to the MAGA agenda, there is a possibility of such a leader effectively determining the direction of all three branches of the US government. The world should then worry about American democratic backsliding.

Challenging the Trump movement is Kamala Harris, who, to her credit, has mounted a powerful campaign in just 100 days and presented Americans with a stark choice. She has made two issues the most salient in her narrative. The first is abortion. Harris has effectively used Trump’s nomination of three judges to the Supreme Court, the court’s reversal of abortion protections, the abortion bans in several states and subsequent human suffering, to carve out both a story of women’s individual autonomy being undermined but also how Trump’s re-election can jeopardise other individual freedoms. Her lead among women voters could well make this an abortion-centric election. The other theme is Trump’s extremism, refusal to abide by democratic norms, open threats of political vendetta, and the fact that many of Trump’s past advisors and aides see him as a danger or a fascist or both to make a case to voters that he isn’t worth risking America’s future. As the first woman who is Black and South Asian to be the nominee of a major party, Harris is on the cusp of making history. Her policies will have their own flavour but her approach to policymaking will be more in line with Joe Biden’s past four years, offering a degree of continuity over disruption.

The key test for the US next week, however, is completing the election peacefully, maintaining both the integrity of the electoral process and the perception of integrity, getting the results right, and then, for both sides to unhesitatingly accept the outcome. Any post-election turbulence for the second time in a row will severely damage the credibility of American democracy.

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