Viswanathan K's Thoughts

As the US Presidential election date comes closer, the gap between Kamala Harris and Trump has reduced and they are almost neck to neck now. After the huge enthusiasm when she became the candidate (in money pouring in and in the pre-polls conducted back then), how could this have happened?   Andrew Sullivan feels the root cause is that nobody knows what she stands for: “This is the first presidential candidate who doesn’t seem to want you to know what she’ll actually do, or what she really thinks about anything much.” Normally such a candidate would have never cleared the shortlist (what the Americans call their primaries). But of course, the party never had primaries: “She is there because of a corrupt Democratic clique that hid Biden’s rapid decline until it was too late to have a real primary, then panicked at the thought of a chaotic convention, and simply anointed this hack — because no white male or female would run against a black woman and risk their political fut...

What is the appeal of a guy like Trump? The American Left’s “answer” to that question – white supremist, racism, gynophobia, xenophobia - never felt satisfying to me. While some fraction of his supporters definitely fall in those categories, surely not half of the country. How could half the country have turned into those things within months of Trump running for power the first time?   Andrew Sullivan’s post provided another answer, one which feels more likely. The one-line summary of it: “Trump has grasped some core truths of our time.” He expands on that.   First , immigrants in America. A part of that problem is the (relative) ease with which the Democrats want to grant even illegal immigrants eventual citizenship. But more than that, it is the change in who qualifies for asylum. In the Cold War era, asylum seekers were mostly to those escaping communism. This set was relatively small and thus manageable (most escapees went to Western Europe, not America); and...