ALL ARE NOT WELCOME: The people were removed from this presidential portrait by tear gas and military violence. Photograph by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI | Credit: AFP via Getty Images.
You are forgiven if, like me, you’ve been looking for but failing to find a coherent election campaign featuring Donald Trump, the current president, versus Joe Biden, the inevitable Democratic nominee for that same office.
It could be argued that the election has been submerged beneath the turmoil of converging injustices connected by 500 years of systemic racism — the pandemic and George Floyd’s murder. The truth is you can’t find the Trump vs. Biden election because it isn’t happening. Democracy’s essential feature — a debate that lays out and contrasts different visions of a country’s future — is MIA in America.
The presidential race will be determined when one of them loses by running the most self-defeating, politically suicidal or merely uninspiring campaign.
Instead, we are viewing two separate, disconnected political battles: Trump vs. Trump and Biden vs. Biden. The presidential race will be determined when one of them loses by running the most self-defeating, politically suicidal or merely uninspiring campaign — the campaign that excels at alienating or failing to turn out its potential voters. The next four years will then determine whether there was a winner or, alternatively, whether everyone lost, including the American people.
