Abortion to Zelenskyy: The A-Z of the US presidential elections

Abortion

Democrats have framed the first presidential election since the US Supreme Court (SC) struck down national protection for abortion rights in 2022 as an existential battle to reclaim the woman’s right over her body and preserve other freedoms. If Kamala Harris wins, 2024 will be remembered as the election that turned on abortion; it will be propelled by furious women voters who reject the infringement on their autonomy.

The battle over abortion is a case study on how political success can be fatal. Till abortion was an issue to rally the base, it helped Republicans. Once the party accomplished its objective of undoing Roe V Wade, the implications hit home, the backlash began and the other side found an issue to rally the base, get the independents and consolidate women. Trump sees it. And while wanting to take credit for appointing the judges who delivered the verdict, he is reframing it as a state rights issue, rejecting the Democratic claim that he would sign a national abortion ban, and, somewhat bizarrely, calling himself the “Father of IVF” to allay apprehensions that Republicans will attack fertility treatments next.

In a way, the 2024 election hinges on a single question: How angry are America’s women, and how many will turn out to express this anger?

Biden

After the Democratic party’s relative success in the midterms in 2022, Joe Biden succumbed to the temptation of fighting for another term instead of being a bridge to the next generation of leadership. He did have a competent record — strong legislative successes on infrastructure, semiconductors, climate, an economic record that combined post-pandemic recovery, robust job creation, growth, and boost to domestic manufacturing. But he faced serious challenges on inflation and immigration, with his record on Gaza fracturing the base.

Except that, on June 27 this year, it became clear that this wasn’t a contest on the basis of record at all. The octogenarian candidate was asking voters to trust him to do one of the world’s most difficult jobs that require hyper-focus and constant judgment for four more years, without showing the ability for it. Biden’s disastrous debate performance exposed his age-related deficits. It generated a backlash, his candidacy became unviable. He reluctantly withdrew from the race and endorsed Kamala Harris.

If Harris wins, Democrats will remember Biden for being a transformative figure who ultimately did the right thing. If Harris loses, Biden is likely to feel that he should have stayed on in the race, while others will blame him for staying on till too late. Either way, any history of the 2024 election will have to factor in the role of the Delaware politician who was once America’s youngest senator and then its oldest president.

Christian nationalism

The Republican Party is the home of the Christian Right. But under Trump, whose personal life and actions don’t quite align with the Christian precepts, the separation between the church and the state is on the verge of breaking down completely. Trump has framed himself as the protector of the religion, openly promised different Christian denominations influence over power and policy, enabled fundamentalists to shape law and jurisprudence, thrown the weight of the American state completely behind missionaries abroad, empowered mobs working under the the rubric of religion, and relentlessly attacked Democrats as opposed to Christianity.

Like dominant religious majorities insecure of religious plurality in society, desperate to ensure their imprint over the state remains absolute, and angry with the secularisation of society, Christian conservatives operate with a mix of belligerence and victimhood. They have sensed an opportunity to shape politics and returned the favour by deploying their network of churches behind Trump.

In the first term, abortion was the most obvious outcome of America’s far-right religious fundamentalist imprint on its society. With JD Vance, a recently converted Catholic, as his vice president; Mike Johnson, who has said that the Bible determines his political positions, as either the House speaker or the minority leader; and a constellation of judges pushed to their positions due to the endorsement of the religious right, a Republican win will truly make America a Christian state.

Democracy

Donald Trump does not like his power being constrained. And he does not like being held to account for his actions. All through his business career, American law and Trump’s instincts collided, leading to multiple cases. In his first term, American constitutionalism and Trump’s actions were at odds, leading to two impeachments. And after his 2020 defeat, America’s democratic outcome and Trump’s refusal to play by rules collided, leading to his effort to block the peaceful transfer of power.

If he wins, Democrats worry that Trump will be in a unique position of actually getting rid of constraints. The former president has been open about it. He will pardon himself of federal criminal charges. He will pardon all those charged in the January 6 mob violence. He will take over the Department of Justice and has spoken of using the military to go after political rivals. He has used violent rhetoric against “fake news”. He will use the SC’s expanded definition of presidential powers to act even more arbitrarily. And he may well attempt to change America’s electoral rules in some form.

For their part, Republicans frame Democrats as the challenge to democracy, alleging that the cases against Trump represent the “weaponisation” of the justice system against a political opponent. They also accuse Democrats of censoring speech, of using the “deep state” to subvert popular will, and of interfering with elections. America today lacks a consensus on the basic rules of the democratic game, with both sides believing that the other side subverts rules at will and can’t be trusted with power. That itself is a risk to democracy.

“Enemy within”

Trump has made it clear that he views domestic political opponents, who he refers to as “enemies within”, as the primary challenge to America rather than adversaries abroad.

All accounts and his own interviews suggest that Trump harbours a sense of victimhood, convinced that the American political and legal system first trapped him in an investigation related to Russian interference in the 2016 elections, then in a Ukraine-related impeachment scandal, then in blocking what he sees (without basis) as his rightful win in the 2020 elections, and then through the “weaponisation” of the judicial system by entrapping him in cases. To Trump, all of this justifies him reciprocating in kind, and he has openly threatened to not just use law but also the military and National Guard against rivals and protesters. He has specifically named Democratic figures such as Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, his most outspoken critics, as “enemies”.

Expect to hear more of this rhetoric when Trump wins. And expect to see it translated into action in a clear sign of American democratic decay and backsliding.

Felon

Never before has a former president who is a convicted felon come so close to returning to the White House as president in American history.

Trump has been convicted of business fraud in a New York case that implicates him of paying hush money to an adult film actress to influence elections, and then fudge business records to obscure the reasons for the payment by making it appear to be legal fees for a lawyer who was actually being reimbursed. This is just one of the many other, more serious, cases that Trump faces, from his alleged obstruction of the 2020 election result certification to his decision to take classified files after leaving office to pressuring state officials to change electoral results.

But if Democrats had thought that the cases would hurt Trump politically, they were mistaken. Trump remained unapologetic, made the cases a badge of his martyrdom, raised funds each time there was a new allegation, used his mugshot to pretend to be a political victim paying the price of personal liberty for the people at large, and rewrote the rules of American politics in the process.

Gaza

Israel’s war against Hamas after the terror group’s October 7 strikes extended into a war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, prompting allegations of genocide. For those critical of the war (and it is impossible and inhumane to justify the killing of close to 45,000 people, half of them children), Israel’s principal backer, America, was equally responsible for the war. The Biden administration faced an avalanche of protests, from students and progressives and the Arab-American population for its role in the war, while coming under attack from the Jewish-American community for not doing enough to support Israel or combat anti-Semitism.

Harris walked into the election with this baggage. She has attempted to walk a fine line, supporting Israel yet being critical of it, and her campaign hopes this will be enough to sustain both the support of Jewish-Americans and neutralise the anger of the Left and Muslim voters. For Trump, the conflict offered the opportunity to blame the Biden administration for weakness and appeasing Iran; to claim that Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel at all if he was president; and to promise an end to war.

Whether Gaza keeps a part of the Democratic base away from the polling booth in swing states such as Michigan will be an important variable in the election.

Housing

While inflation remains a big issue in the election, within that, housing prices have generated the most intense anger and alienated a large segment of younger voters from Democrats. Higher prices led to the Fed raising interest rates. Loans became unaffordable. The housing market didn’t move as quickly as it usually does in urban centres in America. Rent costs went up. And young Americans and middle-class Americans either saw a large portion of their salaries go to pay rents or had to give up on dreams of owning a house.

This, then, is the backdrop in which Trump has leveraged housing prices to paint a story of the unattainable American dream under the Biden administration. And this is the backdrop in which Harris has sought to tell the story of how owning a home was so important to her family, and how her administration would support first-time homeowners with a $25,000 down payment assistance. Whether the anger of the past four years prevails, or the hopes for the next four, will be a factor in voting.

Immigration

Trump’s signature slogan in 2016 was building the wall to stem the flow of immigrants from the southern border. His signature theme in the 2024 election is a cry against the “invasion” of “illegal aliens”. He has claimed that many of them have come from prisons and “mental institutions”, that the Biden administration opened the border to millions of these people who are causing havoc in American cities, and that Harris — as the border czar — was responsible for the crisis. Trump has also promised the largest mass deportation exercise in US history, a promise, if implemented, will lead to massive disruption both to American society and economy and inevitably human rights abuses.

Harris has sought to deflect the criticism by blaming Trump for torpedoing a bipartisan border security bill to run on a problem rather than solve it; she visited Arizona to project herself as tough on the border and leaned into her past as a prosecutor who has charged transnational criminal gangs; and she has promised to sign the border bill if elected. These are all important steps for Harris to move to the centre on the issue and align with mainstream American opinion, but if immigration is the top-most issue for a majority of voters, Trump is going to have an edge in this election.

Judiciary

The election of the political executive and the composition of the legislature shapes the nature of the judiciary in America. That’s why Trump’s nomination of three SC justices, confirmed by a Republican Senate, led to the most dramatic reshaping of American jurisprudence. Six justices, conservative to extreme Right, have prevailed over three liberal justices not just to reverse abortion protections but also to weaken regulatory institutions, take away the executive’s power to enforce environmental norms and expand the president’s powers to make him effectively immune from crime.

In this election, the Supreme Court’s future is on the ballot. If Trump wins, and Republicans take the Senate, which appears almost certain, the American far-right has an opportunity to shape the nature of the court for another generation. The White House may nudge two of the older right-wing judges to resign after their long stints; this will give Trump room to nominate two much younger ideologically-aligned judges, who the Republican Senate will confirm. Trump will also have the opportunity to nominate judges at all other levels, leaving his imprint on the larger court system for years to come.

Kennedy Jr

The most intriguing figure of this election has been Robert F Kennedy Jr, son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy. A maverick with an amalgamation of political views from the far-right and far-left, RFK Jr has a history of peddling anti-science conspiracy theories and is known for his opposition to vaccines.

By aborting his race and backing Trump, Kennedy Jr allowed Republicans to claim that a scion of the most prominent American political dynasty, and a Democratic dynasty at that, was with them — except for one inconvenient fact. All other members of the Kennedy clan have distanced themselves from RFK Jr and backed Democrats. More significantly for the future, Trump has promised RFK jr a major role in American health policy and control over health agencies. This will inaugurate a period of anti-science conspiratorial theorising driving policy in a country where health care remains a crisis of huge proportions.

Latinos

Latinos constitute approximately 15% of the electorate and are a decisive voting bloc in critical swing states such as Arizona and Nevada. A majority of Hispanics have voted for Democrats. With Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, conventional political wisdom would have held that this support of the community for the Democrats would only increase. And the racist attacks against Latinos by people in Trump’s ecosystem would only cement this base further.

To be sure, Latinos remain substantially with Harris. But there is a churn in the community and younger men have moved towards Trump, according to both polls and recent electoral history. This has to do with a complex set of factors. Legal migrants have little sympathy for the illegal immigrants. There is a degree of religious conservativeness that binds members of the community with other White conservatives. The same economic reasons that are leading others to Trump motivate Hispanics as well, based on the perception that business was better and prices were lower under him. None of this means that Hispanic support for Trump will outnumber that for Harris, but there is a Republican dent and the size of the dent will shape the outcome.

Manufacturing

The key political economy theme that has animated American politics over the past decade is manufacturing. A key reason for Trump’s rise was his economic case; globalisation and trade had hollowed out American manufacturing, American elites were happy making a quick buck outside at the cost of jobs at home, China was the key villain, and a combination of high tariffs and a carrot and stick policy for manufacturers would be used to bring back jobs.

The logic of this was so compelling that it has become common sense in America today and a subject of bipartisan consensus with the Biden administration borrowing from Trump’s worldview. Indeed, through his infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductor legislations, Biden can justifiably claim to have done a better job in bringing manufacturing back.

There is today political competition, especially in key swing states about who is to blame for trade pacts of the past that may have led to deindustrialisation, who can take credit for jobs that have come back, and who can offer a more compelling case that they will take care of American worker interests above everything else. The 2024 election cements this consensus further, even though the scale of disruption to international economic arrangements under Trump will be massive.

Never Trumpers

The Harris campaign’s big hope in this election is that a faction of the older Republican Party, who may be conservative but are repelled by Trump, many of whom refer to themselves as Never Trumpers, will vote for the Democratic ticket. The most prominent example of this is the Cheney family. No one was associated with the Republican establishment more than Dick Cheney, the chief of staff to Gerald Ford, secretary of defense in the George HW Bush administration, and vice president to George W Bush. Today, he and his daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney who was a part of the January 6 House committee investigation against Trump, are with Harris. Harris is hoping that figures such as them will motivate those moderates who voted for Nikki Haley in the primaries to back Democrats.

The Trump campaign’s response to this shift is simple. It believes that the older elements of the Republican establishment who had led the party towards free trade pacts and foreign wars are the ones who have shifted to Harris, and this represents a realignment of politics and the reshaping of the Republican Party for the better. The Trump ecosystem hopes that the segment that will shift to Democrats is too small, and the broader conservative bloc of voters remains with him.

Omaha

In the American electoral system, where candidates have to muster up 270 electoral college votes, Nebraska’s second Congressional district, the region around Omaha, is unique.

Unlike other winner-takes-all states, Nebraska splits its electoral college votes here. In case of a tie — not an entirely implausible scenario in an election as close as this, and an entirely possible if Harris wins Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and needs just one more vote — the second Congressional district will end up becoming decisive. Democrats not just have a historical edge here, but the fact their vice presidential candidate, the current Minesota governor Tim Walz, is from Nebraska will help too.

Prices

If Trump wins this election, he can trace it to the high prices that American customers had to encounter at grocery stores and gas stations for most of the past four years.

The pandemic-induced supply chain shocks, coupled with stimulus bills that were inflationary in nature, supplemented by volatility in global oil markets due to international turmoil and wars, resulted in inflation. The Biden administration and the Fed pulled off a rare economic feat of ensuring growth and managing record employment creation, and then slowly taming inflation while preventing a recession. But to be told that the economy would have been even worse off is not reassuring, and is instead even annoying, for a citizen who can feel the pinch every day in the store and every month when his income runs out.

This is the basic anger that Trump is tapping. And if he wins, while macro explanations will all be legitimate, for many voters, it will be due to a simple premise — prices were lower under Trump than Biden, this reflected economic competence, and he deserves a chance again for that reason.

Queer rights

There is an interesting shift underway in American politics on the wider question of Lesbian, gay and bisexual rights. While Democrats have consistently championed the rights of sexual minorities and their autonomy in recent years, Trump’s Republican Party platform has quietly diluted its opposition to the queer movement — as far as it pertains to same-sex couples. Unlike the past where it explicitly mentioned marriage as between a man and a woman, this year, the party spoke of the “sanctity of marriage” but left it at that — leaving room open for interpretation that it applied to same-sex couples as well. Party-affiliated gay groups claimed this was progress, from the time that the party was advocating a ban on gay marriages two decades ago.

Democrats and human rights groups see this shift as merely a facade, claim that the term “sanctity” itself coupled with references to the foundational role of families denotes a backing for heterosexual marriages, and believe that the right to love with pride is under attack. If Trump wins, they warn that same-sex couples face the prospect of vigilante violence. And they point to a judgment in the abortion case by a Clarence Thomas, a right-wing SC justice, to claim that the right to privacy and therefore the right to engage in same-sex relationships may be under the legal hammer under the Right. Whether American society reaches a point of convergence, even if it isn’t explicit, or if divisions grow, the issue of queer rights will be keenly watched.

Race

Race remains a central marker of the political divide in America. After the realignment of political forces in the wake of the civil rights movement, Democrats have been the natural home of Black voters. In this election, Harris, as the first Black woman to be a major party nominee, offers the community a chance at representation in the highest office of the land. And there is little doubt that she will get the support of a majority of both Black men and women. Among Hispanics and Asian Americans as well, Harris appears to enjoy a strong lead over Trump, who enjoys a lead over her, according to polls, among White voters.

But beneath this big-picture outlook lies a degree of remarkable heterogeneity. Young men across racial groups, and this includes Black and Hispanic men as well as Indian-American men, have moved to Trump in numbers that appear surprising. This shows that appeal to identities, based on perceived identity-based grievances, may not be a sufficient basis to mobilise these voters anymore — and Democrats will have to think afresh about newer sources of appeal. It also poses interesting questions for Republicans, who remain fundamentally a White Christian party but are on the verge of a breakthrough in minority communities; how they balance these interests in the future will determine its composition and character.

Swing states

America’s entrenched political divide means a majority of the states are either red or blue. Its unique electoral system means that candidates of either party can quite safely assume that they will get the electoral college votes from the states where their respective parties are dominant. This leaves the outcome dependent on a set of swing states, and often within swing states, on swing counties.

With a candidate needing 270 votes in the electoral college, seven states hold the key. Pennsylvania (19 votes), Michigan (15) and Wisconsin (10) are often called the blue wall states that Trump flipped in 2016 to win an unexpected election, but these states returned to Biden in 2020. Harris’s best hope for victory comes through this path. The four other states in the mix are Arizona (11) and Nevada (6) in the west, and Georgia (16) and North Carolina (16) in the south.

Hyperbolic as it may sound, the voters of these seven American states are about to determine the future of the world.

Trans rights

A fundamental campaign theme of the Republican Party rests on the premise that Democrats, and liberals, have encouraged a dangerous, excessive, and exceptionally permissive environment around sexuality and pedagogy around sexuality in schools and sports. Explicitly, this takes the form of framing issues around trans rights as one where men compete in women’s sports — an issue which provokes deep and visceral opposition — or where children, without parental consent, are indoctrinated and are allowed to undergo gender reassignment surgeries — a claim that is not backed by fact. But this is undoubtedly one of the sources of appeal for the Trump platform.

Democrats have responded by largely remaining silent; they are committed to trans rights, express solidarity with trans people, and have sought to reframe policies to take into account sexual diversity. Harris herself enjoys the overwhelming support of the wider LGBTQI community. But instances of excess, misinformation that is hard to counter, the fact that social change in some segments of society has outpaced what other segments are prepared for, and electoral calculation that defending trans rights could cost more votes than win support has led Democrats to largely cede the ground. Irrespective of the outcome, battles over gender and sexual identities will continue to rock America.

U-turns

When she stood in the Democratic primaries in 2019 and made a failed bid to be the party’s presidential nominee, Kamala Harris wanted to ban fracking. Today, she supports fracking. Back then, she supported elements of the defund policy chant of the Left and Black Lives Matter protests. Today, she positions herself strongly as a law and order candidate, leaning into her past as a prosecutor. Back then, Harris was more vocal about the need to humanely treat undocumented workers. Today, she has projected herself as someone who will be tough on illegal immigrants. Back then, Harris was more vocally supportive of the rights of transgender communities; today, she prefers to be silent about it.

All of this may well be natural given that a candidate in the party primary appeals to the base, while a candidate in a national election has to appeal to a wider electorate. It may speak of the shift in the centre of gravity of American politics where candidates on the Left have to move to the centre or even centre-right to avoid a backlash. It may speak of Harris’s own genuine evolution after experience in governance.

But it does give the Trump campaign an effective campaigning tool that they have used to paint her as someone with either no beliefs or as a radical figure who is just hiding her beliefs for electoral purposes. Harris has responded by saying her values remain the same. Whether the U-turns impact the electorate’s trust in her is to be seen.

Violence

On July 11 this year in Pennsylvania’s Butler County, a former American president and the presumptive presidential nominee of a major party was shot, bringing the issue of political violence to the centre stage of American democracy. Trump survived the assassination attempt. And Secret Service managed to catch a second assassin on his golf course in Florida a few months later. But both the bids reflected the dangerous moment America finds itself in. The combination of polarised politics, framing of each political battle as existential, and easy availability of guns has made violence endemic.

But there is little doubt that Trump, and his far-right ecosystem, have contributed to this environment of violence, the most visible manifestation of which was on January 6, 2021. By egging on a mob to go to the Capitol to block the certification of results, refusing to ask them to stop while watching the attack on television, giving them a clean chit even when the mob was seen as engaging in violence, offering political patronage to such elements, using violent rhetoric in his speeches (including twice in the past week, once against a Republican critic and then against the media), and promoting guns and blocking any attempt to have gun safety laws, Trump cannot escape blame for his role in making America and American politics more violent.

The 2024 election will not resolve this structural problem in American politics, but it will determine if violence continues to get political legitimacy or if the state cracks down on it, irrespective of the perpetrator and the political cause behind it.

Women

The 2024 election hinges on a single question; the turnout of women, and the extent of the gender gap in the support for the two candidates.

All polls and reports suggest that Harris enjoys a tremendous lead among women voters, winning the support of a majority of Black, Hispanic, Asian American, and even elderly White women. This is largely due to the anger against the abortion verdict for which women hold Trump responsible, and the fear that a second Trump win will result in further erosion of women’s rights. It is arguably due to the entirely hyper-masculine Republican campaign that has made at least a segment of women uncomfortable. And it is perhaps partly due to the fact that America has a chance to remedy its history and elect a woman president for the first time.

But this should not be interpreted to suggest that Trump doesn’t have a base among women supporters, especially White women. There is a certain alpha image of Trump that makes him appealing to women. Women also have different priorities just like men voters – for some inflation, immigration, and religion may matter way more and Trump may well be the preferred candidate to achieve those aims. But in the big picture, 2024 will be defined by a simple correlation. The more women turn out, the higher the chances of a Harris win,

X

No single tech company platform has served as the site of political discourse as powerfully as the Elon Musk-owned X in this election. It was here that Biden posted his letter to withdraw from the race and endorsed Harris; it is here that Harris’s team responds to Trump in real time; it is here that Musk and Trump had their big conversation that set the stage for Musk to be appointed the czar to cut down government if Trump wins; and it is here that Trump has made a partial return after being banned, often by importing his Truth Social posts. But most importantly, Musk’s support for Trump appears to have resulted in Musk using his own posts to 200 million followers to promote Trump’s candidacy but also changes in algorithms where right-leaning posts and profiles are more visible on timelines.

How Musk has used X is of course emblematic of his larger role in this election cycle. After openly endorsing Trump in July, Musk has deployed all his power to help Republicans win. This has taken the form of $120 million dollar contribution to a political action committee that is now running the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote operations in swing states. It has taken the form of offering $1 million a day to voters who sign a petition. And it has taken the form of Musk personally campaigning for Trump. The relationship between tech, capital, and politics was never more stark.

Young voters

Biden’s 2020 victory was catapulted by young voters, who united in large numbers to rally behind the candidate who could defeat Donald Trump. Harris’s hopes too rested on these young voters. But the story has become more complicated.

The big change in Trump’s 2024 campaign compared to the 2020 campaign is his focused effort to win over the young, including meeting voters where they are such as long-form popular podcasts. His messaging to young men particularly focuses on the economy and the wasted resources on wars abroad, with more than an element of masculinity thrown in. All of this appears to have eroded the Democratic base among the young, with young men across racial groups veering towards Trump in greater numbers than in the past.

But this does not mean that the majority of the young aren’t still with Democrats. This is particularly true of women, who see in Trump a threat to their own bodily autonomy. The more Trump’s extremism has come into view, especially in the final stages of the campaign, the higher the chances of more young voters rallying behind Harris on voting day. Voting patterns among the young will be a key determining factor of the 2024 battle.

Zelensky

All world leaders are watching the US elections closely, but perhaps, no one else is awaiting the outcome more keenly than Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. It isn’t just his future, but the future territorial unity of his country, its very sovereignty and the nature of its relationship both with Russia and Europe that’s at stake.

A key theme animating the Republican campaign is that the Biden administration has wasted precious resources on Ukraine, and under Trump, Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine in the first place. Trump has also promised an end to the war before he takes office. Democrats, for their part, have cast Trump as someone who remains mysteriously loyal to Vladimir Putin and framed supporting Ukraine’s battle as a way to secure Europe.

If Trump wins, Ukraine will be nudged, perhaps even coerced, with the explicit threat of an end of American support to make territorial concessions to Russia, including Crimea and parts of Donbas, and the doors for NATO will in all likelihood close on Kyiv. Trump will prioritise peace with Russia. If Harris wins, Ukraine can expect continued support, though it remains unclear if even a Harris administration can sustain the same levels of support given the diminished appetite for it within the US, and how it plans to alter battleground dynamics and actually bring peace.