It is not always necessary to have passionate views on everything. The presidential election in the United States is very significant and has a bearing on life outside that country. That is because the US, for all its shortcomings, remains a global power and possibly the only superpower that is in a position to check the relentless forward march of Chinese hegemonism, a phenomenon that has a direct bearing on the future of India. Yet, in the ultimate analysis, and despite the far-reaching consequences of the voting preferences of American citizens, the election is an internal matter of that country. As Indians we have every reason to be interested in who occupies the White House for the next four years. However, interest has to be blended with detachment and the awareness that India must view bilateral relations as a continuous process. We have to engage and work with whosoever the US voters choose to run their country.
At the time of writing, neither Americans nor the rest of the world know who will occupy the White House till January 2025. Although it seems increasingly likely that the winner of the president contest is former Vice President Jo Biden, we can never be sure if President Trump’s allegation of electoral malpractice will fail to stand up to judicial scrutiny. The charges have certainly not withstood media scrutiny, but as is increasingly evident, the US media tends to notoriously one-sided in its views on everything to do with Trump. The President, in its view, can do nothing right. Nor can his supporters.
This uninhibited partisanship that has brought an entrenched section of the US Establishment together to fight a maverick interloper is, of course, entirely an American problem. However, this phenomenon of perceptions being guided on the strength of condescension is becoming universal. In the American presidential election, for example, the opinions industry — still UN reconciled to the shock victory of Trump in 2016 —went out of its way to convey an impression that the whole of the US, minus some semi-educated bigots, were in revolt against the Trump presidency.
This was a monstrous lie as the closeness of the electoral outcome testifies. Trump may very well lose the election but the defeat will not be resounding but by the narrowest of margins. This outcome wasn’t certainly anticipated by the opinion polls, most of which forecast a landslide victory for Biden.
Did the polls make a genuine mistake based on flawed sampling? That would be charitable explanation. However, it is more than likely that the serious under-estimation of Trump’s support owed to what has been described as the ‘social desirability bias’. In everyday language this translates into a fear among Trump’s supporters that their support for the President would be seen to be unacceptable in polite company. In other words, the collective power of the media, academia and big business — not least the tycoons of Silicon Valley — had created an environment that ostracised real sentiments on the ground. Yes, Trump did fight this insidious manipulation of real feeling but not successfully enough.
What are the implications of this coup — and I use this term quite deliberately — on the rest of the world? This is not idle speculation. Since American soft power is all pervasive, it is almost certain that the strategies used to prevent his re-election will now become a model for others to emulate. Without over-stating the point, it is instructive to note that rudiments of the anti-Trump strategy was also tried, though without success, in the 2019 general election against Narendra Modi.
The comparisons aren’t exact. None of the three pillars of the traditional Establishment — media, academia and business — were totally united in their determination to oust Modi and, in any case, there was scepticism over the credentials of the challenger. But the rudiments of the approach successfully tried in the US were evident in India last year. The approach failed because the alternatives to Modi were extremely feeble but it is certain this is not the last we will hear of a concerted manipulation of public opinion, not least by telling a majority that it should be ashamed of itself.
On a more profound note, this election in the US demonstrated the power of the passive voter — those who want a say but are disinclined to queue up before the polling stations. Biden secured his advantage by securing the vast majority of those who either used postal votes or absentee ballots — a legitimate democratic approach as long as the votes were from genuine voters.
I do not share Trump’s insistence that only those who actually vote on Election Day should be counted and others, in effect, disenfranchised. In America this gave a chance to professionals and the middle classes to flex their electoral muscles and favoured the Democrats. In other countries this may favour parties of the Right. It will depend on the context. What is however undeniable that the larger participation of people in any election strengthens democracy.
