Polls have cemented the divisions tearing US apart

Alastair Campbell, The Independent

Given the US presidential election is a fight to choose the “most powerful man on earth,” it would be great if everyone on earth had a vote. That way, the Biden landslide that many were hoping for – including, I suspect, most people reading this – would have been a lot likelier.

Outside of Russia, Brazil, India, Hungary, the Philippines, Downing Street and other populist coronavirus hotspots, Donald Trump has few places, other than the US, where all but a small minority would love never to hear from him again.

But we don’t have a vote. It is the American presidential election, he really means it when he says “America First”, and though China may see itself as the most powerful country in the world, America is the most powerful democracy. So whether we like it or not, American voters have a lot more influence on our lives than we have on theirs.

And before Brits get too harrumphy about the quirks and anomalies of the American system, the vagaries of the electoral college, the slowness in counting votes, the fact that the one with the most votes doesn’t always win.

I’m sure many in the US feel very bemused about ours when they see men with buckets on their head standing alongside a prime minister waiting to hear a local result, and a party that could win a national landslide without getting close to half of the votes in the country.

So, if I can use a phrase I am sick to death of hearing in relation to COVID-19, “it is what it is.” And what it is, right now, is a bit of a mess, and will be messy for a while. But when all is said and done – and given the global TV breath-fest going on right now, more is being said than done – all that matters out of all of this is who is in the White House by January.

Remember the hanging chads in Florida, and the fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which declared George W Bush the winner over Al Gore? A man who accepted that brutal decision with a grace that we know is beyond Trump. Of course you do. But what history remembers is that Bush became president, and Gore did not.

In my heart, I wanted the Biden landslide, every bit as much as the one I worked for with Tony Blair in 1997. But have you ever been to Florida, Georgia or Texas? Not easy, and it was evidence of how nervous Trump was in the early hours that he called these “states we were not expected to win”.

The story of the Trump presidency was always going to be whether the guardrails of American democracy and institutions were able to deal with his wrecking ball approach and personality.

The Republican Party caved early.

But amid all the noise and all the rage, one thing still matters more than any other – who gets across 270 in the electoral college first. My heart and head still say Biden. But it could take a while.

Thanks to Trump’s very deliberate act on Thursday morning, it could get violent, which is what he has been angling for, ever since his “stand back and stand by” message to his more violent supporters, in the first presidential debate.

If he wins two out of the three, he stays in the White House, and most of the world feels sick. If he doesn’t, but he continues on his current tack, and Biden eventually takes office, a very tough job gets a lot tougher for the former vice president.

That is because this election, and especially Trump’s handling of it, has cemented, rather than eroded, the divisions tearing America apart.