The two campaigns, supplied with self-confidence and unease, hoped to rest their cases with exclamation points. In an odd, roundabout manner, their so-called closing arguments did just that, showcasing the tone, style and roots of each candidate.
It’s poetic that Trump gave the last major rally of his nine-year-long campaign where it all began: New York City. Not the Bible Belt nor Appalachia, but the great nerve of liberal culture. It reminds us that Trump is a man of Manhattan, a celebrity magnate at home amidst skyscrapers and at peace when the brightest lights are on him.
Some are disquieted by his personality. Others relish his audacious lack of PR discipline. His message may be thinly veiled snake oil, but it still gives the anti-establishmentarian vibe that thrills a neurotic public.
That neuroticism is exactly what he is tapping into. Despite strong economic signals in recent months, Trump acted as if our nation was deep in doom and despair, rocked by an “immigrant invasion.” According to Trump, Latin American countries were letting criminals loose into American streets, hiking up crime, inflation and practically everything else. If given the reins of executive power, he promised mass deportations and the creation of the greatest economy in history.
The foreboding, alienating and messianic themes excite his base, but they are also his greatest liability. The most notable moment of the night was when the comedian Tony Hinchcliff called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Once again, the Trump campaign was checked by its insular extremism. Other remarks were chock-full of racist bile, but none were so direct, unshielded by plausible deniability. Worse still, the statement was aimed squarely at a Hispanic group with a diaspora scattered in swing states, endowed with complete suffrage.
If Trump loses this election, historians will argue that, in a nation as diverse as ours, exclusionary politics can only go so far. In October 1886, in the same city, a Republican Protestant minister decried the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,” pejoratively attacking the white southern and Irish Catholic constituencies. That remark may have lost the Republican nominee, James Blaine, the election. Can it happen again?
About 230 miles away from Trump, on the doorstep of the White House, Kamala Harris gave her closing argument. This location, too, was poetic, but perhaps intentionally. On one hand, it grounded Harris in the centuries-old traditions of constitutional governance. On the other, it reminded the national media how far we have gone from that normality by pulling them to the scene of the Capitol attack.
Beyond and beneath the theme of joy, much of Harris’s politics is a call for normalcy. Whereas Trump, driven by a crude nostalgia, wants to return to a fictional golden age. Harris appeals to the civil democratic norms that prefixed the modern era. Considering the firebrand style of many new politicians, it’s quite bold to be traditional in this sense.
There are issues in this strategy, of course. Too many overtures to anti-Trump Republicans like Liz Cheney may make left-wing voters stay home. Too many generalities about civility may irritate a frustrated public. And, in the end, Harris must provide substantive politics attractive to the alienated half of the nation that sees a would-be authoritarian as the only option.
If Harris loses this election, historians will argue that well-practiced, feel-good themes are not enough. In 1920, Warren Harding won the presidency in a dramatic landslide because he promised a “return to normalcy.” But his normal — of small government and isolationist policies — did not survive two decades. I hope that voters believe that a Harris administration would be better than normal, that it can heal the inequities they confront.
But, in the end, the American people will decide. We will see which route to power was better paved — the one that excited the base or the one that brought in the center.
