by Bill Crawford

W

e are at the pinnacle of a long-building culture war, which comes every few generations. Like the rather severe one leading up to 1860, the value sets on both sides are so far apart that they can no longer talk. I do not have the crystal ball to tell you what will follow, but I can try and give y’all a picture of what is happening in front of you.

First off, this is less an election than it is a referendum. The two top slots on the ballot may as well be “Donald Trump” and “Not Donald Trump”. Both bases are running less on opinion as by a form of moral imperative.

As such, both sides have displayed some characteristics not usually found in American politics.

Both sides are carried by a compulsion of sorts. On the Republican side, the view is that their government and the culture that follows it have lost track of them. They think that there is a growing administrative state in Washington, D.C. that has developed an independent mindset that seems to regard the waves of elected officials that keep coming their way as an interruption of their power and the chance to use their experience and expertise to properly run the government. They regard this as extra-constitutional and must be finally dealt with. Trump is the populist they have settled on to challenge that.

On the Democrat side, the talk of “norms and traditions” often refers to the series of paradigms that were built after World War II by both parties, including how we run a government, our economy, our diplomatic mindset and the communal aspects of our society. They see Trump and his base as an existential threat to most of that- and therefore to them.

The idea of the Democrat vote as being first and foremost, a pushback on Trump and his base is what allows their ballot candidate to be changed this late in the game and still being an electorally viable ticket. Remember, George McGovern went from being loser to a landslide loser in part because he had to change his VP choice from Thom Eagleton to Sargent Shriver in an election year.

Both sides have developed a relative firmness in their viewpoints, which is why, after all the craziness of the last few months, the polls have moved forward relatively unscathed. The ever-shrinking undecideds who will do much to decide this race will run on the only remaining x-factor: the definition of Kamala Harris as a Presidential candidate, when she has no track record as a primary contender.

It is my contention that, because of this inexperience, she is now being handled by a committee of Obama people (whom Joe Biden disdained and wouldn’t have much to do with) and is being packaged as much as a national candidate on the campaign trail can be.

Joe Biden had a similar challenge in 2020, as he was elevated to Presidential candidate with little or no success in primary contention. The special circumstances of COVID and the revulsion of the Democrat base to Trump power lifted him above that.

No matter what the result, it remains that somewhere around 25-30% of the electorate is not prepared to countenance the notion of Trump getting elected again. This includes a strip of land running up and down the West coast, parts of the Northeast and certainly the Capitol Beltway area. What happens then?

Bill Crawford is a former candidate for Mayor of Pittsboro and Chatham County Commissioner. His blog is twogenerations.net