Mark Wignall | Kamala, onward to your glass ceiling

At the time of writing this column, (last Thursday), 58 million mail-in and early in-person votes had been made in the US elections. The gender breakout was 54 per cent female, 46 per cent men. There was a 10-point gap between men and women in the swing states early vote.

The US presidential elections this Tuesday has monumental importance. We recall that in 2016, Donald Trump ‘lucked’ into the Oval Office. Like any canine, he chased down the car. When the car stopped, he had two options. Turn tail and go back. Or the one he employed: leave his territorial odour while spending the next few years maligning his own country and building his unhinged GOP hate fest.

Unlike most US elections, age is a big factor this time. Age and a part of its consequences sneaked up on 81-year-old Joe Biden and rendered him closer to a lounge chair on the cool back patio. Let’s step back a little.

In 2008, when 47-year-old Barack Obama was running against 72-year-old John McCain, the young senator was openly civil to a fault, but he put one over on McCain - constantly. The television would always show McCain (with war injuries) slowly walking up to a speaking platform. At the same time, there was Obama in a springy trot up to the dais. It was no disrespect, with Obama showing McCain as old. It was politics.

Come Tuesday, based on CNN and a few other polling outfits, Kamala Harris will be the 47th president of the United States. She is 60 years old. If the win doesn’t happen, I will have to make a trip to voodoo St Thomas for sustenance of my sanity.

To paraphrase and simplify Occam’s razor: ‘the simplest explanation is usually the best one.’ If that philosophy holds, Harris wins in just about every metric. Spoiler alert: Occam’s razor and politics seem to be at war with each other.

“On Monday, 78-year-old Trump publicly declared that the economy is good, and he wants credit. On Wednesday, Trump said the economy is ‘a disaster’, and Vice President Kamala Harris deserved the blame,” wrote Maddow blog on October 31.

Trump is a most confused man. Each time he sits with some friendly news network, he trashes the US economy and paints darkness and doom. And yet in another breath, he says the economy is good only because the various sectors operating are expecting a Trump win.

In 2016 when Trump scored well at the Electoral College, many Clinton-leaning voters had a healthy dislike for her. In 2024, Trump has demonstrably physically and mentally slowed down. At the same time, he has grown more comfortable with the hate and cruelty of his politics. His enablers are more vicious.

One factor that stands out in Trump is his inability to answer questions and make the answers make sense. A reason may be found here. In 2008 when VP pick Sarah Palin was demonstrating her stunning empty-headedness to Americans and the world, international affairs expert Fareed Zakaria explained that it was not just a simple matter of Palin being unable to answer the questions. How could she when she didn’t understand the question?

Trump’s mass meeting recently, held at Madison Square Gardens, was a cavalcade of all of the racism, sexism, vile misogyny, and hate of ‘the other’. It was like hurling a bedpan filled with all the stink the Trump GOP could hold in place until it was aimed at the faces of those making up the basic good that America used to stand for.

HARRIS’S GLOBAL SUPPORT

Although Jamaicans at street level and those under 25 are not tuned in to the US elections, there is, among countries supporting democracy, widespread acclaim for her and the hope that she wins. Polls have shown significant lining up in that hope.

In the public exposure of Kamala, it has catapulted the incompetence of Trump in comparison. There are some who believe that a Harris win will not be by a scrape and a whisper, but it will be a blowout. Of course, if Occam’s razor would hold.

Global tension is increasing, and as much as America and the CIA have caused the global community to remember that sordid past, many democratic countries recognise the usefulness of American leadership, its influence, and its soft and raw power.

Donald Trump has used his 2017 - 2021 period to learn the ropes, not of governance, but how to capture it for his enablers and billionaire allies. Absolutely no good could come from another term. Harris not only has a big tent, but her to-do list will be challenging if the vote on Tuesday fails to secure the Senate and the House.

NOT A GOOD LOOK, DR TUFTON

I recently read about Dr Brady. He is a Jamaican doctor living overseas who has come to Jamaica for some 20 years to perform critical, specialised surgeries on children in Jamaica. This special human being does so out of the goodness of his heart as he does not charge for his services.

Recently, he was in Jamaica and could not perform a particular surgery on a young patient at the Bustamante Children’s Hospital because of inadequate infrastructure. All of us would ask, why was this so?

The Ministry of Health and Government of Jamaica knows Dr Brady comes yearly to do the surgeries. They knew where he would do the surgeries. Why was the hospital not properly prepared for him to do the surgeries?

I saw where Tufton made a feeble attempt at justification and announced that the surgery would be done at the UWI but not by Dr Brady. Minister Tufton, this is not good enough.

SENSELESS DEATH

Recently, the police gave chase at a biker on Olympic Way. From what I understand, the young man was not a gunman or a suspected violent thief, and he died after being hit by the policeman’s unit. The obvious question is, which idiotic policeman would want to chase a man riding a bike?

In the past, the Jamaican police have fired at route taxis. In one instance, a schoolgirl from Immaculate was shot dead by the police while she was a passenger in the taxi.

The police have shot at buses, In one instance, long Spanish Town Road, a passenger’s fingers were blown off.

Apart from idiocy, could the common element be about the cops sipping the sauce while on duty?

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.