By the time this editorial comes out, Americans will have started to vote.
The past few months of the campaign have proven controversial and divisive, and either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump is still likely to emerge as winner in the key swing states – Arizona (11 electoral votes), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Nevada (6), North Carolina (16), Pennsylvania (19) and Wisconsin (10) — at this point.
Polar opposites in profile and temperament, the candidates have vowed to deliver their own versions of much-needed reform and have engaged in different manners of getting voters to choose them.
Should she win, Kamala Harris would be the first female president of the US, the first Black woman and person of Asian parentage.
Should he win, Trump would likely deliver a performance akin to what he already showed from 2016 to 2020. He would also have shown defiance of the odds given his legal baggage. In May, Trump was convicted of falsifying business records in connection with a payoff to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claimed she had had a sexual encounter with him. Trump bought Daniels’ silence to avert a possible sex scandal toward the end of the 2016 campaign.
Aside from this conviction, Trump has been indicted on charges of federal election interference, election interference in the state of Georgia, and taking highly sensitive national security documents when he left the White House in January 2021.
But Trump has been conditioning people’s minds that he could only lose if he is cheated and if the electoral process is rigged.
Following the results of the US elections could seem like entertainment for some, but it carries serious implications for Filipinos, or those who have family members, in the US. People from other countries seeking a chance to live the American Dream will have good or bad prospects depending on who wins. Moreover, given the interrelatedness and volatility of global politics and economics, whoever calls the shots in the US would have a hand in shaping the world as we know it.
Filipinos, too, are not strangers to the spectacle of the election experience. Politicians using misinformation and disinformation to boost their stock or to cast their opponents in a bad light? Common. Attacking the other party, calling them names, twisting their words? Familiar. Refusing to accept defeat and claiming they were cheated? Nothing new. Casting doubt on the entire democratic process just because they did not win? Tell us about it.
As Americans toast – or lament – their elected leader, may we also remember that ensuring the integrity and unassailability of the democratic exercise are always superior to any circus-like clash of personalities and their antics.
