Are we not entertained? No polls could capture the weirdness of the past seven days in American politics. It began in Milwaukee amid Republican euphoria that history was finally on Donald Trump’s side. It ended with a surge in Democratic enthusiasm for vice-president Kamala Harris as their overnight champion. In between, a Covid-stricken Joe Biden caved to demands not to run again. There was also the strange anointing of Yale-educated, Silicon Valley-funded JD Vance as America’s hillbilly-in-chief. It will be a while before we can reliably gauge what voters make of all this.
Yet amid the drama is a constant that will outlast the mood swings. The US election is now a battle between a man and a woman. They are not just any man and woman. The man, Trump, entered the arena last week to the sound of James Brown’s “It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world”. He was introduced by a testosterone-fuelled line-up that included Kid Rock chanting “fight, fight, fight”, the actor-wrestler Hulk Hogan (Terry Gene Bollea) ripping his shirt off to reveal a Trump-Vance tank top, and Dana White, chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the last word in blood-soaked pugilism.
If Trump’s point was not already stark, his selection of Vance drove it home. He could have broadened his appeal to the “secret non-Trump voter” — chiefly women in conservative communities who are worried about loss of any bodily autonomy. They drove much of the roughly fifth of the party’s votes that went to Nikki Haley in the primaries. Instead, Trump doubled down by selecting a running mate who has argued for a national abortion ban. Picking Vance was a sign that Trump was confident his base would be enough to carry him to victory. At the time, Trump’s bet did not seem outlandish. But it was based on an assumption that quickly vanished — that a visibly ailing Biden would be his opponent.