Harris offers hope to Americans who feared a future with Trump - Vladimir McTavish

US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a moderated conversation with former Trump administration national security official Olivia Troye and former Republican voter Amanda Stratton on July 17 in Kalamazoo, MichiganUS Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a moderated conversation with former Trump administration national security official Olivia Troye and former Republican voter Amanda Stratton on July 17 in Kalamazoo, Michigan
US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a moderated conversation with former Trump administration national security official Olivia Troye and former Republican voter Amanda Stratton on July 17 in Kalamazoo, Michigan
It was Harold Wilson who first coined the phrase “a week is a long time in politics”. ​A throwaway answer from the Prime Minister of the time to a journalist’s question, it has been used so often over the subsequent sixty years, to have long entered the realm of cliche.

Yet, if one looks across the Atlantic, it has never rung truer than it does today.

If anyone ever wants to know what the ordinary American voter is thinking, I would advise them to get in touch with my cousins.

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Born and raised in the same small town in New Jersey where they have both lived for seventy or so years, they are the embodiment of middle-of-the-road blue-collar Democrat voters.

One is a retired high school teacher who is still very active in her local neighbourhood, whose deep sense of community service has been passed down to her sons, two of whom are volunteer firefighters.

Yet they are not evangelical tub-thumpers. I have never heard any of them quote the bible. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, they never attend church. If they do, they never talk about it.

They may have lived their entire lives in the same small town, but they travel widely and are immensely proud of their multicultural roots.

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When it comes to politics, the only vaguely radical action either of them has ever taken was to go on an anti-Vietnam march in 1969.

They are remarkably unremarkable. There are millions of Americans just like them. Disgusted and embarrassed by the antics of Donald Trump, they are Joe Biden supporters to their fingertips.

A fortnight ago, I spoke to one of them on the phone. She was distraught by recent events.

She was distressed by the assassination attempt on Trump, which, unlike me, she did not think was staged. As she saw things, it handed him a huge initiative.

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She was equally distressed by the state of Biden, whom she compared to an elderly relative. “It’s like when Uncle Chuck lost his marbles and used gravy granules to make a cup of coffee”.

She saw herself and her nation posed with the most difficult of choices come November. Her heart was telling her to vote for Biden while her head was telling her that he was too frail to do the job.

While her stomach was shouting at her not to let Trump in through the back door. She feared for her own future, but more importantly for that of her grandchildren.

And then this week Biden announced that he was going to withdraw. This was such a seismic moment, even Joe himself may have remembered it the following day.

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The next day was my elder cousin’s birthday, the same day as Kamala Harris announced her candidacy.

I spoke to her on the phone and her attitude had changed to hopeful, almost enthusiastic optimism.

“It’s wonderful”, she enthused “I feel we can finally vote for hope”.

Much of Trump’s campaign up until now has centred on laughing at Biden’s age, his supposed gaffes, stumbles and memory lapses, his “senior” moments.

All this is now going to come back to bite him in the butt in the coming three months.

Like the man said, a week is a long time.

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