Outcome of US Presidential Race Hangs in Balance
By Dr Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD

Of all the years I have lived in the US, I have never experienced the tension and the sense of unease associated with national elections, as now. Many Americans for the first time perceive potential for violence on the election day, November 8, and beyond, a byproduct of the vitriol and viciousness, emanating mostly from the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, that have become the defining feature of the 2016 elections.
The US elections in modern times have not been this rancorous. The 1992 presidential race between President George H. Bush and Governor Bill Clinton had been contentious, even bitter. The incumbent President Bush was eventually defeated in the election. When the newly installed President Clinton entered the White House, following his inauguration on January 20, 1993, he had a pleasant surprise waiting for him. The outgoing president had left a warm handwritten note which started with: “Dear Bill” and ended on, “You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success is now our country’s success. I am rooting for you. Good luck.”
Some 23 years later, it is hard to imagine such a display of civility between Secretary Clinton and Donald Trump, the two presidential candidates, regardless of who wins the election. The bitterness generated by the contest, though unprecedented in recent times, was not entirely unknown in the days of America’s founding fathers who wrote the constitution and fought for the country’s independence. John Adams, the second president of the US, was defeated by Thomas Jefferson in 1800 as he sought reelection to the office. These erstwhile friends had become sworn enemies during the campaign. John Adams did not even attend the inauguration ceremony on March 4, 1801, of his successor. He hurriedly left the White House early in the morning in a horse-drawn carriage for his home in Massachusetts to avoid attending it.
Trump has been promoting a narrative, rooted in anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-woman prejudice. He has labeled Mexican immigrants as criminal and rapists, alienating many Latino voters who now constitute the largest minority in the country. He promises to deport an estimated 11 million illegal aliens, many of whom have been here for decades and are well integrated into the society. It’s mindboggling to even contemplate the resources, police, army, transportation, needed to uproot this huge number of people from their homes for deportation. The bias extends to African-Americans as well. Trump was one of the most ardent promoters of the myth that President Obama was not born in the US and therefore ineligible to hold the office. The country’s demographics, in the meantime, have changed. The share of the non-white vote has gone up from 13 percent in 1992 to 30 percent in 2016.
Trump’s other favorite target are Muslims. He announced soon after the terrorist attack in California that he would completely ban their entry into the country. He ignored that the last two terrorists, Omar Mateen who killed many people in a night club in Orlando, and Rizwan Farooq, one of the shooters in San Bernardino, California, were born in the US. He has found strange bedfellows in a small group of Hindu-Americans, allied with nationalist BJP in India, who have been raising money and rallying to his cause, attracted by his tough instance on “radical Islamic terrorism.”
In the primary elections that choose the nominees for the two main political parties, Trump showed an uncanny ability to vanquish his 16 opponents. He mercilessly attacked their service records, their physical appearance, their family history, often using vulgar and obscene language. Trump’s simplistic promise of recreating America’s mythical past resonated well with the Republican Party base, mostly whites, badly affected by shipment of jobs overseas. He won the party’s nomination easily and most of his former rivals have grudgingly endorsed his candidacy.
Trump is opposed in the general elections by the former Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, the nominee of the Democratic Party, the first woman to be nominated by a major party. Although the polls are not entirely reliable, she is ahead of her rival in most of them. Should she be elected, she would be the first female president of the US and will follow the first African-American president, Barak Obama. Clinton. However, she has her own baggage and is not universally popular. She has been in the public eye for the past thirty years, as the wife of President Bill Clinton, as a Senator and finally as the Secretary of State. She has accumulated a long record, some of it highly controversial. She and her husband have become multimillionaires since he left the presidency in 2001. Both have collected huge sums of money for making speeches to business audiences.
There are other problems as well. As Secretary of State, she used her own private e-mail server to conduct official correspondence, without considering that some of it might be confidential, a practice against the law. Although the FBI exonerated her of any criminal wrong doings, the Republicans have not forgiven her. In the last eleven days of the election campaign, the FBI dealt an unexpected blow to Clinton, announcing that they were examining some e-mails found on the computer of Huma Abedin, the top aide and confidante of Clinton, who was married to disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner. As of this writing, it is unknown what information these e-mails contain and how damaging it might be to Clinton’s candidacy.
Two events have worked greatly against Trump and helped the public opinion galvanize against him. One was a brief, powerful speech by a Muslim of Pakistani origin, Khizr Khan, delivered at the Democratic Party Convention. His son, Captain Humayun Khan, just 27years old, was killed in combat operations in Iraq while valiantly trying to protect soldiers under his command. Humayun Khan has become the powerful symbol, showcasing the patriotism and sacrifice of American Muslims, whose loyalty Trump has been questioning for months. His subsequent public attacks on Khizr Khan and his wife ignited a firestorm against him. The families of fallen soldiers are considered sacrosanct and any attack on them is off limits.
The second factor has been even more damaging. Trump was caught on an eleven-year-old tape making salacious and lewd remarks about young women whom he met, boasting about the ease with which he could sexually exploit them. When confronted, he rationalized his disgusting comments as just “locker room [dirty] talk.” His defense was not helped when a dozen women surfaced claiming that he had tried to take advantage of them years ago when they applied for jobs in his companies.
Sensing his potential defeat, Trump has been claiming that the elections are rigged against him, even before the first votes were cast, and that he might not accept the results.
In this country, validity and transparency of the elections has never been questioned and the candidates accept results graciously when they go against them. That is the basis of democracy. Trump’s refusal to abide by it raises the specter of a permanently divided and polarized nation, with Trump and his hardcore supporters never acknowledging the legitimacy of the elected president. It is hard to decide which would be the greater setback for this nation: Donald Trump’s defeat or his victory.