Victory!
I am not one for categorical declarations, and I don’t plan to start here. But I will say this. I believe tomorrow that we are going to win, and we are going to win big. I’m not certain of it in the same way that I am certain that the sun will rise on Tuesday, but I can feel it in my bones. Some time late tomorrow or early Wednesday, we, you and me brothers and sisters, will legitimately be able to juxtapose two words we have only ever tried on for size. Those two words are “Madam” and “President.”
Women are at the forefront of what gives me this particular hope. According to a recent poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics, Kamala Harris leads among women ages 18-29 by a thundering 30 points. It gets even better. Among all college students, male and female, she leads by 38 points. According to Ann Seltzer, perhaps the most consistently accurate poll of all, Kamala Harris is leading Trump for all voters of all ages in Iowa 47% to 44%.
Then there’s the stealth vote. Women (and even some men) who live in battleground states, who are afraid to defy the local conventional un-wisdom, will be voting for Kamala Harris and will keep it a secret from their husbands and friends. Trump is aware of this. He is so terrified by it he even said, “Can you imagine a wife not telling a husband who she’s voting for? Did you ever hear anything like that? Even if you had a horrible — if you had a bad relationship, you’re gonna tell your husband.” Sorry, Donny, you can repeat that lie later with desperate incredulity from inside a jail cell.
Just about everybody is saying it, from Newsweek to the Daily Beast to The Times of London: Harris is set to win the battleground states, and thus the election. The die is cast. Soon, very soon, the long national nightmare will be over. So, as Kamala Harris put it in her surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, “Keep Kamala and carry on-ala.”
In response to the defeat that they know is coming, MAGA Republicans are telling a lie that is so laughably transparent that I’m actually surprised that even they would try it. They are predicting a landslide for Trump bigger than Ronald Reagan’s 1984 win over Walter Mondale. There’s just one problem with that prediction. It simply is NOT possible. Reagan won 49 states that year. Do Republicans honestly think that Trump will win New York? California? Of course they don’t. They’re saying it because they’re terrified. They know what’s coming.
I understand how it is. We’ve had to endure years of disappointment. It seemed as if every time we were on the brink of hope, intervening circumstances have dashed that hope. But past outcomes have no bearing on future outcomes, and our future looks very, very good.
Kamala Harris burst onto the recent scene with an unanticipated juggernaut of momentum that defied logic and all expectations. That momentum has carried forward unabated to these final few days. Americans are tired of Trump and in love with Kamala. It shows in the polls, it shows in Trump’s flagging rally attendance, it even shows on Donald Trump’s haggard and defeated face. We are set for our long-awaited outcome. We are set for victory. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.