The World Watches as America Decides on a New President

An unprecedented and invective-filled campaign for the White House that included the dramatic substitution of one party’s standard-bearer and an assassination attempt against the other comes to an end tonight. The 2024 race saw the return to the limelight of a 78-year-old Donald Trump despite two impeachments, four indictments and his new status as a convicted felon. It was followed by the sudden departure of President Joe Biden, who while just three years Trump’s senior, was run off by his own party following a botched debate and a firestorm of negative media coverage. Suddenly facing a new rival in Vice President Kamala Harris, 60, Trump turned his attention to the former US senator and prosecutor through months of disjointed, hours-long speeches packed with malapropisms and sprinkled with racial and ethnic insults.

If elected to a second term, the Republican has threatened to prosecute his political enemies and send the military into the streets of Democratic cities to target illegal immigrants. Trump’s allies have assembled a plan to eviscerate many of the agencies central to the federal government and the regulations they enforce while filling powerful posts with inexperienced loyalists. He also has pledged to escalate the trade war he began with China while, as a self-professed admirer of Vladimir Putin, helping negotiate an end to a war in which Russia has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians. Harris has spent her truncated campaign railing against alleged price gouging while promising (like Trump) to urge Congress to reduce taxes and help with the cost of childcare. But most of all, Harris and her fellow Democrats have gravely warned that, beyond the radical right-turn on policy planned by Trump, a 248-year-old democracy is on the ballot, and that the whole world is watching.