Rita Panahi: US Presidential election the most important of our time
In 2016 I didn’t think Donald Trump was a real conservative, up to the job or had a realistic chance of winning, but I’ve been proven wrong, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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This US presidential election is arguably the most consequential of our time.
Seldom has so much been at stake, not just for the US but for the world, with two candidates that are poles apart ideologically.
If the polls are accurate, then Joe Biden will win and win handsomely but an analysis of the early polling data shows that the race will be tighter than the Democrats would like.
Then there’s the “shy Trump voter” factor; the people who refuse to tell pollsters they back the president after four years of having the media, Hollywood and woke culture labelling his supporters racist, sexist monsters.
Meanwhile, in Democrat strongholds such as New York, San Francisco and Washington DC, where Trump only secured 4 per cent of the vote in 2016, businesses are preparing for riots and looting in case Biden doesn’t win.
Thus far more than 93 million have already voted eclipsing the 47 million early votes in the 2016 election. In a number of swing states including Florida and North Carolina early voting has already passed 90 per cent of the 2016 vote totals.
Republicans are far more likely to vote on election day and if they turn out in numbers we can expect to see the highest participation rate in more than a century with 150 million-plus votes cast compared to 139 million four years earlier.
This is as good a time as any to confess that I was terribly wrong about Trump in 2016; I didn’t think he was a real conservative, up to the job or had a realistic chance of winning. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Despite what you have heard from the overwhelming majority of the news media, who for four long years have dropped any semblance of journalist integrity in their coverage of Trump, the president’s list of achievements is long and impressive.
Yes, he’s bombastic, incorrigible and “unpresidential” but if you ignore the style and focus on the substance it’s clear that Trump’s first term has been exceptional on just about every front except for COVID which we covered at length in last week’s column.
The Trump administration has fulfilled more promises than any administration in a generation from foreign policy to the economy to judicial appointments. For that he deserves to be re-elected. However, I can’t see a path to victory for the President without Pennsylvania.
Trump needs The Keystone State and its 20 Electoral College votes to secure the 270 votes needed for re-election.
After spending a week in Pennsylvania, talking to the locals and examining the polls, particularly the early polling data, I’m doubtful that he can prevail in the deeply divided state. The Democrats are outspending the Republicans by two to one across the country and considerably more in crucial counties in Pennsylvania.
Biden has even emerged from his basement to make appearances in Pennsylvania and of course the fact that his hometown is Scranton doesn’t hurt. The fact that Trump has held up to four rallies a day in Pennsylvania in the final week of the campaign speaks to the urgency of the situation.
There’s every chance that we won’t know the final result in Pennsylvania until well after the election with the state allowing absentee ballots to be counted even if they arrive several days after the polls close.
Without Pennsylvania Trump would have to hold on to swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan. The Democrat are bullish and even talking about winning Florida and Texas. If Trump loses either state it’s all but over. And, what a reign he would’ve had.
Before the pandemic hit the US had recorded the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years, as well as the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment ever. There was real wages growth and Trump fulfilled his promise to stand up to China and negotiate a better trade deal for the US. He ensured that NATO partners paid their fair share instead of sponging off American taxpayers.
Trump not only tore up the disastrous Iran nuclear deal but negotiated peace deals between Israel and a number of Muslim majority countries, a feat considered unthinkable four years ago.
Presidents Obama, Clinton and Bush had all promised to move the American embassy to Jerusalem but Trump actually followed through and did it despite protestations from foreign policy ‘experts’ predicting long-term mayhem. Trump has started no new wars, fulfilled his promise to smash Islamic State’s caliphate and his intervention saw the first Inter-Korean summit in more than a decade.
But most importantly for Americans he has delivered on his promise to appoint originalists to the Supreme Court, slashed economy restricting regulations, cut business and income tax rates and delivered sound energy policy a world removed from the insanity that is the Democrat-backed Green New Deal.
Trump deserves to win and if he pulls it off it’ll be the greatest victory in modern political history.
IN SHORT
French President Emmanuel Macron deserves praise for being unequivocal in condemning Islamist terrorism after jihadis committed horrific acts of murder in Paris and Nice. Macron has stood firm for French values of free speech and expression and refused to accept “Islamist separatism” in France.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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