President Donald Trump supporters wave a flag throughout an election watch occasion Nov. 3, 2020, in Chandler, Ariz. (AP Photograph/Matt York)

As a Canadian, I sit on the fringe of my seat each election evening in America.

Although it isn’t my nation, like many, I really feel the magnitude of what’s at stake in a rustic more and more divided over problems with race, gender, the economic system and the coronavirus pandemic.

Whereas this has been the narrative of the previous 4 years, America has at all times been a nation divided. This division was totally examined within the New York Instances 1619 Mission, which sought to reframe the nation’s historical past by putting plantation slavery and the African American expertise on the centre of American historical past.

Regardless of historic info, what has made the Trump period distinctive in its divisiveness is the way in which wherein his presidency has been marked by a stark failure to disavow white supremacy whereas discrediting African American makes an attempt to reclaim their place in American historical past. He condemned the 1619 Mission whereas paradoxically claiming that he has accomplished “extra for the African American group than any president except Abraham Lincoln.”

Whereas we might not know the winner of the election for a while, what was clear on election evening is that Trump did higher than pollsters predicted. Why was this race so shut?

Completely different ideologies

Trump and Biden couldn’t be extra totally different when it comes to ideology. However in relation to nostalgia, each candidates relied on an analogous notion of returning America to a unique time.

For Trump, “Make America Nice Once more” has not solely functioned as a political slogan, it has additionally morphed right into a battle cry for his followers who yearn for a previous that has by no means existed.

By way of repeated invocations, the slogan just isn’t solely a reference to the previous but additionally a “construction of feeling” — a time period cultural theorist Raymond Williams coined within the 1950s. The time period describes the paradox between the truth of individuals’s lived experiences — with its intangible and undefined components of cultural life — and the official, materials and outlined types of society.

In different phrases, MAGA has nothing to do with coverage — therefore why Trump’s re-election marketing campaign had undefined coverage goals — however every thing to do with how and what his followers “really feel” and take into consideration MAGA.

President Donald Trump gestures to supporters after talking within the East Room of the White Home, Nov. 4, 2020, in Washington, as he and Melania Trump depart.

(AP Photograph/Evan Vucci)

Biden additionally has a model of nostalgia and has performed on the trope of an industrial America of yesteryear, the place folks work laborious, love their households as they do their neighbours. It’s a spot the place “sincere Joe” can acknowledge that a number of the neo-liberal insurance policies of the Democratic Social gathering that he endorsed, together with the 1994 crime invoice, may need harmed African Individuals — the very folks whose votes he wanted — however for which he, not like Trump, is at the least capable of apologize and present some modicum of empathy.

Biden’s promoting level, then, was that “at the least” he cares. Was that sufficient to win over African Individuals?

Black males iffy about Kamala Harris

Even with Kamala Harris, a Black girl (who additionally identifies as South Asian) on the ticket, African Individuals have been divided about her loyalty.

Whereas Black ladies have been enthusiastic about Biden’s choose, many Black males weren’t. That wasn’t due to coverage choices as a California senator, however due to her former job as California’s legal professional common, and earlier than that, as district legal professional of San Francisco the place, below her tenure, Black folks made up lower than eight per cent of the town’s inhabitants however accounted for greater than 40 per cent of police arrests.

So not like the narrative of group organizing and activism that was hooked up to Barack Obama throughout his 2008 presidential run, a story that appeared to supersede his work as a senator, Harris’s previous has seemingly overshadowed her Senate work, whilst her votes have been in support of Black America.

The closeness of the 2020 election has a lot to do with the way in which wherein each Trump and Biden have invoked an imagined previous, a story that means America must perpetually look again as a substitute of wanting ahead.

Trying backwards

Obama’s 2008 slogans — “Change we are able to imagine in” and the mantra “Sure We Can” — have been so highly effective as a result of they projected an air of risk in regards to the future, that issues may enhance and that voters had the ability to make it occur.

Trump’s “Make America Nice Once more” and Biden’s “Battle for the Soul of America” don’t have anything to do with the voters or their skill to create a future; as a substitute, each slogans ship the identical message — there was a time in America the place issues labored, the place the nation was untainted by division, and that it should return to.

This act of forgetting actuality by clinging to a fictive, golden-days previous is harking back to the title-track of the 1973 movie The Means We Have been, starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. The tune, carried out by Streisand, was an enormous hit, No. 1 on the Billboard 12 months-Finish Scorching 100 singles in 1974.

Most individuals don’t keep in mind that Gladys Knight & The Pips additionally launched an R&B cowl of the identical tune in 1974. Within the collective reminiscence of The Means We Have been, the tune belongs to Streisand; it’s laborious to even think about anybody else singing that tune. In different phrases, folks overlook particulars, however what will get remembered is the long-lasting. Streisand is an icon. (Knight’s an icon in her personal proper, however primarily amongst African Individuals.)

Trump is iconic

Equally, Trump is an iconic determine whose fan worship has managed to actually trump the Republican Social gathering itself. He has satisfied his loyal following to cling to the previous as a result of it was less complicated then, and it offers folks an opportunity to dwell out that simplicity — nonetheless fictional Democrats imagine it to be — over and over.

Our recollections of the previous don’t matter; what issues within the Trump period is the rewriting of each line of precise historic reality. Biden has relied on empathy and sentiment to win again the presidency, to carry again a sort America along with his quite a few folksy “Bidenisms” whereas Trump has accomplished what no one thought was doable — he has confused the citizenry to the purpose the place many doubtless can’t keep in mind what the U.S. was like earlier than 2016.

Whereas Trump likes to evoke Lincoln’s title, it was Lincoln who famously mentioned: “A home divided towards itself can’t stand.”

America is split. However the query is, when the mud clears and the ballots are all counted, will it nonetheless aspire to turn into the nation it so desperately tells itself (and the world) that it may be?

Cheryl Thompson doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that might profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.