'The US election has become a race to the bottom - and Donald Trump is winning'

The 2024 US Presidential election has become the most toxic and vulgar race for the White House in modern history as candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump continue to exchange barbs

On October 24, Kamala Harris posted a tweet which served as a microcosm for the most toxic, vulgar, reprehensible race for the US Presidency in modern times.

It read: “Trump has an enemies list. I have a to do list”. Her tweet listed a string of policies intended to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, including cutting taxes, restoring reproductive freedom, strengthening medicare and protecting social security.

Working with the private sector to build three million new homes, protecting and strengthening the Affordable Care Act. And so much more. On the same day Donald Trump was calling his former chief of staff John Kelly “dumb” and “a total degenerate”, for being the latest person to claim the ex-president has worrying designs on a return to power to become a dictator.

Welcome to the 2024 US Presidential campaign. So poisonous it has emboldened voices from the darkest recesses of the right wing swamp to emerge and breathe bile far beyond the United States.

Witness the right-wing commentator thrown off and banned from news network CNN at the start of the week for telling respected news analyst Mehdi Hasan: “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off’ - a reference to the alleged Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah. Footage of the incident went viral.

It is also worth revisiting last Saturday’s Republican rally in New York where podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico - home to 3.2m US citizens - as an “island of garbage”. Although the Trump campaign distanced themselves from the slur, they appeared to have no issue with other disgusting remarks at the rally about Jewish, Black and Latino people. Or with one speaker referring to Harris’s “pimp handlers”.

One speaker talked about "f**king illegals”. Another called Trump's 2016 presidential opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, a "sick son of a bitch. Clinton responded by accusing Trump of "re-enacting" a pro-Nazi rally that was held at Madison Square Garden in 1939 on the eve of World War Two.

The whole race to the bottom has been ongoing ever since the bell was sounded to signal the race for the White House. Perhaps nobody thought Trump would ever be this close again.

Last December, twice asked at a rally to deny he would be a dictator if he returned to office, abusing his power, Trump said: “Except for day one.” He is already notorious for his vicious personal attacks on his political and legal opponents and anyone who dares call out his vitriol. Imagine what he will do with the keys to the Oval Office.

Harris, as pointed out by this column earlier this week, is no saint in the eyes of many Americans. Muslim voters and dismayed neutrals intend to hold her accountable for lack of backing amid the cycle of blood in the Middle East.

But at least her discourse is civil, courteous and largely respectful. Her pronouncements on Trump are generally in response to the incoming bile from his direction. At least when she sits down to be interviewed the upshot is somewhat cerebral.

Trump has been a car crash from day one. A convicted felon from day one. Ready to choose violence (metaphorically) from day one.

So the words of Michelle Obama, who spoke so powerfully at a Michigan rally on Sunday night, should give us all pause as we consider how it is a man whose openly stated aims horrify so many can rampage through the legal and political system with such impunity that he stands within days of the return to the most powerful office in the world.

“When you lay out the options,” said Obama. “This choice isn’t even close. But whether it's online or in the media or in our social circles, there are folks who say they are not sure about Kamala.

“They accuse her of not providing enough policy detail. Some wonder: ‘Do we really know her? Is she too aggressive? Is she not aggressive enough?’

“There are folks sowing seeds of doubt about whether she is who she appears to be. Now don’t get me wrong. Voters have every right to ask hard questions of any candidate seeking office, but can someone tell me why we are once again holding Kamala to a higher standard than her opponent?

“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate. To have a clear set of policies [and] to never show too much anger. To prove time and time again that she belongs.

“But for Trump? We expect nothing at all. No understanding of policy. No ability to put together a coherent argument. No honesty, no decency, no morals.

“Instead too many people are willing to write off his childish, mean-spirited antics by saying: ‘Well Trump’s just being Trump.’ Rather than question his horrible behaviour, some folks think he’s funny. And if you remember, that’s exactly how he got elected the first time. Folks gave him a pass and rolled the dice, betting that he couldn’t possibly be that bad.

“Then there were those folks who didn’t think it really mattered who the president was. And then there were others who thought it would be a good idea just to blow up our entire democracy. Let us not forget how badly that worked out for all of us.

“Let us not forget the incompetence. The corruption, the chaos that was the cornerstone of his entire four years in office.”

Perhaps it's Trump's money. Perhaps it's his friendship with a man in control of the social media algorithms through which so many of us are forced to see the world every day.

Perhaps it's the fact so many media outlets in America are scared to go against him that reporters and columnists are resigning in disgust. Perhaps it’s the fact some outlets believe he has to have a comparable entity up against him, so they whip up controversy around Harris as if there is any similarity. At all.

Perhaps it's the fact we over here have had a similar kind of election, within which Boris Johnson showed us who he was with his Brexit lies and even before he was elected, to the extent that he famously hid in a fridge to escape TV questions. His spectacular incompetence went on to cost lives, wreck families and draw accusations of corruption during and after Covid.

Like Trump, Johnson used sexist language, claiming in 2013 that women only attend university to find a husband.

Like Trump, Johnson used racist language, claiming in 2018, that Muslim women who wear the full veil look “like letter boxes” and bank robbers.

Like Trump, Johnson showed zero grasp of his brief. But at least the British PM showed the self-awareness to dodge interviews with big hitters who’d done their homework.

Trump is bold. Brazen even. Both men are still discussed by some TV and newspaper analysts as though they are visionaries rather than populist blowhards.

We already know where, disgracefully, Trump has bragged about being able to grab women. On Wednesday just gone he bizarrely declared he will be a protector of women “whether the women like it or not.” (That would be news to at least 26 women who accused him of sexual assault ).

In a September televised debate, no less, Trump questioned both Harris’s ethnicity and accused her of being promiscuous when he said: “I read that she was not Black, that she put out…I’ll say that…” More broadly, Trump warned in March of a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win next week’s election. On more than one occasion, he has claimed immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”. In March, in Ohio, he even referred to them in sub-human terms.

"In some cases they're not people, in my opinion," he said. "But I'm not allowed to say that because the radical Left says that's a terrible thing to say. "These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it." Everybody knows how often he has positioned immigration as a major driver of violent crime and economic decay. Just as the risible Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, Rishi Sunak and Johnson have all done over here.

Tellingly, however, celebrities with influence have urged their social media followings to do the right thing. Not least former republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been - and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger,” said the legendary star of the Terminator film franchise.

“That’s enough reason for me to share my vote with all of you. I want to move forward as a country, and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz. Vote this week. Turn the page and put this junk behind us.”

We’ve done that already in the UK, consigning Sunak to history. Americans have the chance to do the same with Trump.