Two weeks until the election, uncertainty reigns

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With the election only two weeks away, let’s stipulate the futility of any attempt by my humble column — or anyone else’s — to accomplish much in the way of changing voters’ minds. So-called independents and uncommitteds may waver until the moment they step into the voting booth, but most voters have made up their minds, and at this point few are likely to be changed by mere reasoning.

Predicting the election’s winner is equally futile. A quick search yields these descriptors: “toss-up,” “deadlocked,” “close,” “exceedingly close,” “roughly even,” “razor-thin.”

When all this uncertainty is coupled with the vagaries of the Electoral College, we’re left with the very real possibility that Donald Trump could become the 47th president of the United States. Hold that thought.

If Kamala Harris wins, we know, more or less, what will happen: business as usual.

Despite Trump’s evidence-free assertions, Harris is not a Marxist or communist. She’s a conventional, left-of-center politician whose progressive leanings, such as they are, will be restrained by the checks and balances built into our system, as well as by the center of her own party.

The assertion that Harris is a mysterious unknown is belied by the most important statement she made during the otherwise useless interview that Fox News’s Bret Baier conducted with Harris last week: She said that if you want to know what her plans and policies are, go to kamalaharris.com and you’ll find 80 pages of detailed information.

She’s right. I haven’t verified the page count, but click on “Issues” and you’ll find a lengthy, well-organized description of her positions, including charts, graphs and real data.

By contrast, Trump’s website opens with “20 Core Promises” to Make America Great Again, including “End Inflation,” “Large Tax Cuts” and “Defend Our Constitution.” If you want more detail, there’s a link to the Republican Party’s platform — 16 pages, of which the first five repeat Trump’s 20 Core Promises and make a case for what the party calls “Common Sense.”

In short, we know more about Harris’s policies than Trump’s. And if she’s elected, the republic will endure.

A Trump victory, on the other hand, bears considerable uncertainty. The lack of policy information on Trump’s website is consistent with the uncertainties attached to his public statements. What does he mean when he promises to be his followers’ “retribution”? What would the “largest deportation operation in American history” look like and what would it do to our workforce? Will massive tariffs cause inflation? Who is Trump talking about when he suggests that he might use the American military to go after “the enemy from within”? Does he really mean it when he says that people who criticize the Supreme Court “should be put in jail”?

We don’t really know the answers to these questions.

In fact, the New York Times reported recently on a group of Trump voters who are depending on the hope that Trump’s provocative statements are just Trump being Trump and that he’ll never act on these promises or threats. I call these the “Just-Locker-Room-Talk” voters.

Maybe Trump will attempt to do some or all of these things; maybe he won’t.

But here’s the one thing that we can be certain of: If Trump loses, by a little or by a landslide, he will not concede.

Some MAGA friends assure me that Trump will quietly leave the scene. Let us so hope.

But history indicates otherwise. In fact, substantial reporting suggests that systematic efforts are already being made in various important voting districts to contest the election and create chaos in its wake.

It’s a paradox that we can’t ignore: If Harris wins, the Biden administration must use all of its powers, even force if necessary, to implement the “peaceful” transfer of power — from Biden to Harris. Some things are worth fighting for. One of them is democracy.

Too dramatic? Maybe. But in Trump’s mind, and in the minds of his millions of devoted, well-armed supporters, what part of “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” has changed since Jan. 6?