That moment when VP candidate Tim Walz’ son, Gus Walz leapt to his feet, tears in his eyes, mouthing, “That’s my dad!” Michelle Obama with her, “That may be a Black job” reference to the race for president. Or Bill Clinton’s “Count the ‘I’s’ not the lies” remark about Trump’s narcissism.
It’s easy to get caught up in the pageantry of the DNC, happening all this week in Chicago. The joy, so absent in American politics these past years, feels contagious.
“Something wonderfully magical is in the air,” Michelle Obama told a cheering crowd of over 20,000 at the United Center in Chicago Tuesday night.
The United States is on the precipice of electing its first ever female president, a woman born and raised in Oakland, California and the daughter of immigrants, one Jamaican, the other Indian. History could be made, and the energy among Democrats – barely registered while Biden was in the race – is palpable.
And yet, for all its attention to the working class, for all the nods to diversity and to the immigrants who will assuredly play a decisive role in this election, there are voters like Gurkirat, an Uber driver in the Bay Area who – like most gig workers – spends his waking hours grinding out a living.
I took a ride with Gurkirat recently, and as often happens over long Uber trips we began chatting, first about the weather, then the traffic, then the recently held elections in India that served as a wakeup call for Indian PM Narendra Modi, whose party took far fewer seats than had been expected.
“He uses religion to stoke fear and hatred,” Gurkirat insisted, speaking of Modi, before pivoting to the contentious history between Sikhs and Hindus in India and the ongoing push among some in the Sikh community for an independent homeland. Modi was playing with fire, he said, adding that India’s recent election outcome was a necessary check on what had been Modi’s increasingly centralized power.
“So, who do you like here?” It seemed a natural segue. President Joe Biden had just announced his departure from the race, paving the way for Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic run as the first Black and South Asian woman to head the Democratic ticket. “Does the fact that she’s Indian matter?”
The reply was instant. “Not at all. I like Trump.”
It’s hard to hold multiple, even conflicting realities in one’s head simultaneously. Here’s an immigrant, a working-class father and family man from a religious minority living in what is probably the bluest of blue regions of the country. He is literally a walking, breathing definition of who a Democratic voter should be.
And yet…
According to Gurkirat, Trump was better on the economy. The dollar was stronger, inflation was lower, a day’s wages went farther at the grocery store, he says. Never mind former President Bill Clinton’s point during his DNC speech Wednesday night about Democrats being responsible for 50 million of the 51 million American jobs created since WWII. Forget about Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, probably the biggest federal investment in American infrastructure since FDR.
For Gurkirat – and I suspect many others who’s sweat, and toil keep this economy moving forward – the perception that times were simply easier under Trump persists and is borne out by polling showing that he leads Harris on the economy even as she continues to build overall momentum across the electorate.
Gevorg fled Armenia four years ago. A husband and father of two, he recalls bitterly the 2018 Velvet Revolution that swept former Prime Minister and President Serzh Sargsyan from power bringing in a new government that, according to Gevorg, had consolidated support on the back of sweeping promises to restore social justice for the nation’s poor and working class.
Sound familiar? Reporting at the time, Al Jazeera headlined the revolution a “master class in socialism.”
Armenia’s economy quickly collapsed, prices spiked, a bloody war later broke out between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. It was all too much for Gevorg, who recounted his family’s journey from Armenia to Los Angeles, where he now makes his living as an Uber driver.
“Americans just want the government to do everything for them,” he complained as we sat in traffic on the way to LAX. “They don’t understand the opportunities they have, the work they have to do.”
I refrained from asking Gevorg what he thinks of the increasingly fraught relationship between Uber and its drivers, many of whom say the ride share company’s rising profits have come directly at their expense.
And while Trump’s name never came up in our conversation, it was clear where Gevorg’s political leanings lie. For him, the Democrat’s promises to right the ship of economic injustice through government intervention ring all too familiar.
A similar pattern plays out in immigrant communities across the country. Some Venezuelans, watching their country sink into the hands of an authoritarian despot, will just as quickly cast a vote for Trump – who has made no bones about his own authoritarian leanings – out of fear of a leftist takeover here. The same holds for Cubans, Vietnamese, and many in the Korean American community.
In 2016, another woman stood in Harris’ shoes and many – indeed, most – Americans believed that the glass ceiling would finally be shattered. To say that Nov. 6 came as a gut punch is to put it mildly. The polling, the enthusiasm, the desire to see America be its best self was just too apparent.
And yet…
As election day nears, the polls show an increasingly tight race between Harris and Trump, a far cry from a month earlier when it seemed almost inevitable that Trump would clinch a second term. And Democrats – me included – are understandably jazzed.
But I can’t shake these conversations, and the warning signs they’re flashing of a new silent majority, one that on its surface looks and sounds a lot like the crowd in Chicago. Until you take a ride with them.
