#BabyMarvin f9c7 From Trump's assassination to Biden's withdrawal from the election, and then to Harris taking over, this presidential election, arguably the most intense in modern American history, has entered its final sprint.
(Dialogue with the World) went deep into the front line of the election and launched a special report "Going Behind the Scenes of the US Election", inviting local Americans to provide in-depth interpretations of this election. This article is the fifth in the series of reports.
The US election has officially begun. Who has stronger ground mobilization capabilities, the Democratic Party or the Republican Party? Is this election the darkest in US history? What factors should Chinese Americans consider when voting for Harris or Trump?
(Dialogue with the World) Recently in the United States, I had a conversation with Li Zhonggang, executive director of the Republican National Committee of Asian Americans and advisory member of the Asian American Committee of Trump's 2016 campaign team, to explain it to you.
Key points
1. Looking back at the 2016 and 2020 US elections, Li Zhonggang pointed out that one of the manifestations of the terminal illness of American politics is that voting is too based on formal justice. Public sentiment is prone to change over time, so elections are prone to emotionality. The biggest problem with polls is that they cannot measure the popularity and "fandom" of Harris and Trump. Instead of polls, it is better to look at the enthusiasm of voters from canvassing software and donation software.
2. No matter who is elected as the US president, it will only bring different risks to the public. Trump's campaign ability is first-rate, but his political literacy is not high. Li Zhonggang thinks he is a bit like an engineering student. Harris will be a headache, but it won't be to the extent that everyone can't safely spend the next four years.
3. Li Zhonggang believes that this year's election is the darkest in American history. The political cycle of the United States changes every four years according to the election cycle, but this election did not show any innovative ideas and solutions. Both Trump and Harris are "reheating old ideas", which is of course related to the decline of the United States' national strength.
4. More and more Chinese Americans are running for public office, which is conducive to protecting the interests of the Chinese community. The previous suspension of the "China Action Plan" was also attributed to the efforts of Asian political forces. Li Zhonggang suggested that if Chinese Americans in the United States value their own and their family's living space more, they can vote for Harris; if they prefer tax cuts and the opportunity for their children to go to Ivy League schools, they can vote for Trump.
Trump is a bit like an engineering guy
(Dialogue with the World): What do you think of this year's election?
Li Zhonggang: The situation this year is different from the previous two times. In 2016, Trump must win, no matter who his opponent is. In 2020, Trump must lose, no matter who his opponent is. The main reason is that voters don’t like him. But in 2024, the feeling towards Trump has declined, both favorable and unfavorable. So 2024 is a contest between Trump and Harris’ base, but Harris’ base is weaker.
How can we tell the base? In 2016, many voters lined up in the cold wind to listen to Trump's speech. Then they saw that although the poll numbers were behind, they would definitely win. Because when you call to inquire about the polls, you will only get a number of 1. Waking up at 5 a.m. to line up to watch Trump's speech and "I will vote for Hillary" will turn out to get a 1 in the polls, but the depth is very different, which represents a huge difference in enthusiasm. Different enthusiasm affects the turnout rate.
▎Some people in Florida pray that Trump will win the 2024 US election.
In other words, the current polls are out of date. Only those who have both horizontal experience (Chinese organizations) and vertical experience (senior Republican leaders) in the political arena, as well as a technological background, can make judgments based on polls.
The biggest problem with polls is that they cannot measure the popularity and fandom of candidates. Fandom is a new word I have come up with, which is the fandom of "fan circle". This is related to the performance on voting day. If the weather is good and everyone comes out to vote, the fandom will have little impact. If it is windy and rainy, those voters who got up at 5 o'clock to listen to Trump's speech will still come out to vote, but the probability of those who only choose "yes" or "no" is very low.
Look at 2016. If you wanted to listen to Hillary's speech, you had to use buses to attract people, and if you wanted to invite people to dinner, there were only a few people. Trump had to queue up in a long line, and it was difficult to get in. So the judgment at that time was not only a response, but also the ability to turn more than one state red.
But by 2020, you can feel the passion and enthusiasm for hating Trump. As an extreme person, after doing a lot of things, he will offend a lot of people, and American politics is like this, that is, people who say good things about you are not as good as those you offend, so when the economy is better and you don’t offend many people, most presidents with political skills are easy to be re-elected.
But Trump's political literacy in this aspect is not high. This guy is first-rate in election campaigns, but he is not good at politics. He is a bit like an engineering guy. He does things without thinking. He just speaks without thinking, and once he speaks, one faction will use it to attack the other faction. As a result, the other faction also has the power to lobby, and then he says it again, and in the end everyone is offended. So he not only offends those above him, but also those below him.
Of course, the epidemic is also a big opportunity. At this time, the number of fans who oppose him exceeds the number of fans who support him. He is a media person. But he has a very poor media quality that cannot be used in politics. What does he believe in? It is that a bad reputation is better than no reputation, but it is not the case in politics. If your reputation is bad, everyone will want to get rid of you. So Trump will definitely lose in 2020.
▎On November 4, 2024, local time, in Pennsylvania, the United States, the final countdown to the U.S. election, Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Harris held a campaign rally.
The characteristic of 2024 is that Harris has a group of fans, because she is a minority and a woman, and has a fan base on abortion. After the Democratic Party changed, there was still a sentiment of support for her, including some people saying that Harris must win and must win. I said wait a minute, because emotions are time-bound. So why do people say that the US election is unreliable? It is here, very emotional, not very rational. Emotions will change after a while, for example, they supported the war in Iraq that year, and they supported the war in Vietnam tomorrow, but they opposed it if people died.
I think one of the manifestations of the terminal illness of American politics is that it is too based on a single vote for formal justice. So it will swing back, because once the passion is over, people will think someone else has changed. A few days ago, I was a little more pessimistic than others, saying that Harris might not win, but today I am a little more optimistic than others. I think Harris may not lose, but it will be very tense, and this year it may really be a matter of one state. This is the situation this year.
At present, who of the two candidates will be elected is just a matter of risk. One of them will be crazy, and sometimes he will really do something and accidentally start a war. Relatively speaking, Harris will be a headache, but not to the extent that we cannot safely get through the next four years.
This is the darkest election in the United States (Dialogue with the World): Who do you think has stronger ground mobilization capabilities between the two parties? Is this a key factor in determining the election situation? Including canvassing software and so on.
There are two very important softwares, one is the canvassing software, and the other is the donation software. This year, the Democratic Party's donation software is very powerful. In politics, why do you want to donate 1 or 5 dollars? In other words, if a person donates 1 or 5 dollars, the possibility of him running for election is greatly increased, because he feels that he has invested. So sometimes in politics, there is often an idea that I would rather lend you a dollar to donate.
▎On November 4, 2024 local time, Democratic vice presidential candidate Waltz held a campaign rally.
So you need to look at two softwares, one is the donation software, such as Door Knocking, whose software will tell you on your phone what this family is like. For example, some people are solid blue voters, so the Republicans must bypass this family; for example, this person may have checked, voted, donated money, etc., and the software has all of them.
Another very important issue is social media. Who should Facebook advertise to and how should it advertise? Trump won in 2016 because of this. Facebook originally wanted to do it for Hillary, but Hillary ignored them. Later, Facebook sent a team to Trump's campaign.
But back to the question itself, this year is not a revolutionary year in terms of software applications or other aspects. High technology began to be used in election campaigns in 2016, and it reached a plateau in 2020. Everyone used it and neither side forced the other. 2024 is a year with no technological innovation. AI has not been widely used and may not start until the next election cycle.
▎On November 3, 2024 local time, California voters voted early.
In general, the 2024 US election, whether from the perspective of election technology or US politics, will be the darkest election in the modern political history of the United States. 2008 was a change for the United States. Obama had already seen that something was wrong with the United States, so he shouted the slogan of change, which shows that he saw the necessity of change. He was a pioneer in thought, but he did not have any effective measures. The real prospect is for Trump to open up, but he shouted the slogan of anti-immigration, which is a toxic change.
Why does the United States have an immigration problem? Because many white people see more and more things from ethnic minorities, and they think that there is something wrong with civilization, but in fact, there is something wrong with the entire education system, political system, and economic system. Was the 2008 financial crisis caused by immigrants? Trump has done a very bad thing for the United States. He has made a fake change. When a person is terminally ill, he is not going to cure the disease, but to make you feel better, just like taking hormones to make you suddenly have a flash of life.
His speech made Americans, especially those at the bottom, unhappy. He suddenly shifted the entire society's attention from the real transformation of the United States to changes in immigration and trade and confrontation with China. This would hurt the enemy by 800 and hurt your own 1,000 or even 2,000. As a result, it actually hurt the foundation of the United States.
▎On October 28, 2024 local time, former US President Obama held a campaign rally to canvass votes for Harris.
Many people are looking for ways to change and solve problems. For example, National Security Advisor Sullivan said that government intervention is necessary, which is actually also industrial policy. However, he is only reforming the middle level and not the bottom level. It is not a surface reform. Industrial policy is a large middle-level reform, a continuation of Keynesian policy and an economic policy reform, but it does not touch the social system.
The political cycle in the United States is every four years, which is based on the election cycle. Logically, this is the time for political ideas to emerge. The biggest feature of 2016 was the changes proposed. In 2020, some new ideas emerged, such as Andrew Yang’s UBI (universal basic income) and the development of the country through science and technology and industry. You can no longer "develop the country through finance", but the person who shouted it out was wrong. If the person who shouted out this idea was Trump or Biden, American politics would have gone in another direction.
If you look at it from the perspective of the US four-year cycle, this election is the worst. I don’t think there is any thought in it. In the 2024 primary election, everyone is still competing to see who can be more anti-immigration. This is all just rehashing old ideas. So starting from the primary election, it has been the most boring and thoughtless election.
Looking at the two election debates, Trump vs. Biden had nothing new to say from beginning to end. Then Trump vs. Harris came out and talked about abortion, guns, economy, trade, and immigration. There was no innovative idea or new solution. If we continue in this direction for four years, there will be more "treating the symptoms instead of the root cause", such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Kazakhstan-Israel conflict. These are acute diseases, which are of course related to the decline of the US national strength.
▎On June 5, 2024, local time, Biden's asylum ban came into effect, and immigrants waited for procedures after crossing the border.
As a country, the long-term political interests of the United States have never been the interests of any particular American political group. This is the problem.
No American will sacrifice himself for the long-term interests of the United States. If someone really reforms the social system in a way that is in the long-term interests of the American people as a whole, and if 10-20% of the people can understand and change it first, and then gain the approval of many people, then there will be a major social change in the United States. I believe this social change will come in the next 10 years.
Young people in the United States today are different from those in the past. Young people in the past all felt that "America is absolutely number one, we are absolutely the hegemon." Today's young people say, "Why do we have to be the hegemon?"
Who should Chinese Americans vote for?
(Dialogue with the World): I saw a lot of Chinese fans at Trump's rally in New York recently. It seems that there were a lot of Chinese Trump fans in 2016. This year, I also saw some Chinese who support the Democratic Party in North Carolina. What do you think will happen to Chinese Americans in the future? How will they protect themselves in American society?
Li Zhonggang: Let me answer you this way, should Chinese people vote for Harris or Trump? If they are smart, they should vote for Harris. Although there were actions against Chinese people when the Biden-Harris government was in power, it was far better than when Trump took office.
There are several types of officials in the political structure of the United States. The top one or two levels of each department are politicians. For example, the four or five levels below the assistant secretary are all appointed officials (appointed politicians). The people below are called career politicians, who are hired officials and do not change with the government. A large part of the latter are retired military officials, and they have a natural hostility towards Chinese people because their imaginary enemy every day is China.
The people influenced by Harris or the Trump administration in the election are called appointed officials. The group appointed by Harris is much friendlier than the group appointed by Trump, so the China Initiative targeting scientists was canceled. Although the bottom is still the same, the dialogue between the top people is more friendly. The deep state often mentioned in the news refers to the professional bureaucrats, who have certain tendencies. So although there are still many FBIs under the Biden administration who continue to suppress Chinese people, the pressure will be greater if a group of Trump people come up.
In particular, his senior political advisor Stephen Miller once mentioned that he would review all visas for Chinese Americans and planned to promote the denaturalization program, which is extremely dangerous. So Chinese people should understand this. If you think your living space, your and your children's opportunities to succeed, and how others see you are important, then choose Harris. If you only care about reducing taxes, distinguishing between male and female toilets, or giving your children a better chance of attending Ivy League schools, then choose Trump.
▎In 2022, Chinese Americans held a protest in Washington, calling for the cancellation of the "China Action Plan."
(Dialogue with the World): I see that many Chinese Americans are actually running for public office more and more, such as Lily Tang Williams, who has been popular in recent videos. If more Chinese Americans hold grassroots public office, or even get elected as members of Congress and senators, will it better protect the interests of this group? Li Zhonggang: Absolutely, the more Chinese Americans there are, the better, and these Chinese Americans are on the Democratic side. On the Republican side, ethnic minorities are not successful in the Republican Party, not because the Republican Party does not like Chinese Americans.
Let more Chinese vote for them and they can enter public office, which is of great benefit to us Chinese. The reason why the China Initiative was terminated is the credit of Chinese political forces. For example, Chinese American Congressmen Grace Meng, Judy Chu and Japanese American Senator Mazie Hirono clearly told the Biden administration, how could you do this? In fact, according to the political interests of the United States, if the China Initiative is terminated, some people will definitely accuse Biden of being pro-China, right? So what can Biden get? Biden has the support of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), because you did what I asked you to do, so without these Chinese political forces, there would be no play.
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