The catastrophe that Trump has wrought

The American presidential campaign has taken on a bizarre, dystopian quality. For the first time in living memory, a US presidential candidate refused to commit to accepting the result of an election. Republican candidate Donald J. Trump did exactly that during his final debate with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on October 19. I wondered if I was in Dhaka. Trump had borrowed the barroom-brawl attitude right from our part of the world, where losers routinely discredit winners. 

Trump's stance runs against the spirit of US presidential races. I vividly recall listening to prior losing presidential candidates like Democrat John Kerry, Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney. They differed in their politics, but each one was especially gracious in his concession speech. Each time, it was an emotional, healing moment that brought the nation together after a bitterly-fought campaign.

Like a bull in a china shop, Trump tramples through political niceties with a wanton abandon that is horrifying to watch. 

To give the devil its due, this debate was by far Trump's best performance to date. (True, it's a really low bar.) But like a bright yet delinquent adolescent, he went back to sulks, swagger and a sophomoric vocabulary. His explanation about how he would fix the national debt with extravagant tax giveaways to the rich was characteristically substance-free bluster. 

Hillary hit Trump hard. She is one of the most articulate presidential candidates I have seen in over two decades – but she was evasive about accusations about Clinton Foundation. 

Does any of it matter? Most probably not. Although elections are a few weeks away, early voting has begun in a majority of states, and pollsters say Hillary is running away with the race. The question now is whether it's going to hit the Republicans in down-ballot races. Remember, about a third of the Senate and the entire US House is also up for re-election.

While the jury is still out on that, the one thing Trump has managed to do is tear his own Republican Party apart. A substantial chunk of the party establishment has dumped him, again unprecedented in modern US history.

American newspapers have almost unanimously refused to back Trump. This includes newspapers which have backed Republican presidential candidates for decades. This, too, is unprecedented in modern US history.

The turning point came when a tape revealed The Donald's lewd admissions of molesting women. Women are coming out of the woodwork to confirm that's true. 

Trump now has lost the support of two demographic cohorts without which he simply cannot win: Suburban women, and college-educated whites. Both groups are reliably Republican.

Take Pennsylvania, a battleground state that Trump must win. Normally, Democrats win heavily in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and Republicans make up the difference by winning the rural areas and the suburbs. Only this time, suburban support for the Republican candidate has plummeted – women and college-educated men are too turned off.

Yet the demographic cohort that supports him – non-college educated whites – are committed to him no matter what. These people swell his rallies and allow him to live in a fool's paradise.

While the presidential elections seem a foregone conclusion, what is going to happen is anything but.

The signs are ominous. Trump says the elections are rigged, with his usual disregard for facts. The notion of a presidential election being stolen in such a crazy-quilt decentralised system is ludicrous. 

The Republican Party is deeply divided, and the establishment finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place. This became apparent after Trump's lewd remarks became known. The flow of elected Republicans abandoning Trump grew into a torrent, but after a backlash from Trump supporters, many returned to the Trump fold. 

Why would they do that, you would think? It's the unforgiving math. To win elections, Republicans need the support of those who despise Trump as well as those who think he is the second coming. 

As a passionate Democratic Party supporter, I could take pleasure in the party's meltdown, in what the Germans call schadenfreude. But I cannot.  I am too horrified of the collateral damage that could happen if a major US party commits hara-kiri.

Yet the Republican Party is not entirely blameless. Decades back, since the days of New Gingrich, the firebrand Republican house speaker who pioneered scorched-earth politics, Republicans have been happy to pander to mean-spirited demonisation of Democrats. Right-wing media like Fox television and conservative radio commentators have happily fanned the flames of hatred and bigotry.

Now the chickens have come home to roost. The Republican Party today has the dubious distinction of being the first major party of the Western world where its candidate is poised to question the results of a democratic election. 

It's a profoundly depressing moment in American politics.

The writer is a contributing editor for Siliconeer, a monthly periodical for South Asians in the United States. He has been writing for US-based South Asian media for over 25 years.