Imagine a tennis match where two old combatants are preparing to recontest the final, having contested it four years before.
Suddenly, the defending champion acknowledges that he is not fit enough to defend his title. Under the strange rules of the tournament the retiring incumbent can nominate their replacement for the final match which will take place in just under four months.
The champion’s replacement is the incumbent’s understudy.
She is 25% younger than the older challenger.
Her background is radically different from the older male challenger.
The new challenger clearly has a calmer temperament and is more gracious.
The altered context of the competition galvanises new attention in a contest that many had become disinterested, if not dispirited by.
The approval ratings for the new challenger dramatically improve.
The older challenger is now the oldest of the two players. The younger challenger attracts great interest and support particularly from the younger spectators living on the coasts who are charmed by her more delicate and harmonious style. Past champions and present celebrities clamour to offer their support.
Suddenly, the younger challenger surged to the lead in opinion polls and betting charts in anticipation of the final match.
Under the rules of the tournament, the two combatants have a freewheeling preview match. There is no clear winner, but most are impressed by the poise and feistiness of the younger challenger when facing the wild style and words of her opponent.
Remarkably, the consensus with a month to go before the championship decider is that an unprecedented upset is likely and that for the first time there may be a female title holder.
A straight sets victory is on the cards.
Now, equally as remarkably, it seems like the match will go deep into the fifth set. The challenger’s confidence seemed to waver at the start of the third set. The older contender’s bragger and swagger have regained their implausible appeal, galvanising especially older supporters living in the mid-west and south.
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will not have to oversee a tiebreak to decide the outcome of the contest.
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Making a metaphorical tennis match to analyse the Presidential election seems as sensible as any option.
After all, the Democrats and Republicans have done their best to make a mockery of arguably the most significant electoral contest in the Western body politic.
Let’s not forget that until the unrelenting glare of television cameras in the first Presidential debate, the Democrats were all too willing to support Joe Biden as a credible candidate capable of carrying out another four years in the Oval Office.
How can we forget that the Republicans are all too willing to believe that Donald Trump can be a “gentler and kinder” version of the volatile narcissist who trampled over nearly every principle of democratic and accountable government when he was President?
The fact that Trump enters the final week of the campaign with a half-decent chance of being re-elected says much about the power of his shrill appeals and the inability of the Democrats to permanently puncture his populism.
If re-elected, Trump will become the first President to twice lose the popular vote, but still make it to the Oval Office courtesy of the constitutional quirks of the Electoral College. In America’s federated nation, the President, above all else, must be the person most preferred by the greatest percentage of representatives from its constituent States. And there we were all thinking that the Presidential election was a personality contest! The magic formula is 270 TO WIN!
What we do know is that for all the surreal antics and atmosphere of the campaign, the election result will come down to the individual preferences of millions of voters.
What will motivate these decisions, in a land of voluntary voting, is as elusive and varied as the cultural, political and geographical landscapes of America itself.
Regrettably, one is not able to utter the wish that “may the best person win” with any degree of confidence.
If Americans are gambling with their political future next Tuesday, let’s not forget that Australians will be gambling on the Melbourne Cup as Americans prepare to vote. Betting on the Melbourne Cup may be a voluntary activity as voting is in America; however, it seems a compulsion for most Australians.
Australia and America may be strategically tied together by ANZUS and AUKUS alliances, but are also culturally connected by the synchronicity of the first Tuesday in November. For the Melbourne Cup is always run on the first Tuesday in November, and Americans, every four years, vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November for their President. This year the Novmber Tuesdays align, and let’s not forget that on the first Tuesday in November in 1937, The Trump won Australia’s most famous horse race.
In 2024, reflecting the globalisation of our world, the current favourite for the Melbourne Cup is Via Sistina. If she runs, ‘Australia’s greatest race’ may be won by a horse sired by an Australian stallion with an American grandsire, bred from an Irish mare, owned by an Asian-Australian, trained by a New Zealander and named after a thoroughfare in Rome!
Geo-political complexities also surround the male and female players likely to be crowned the world’s No.1 at year’s end. Jannik Sinner remains in a cloud of controversy over alleged misuse of a prohibited substance, whilst Arnya Sabalenka is shackled by the persona non grata status of her native Belarus.
Everywhere you look nothing is as certain, compelling and competent as one would wish, except for Sydney's jacarandas whose springtime blooms against an azure sky are "a thing of beauty which is a joy forever."
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