Irish Examiner view: Harris needs to get out the vote
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks during a town hall at The People's Light in Malvern, Pennsylvania, US, on Monday. Picture: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
With just 14 days left before what is seen as the most consequential vote in American history, campaigning is intensifying as the world waits to see if America sides with the Democratic candidate and rejects Trump and his Maga agenda.
Thanks largely to the exigencies of the country’s electoral college system, however, it is feasible that Trump will once again upset the apple cart and win back the White House regardless of whether he is the winner of the popular vote. His vanquished opponent in 2016, Hillary Clinton, received almost 3m more votes than the eventual winner.
Democrats are concerned that those who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 have become disengaged with the political process since then, because they feel less alarmed by Trump and his MAGA movement than they did prior to that election.
Analysts say the difference between Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016 and Biden’s win in 2020 was an unprecedented participation level of new voters convinced that, if Trump won, they would lose many freedoms they take for granted.
Failing that pro-Democrat turnout surge seen in the last election, survey data seems to indicate that Trump might well prevail. The same data now also predicts that voters don’t see him as being as much of a threat as they did previously, despite the startling extremist goals highlighted in the conservative Project 2025 manifesto.
If the Harris campaign fails to mobilise those voters once more, the consequences for America and its citizens — not to mention the rest of us — remain too horrible to contemplate.
Archbishop Eamon Martin, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, has weighed in on the issue of assisted dying in this country ahead of this week’s Dáil debate.
Having witnessed stinging rebukes to Catholic teaching in the shape of referendums on divorce and abortion, Archbishop Martin may be about to behold another example of how the Church’s once dominant muscle has atrophied.
The final report from the joint committee on assisted dying will be discussed in Leinster House this week and we already know it is recommending that the practice be legislated for, albeit with some 38 conditions ensuring safeguards.
These protections focus mainly on making certain that people are not coerced into ending their lives and are protected from making a decision to end their life without being fully capable of doing so.
The archbishop’s assertion that the introduction of laws to permit assisted dying are “an affront” to a safe and protective society, and that any such legislation should be opposed, are his own opinions and reflect those of the organisation he represents.
He is, of course, entitled to those opinions, as is the Catholic Church, but he may be about to find out that — yet again — such views no longer reflect those of the wider Irish society.
His stance, that society is defined “by the extent to which we care for our most vulnerable persons including those with disabilities, terminal illness or otherwise nearing the end of life”, may be true, but is not something that prevents us from introducing solid and mature legislation on assisted dying.
We are, for sure, a caring society and as such that should allow us to legalise assisted dying where the alternatives are inhumane and unconscionable.
Such an eventuality would define us more than Archbishop Martin’s narrow interpretation.
With a general election looming, he is urging people to contact candidates to express their views on the matter — and so they should, no matter what their beliefs are.
Collectively, however, it should be our conscience which is the deciding factor.
Yet another razor-thin election result — this time in Moldova — has seen the central European country vote in favour of joining the EU in a referendum clouded by allegations of interference and attempted rigging.
Formerly ruled by Moscow when it was the capital of the Soviet Union, Moldova has been independent since the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1991, but has long struggled to shrug off the influence of Russia.
Last Sunday’s twin votes in the country — on the one hand, a presidential election, and a referendum on seeking EU membership, on the other — was seen as a crucial test of the pro-European agenda of president Maia Sandu, but the narrowness of the victory will have disappointed both her own supporters and her allies in Brussels.
In the presidential vote, Ms Sandu topped the poll with 41.9% of the vote and she will now face off in two weeks’ time against former prosecutor Alexandr Stoianoglo, who is backed by pro-Russian socialists. The referendum vote was a lot tighter, with the yes campaign coming home with just 50.18% in favour out of 1.4m ballots cast.
Both were held amid claims that Moscow and its proxies had carried out a determined campaign to destabilise the country and upset its plans for EU membership.
Russia was accused of, among other things, backing a major vote-buying scheme involving an estimated 130,000 voters, or nearly 10% of voter turnout. Sandu insisted this was “a fraud of unprecedented scale” and was aimed at undermining the democratic process.
While the elections were positive to a point, Moldova, which is one of Europe’s poorest countries, is still far from being beyond Moscow’s extensive reach. For its citizens and its democracy, that is a huge worry.
