Hurricane season could influence how America votes
Donald Trump is desperate to capitalise off of Hurricane Milton.
Stormy times await us and not only because Channel 4 has announced that the favourite porn star of “your favourite president” has been booked as a guest on its US election show on 5 November.
It certainly seems, at times, that US politics is merely an extension of celebrity culture, and it’s no more than a ratings game. Yet, in just a few short days, we’ve been reminded why elections – and this election above all others – are a serious business. Overnight Wednesday, the eastern Gulf States of the US were hit by the second once-in-a-lifetime hurricane in a week, as Milton completed its slow path to make landfall near Tampa. These hurricanes do not play by the rules of politics, and they certainly do little to accommodate a former president who has spent a large part of his week trying to exploit them. The effects are indisputable. Lives are destroyed. Infrastructure rendered unusable. They are the very kind of events for which a federal response exists.
As the timescale of the presidential election now shifts from months to weeks, soon to be days, it’s hard not to see how this storm season doesn’t influence how America votes. The race for the presidency certainly underwent a subtle shift over the past seven days. The arrival of Hurricane Helene came as the Harris/Walz team seemed to take its foot off the pedal for the first time since the Vice President entered the race. Relief operations kept President Biden busy but also meant that Kamala Harris would devote time to disaster relief as well as briefly detouring to North Carolina.
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