There are so many aspects to Tuesday’s US election, it feels like one column simply won’t do.

So, here’s seven of them.

Hatred

Each side of politics in the United States no longer accepts the other side as legitimate – they believe they are motivated entirely by selfish/evil aims and are out to destroy the country, using words like “antichrist” and “Hitler”.

They’re driven not by normal political rivalry but by hatred, and hatred in politics is profoundly corrosive, not just of the polity, but the country.

In order to function, democracies rely on everybody agreeing that the competing parties are mostly trying to improve the country and do the right thing, but they’re just wrong, or misguided. Nevertheless, it’s sometimes their turn.

The US was in that kind of state up to 2020, but Donald Trump lost and tried anything to change the result, including encouraging a violent insurrection.

At the time, most people saw it as largely to do with Trump’s narcissism, that he couldn’t accept losing, but in 2024 we’re well beyond Trump’s psychopathy.

The Republican Party has been fully taken over by the MAGA movement so that close to half the country won’t accept a majority verdict because they think the Democrats will destroy the country, and Democrat voters won’t accept the legitimacy of a Republican win either because they believe it was bought by billionaires or by Russia, and they believe Trump and Vance and their billionaire backers will destroy the country and/or plunder it.

Discourse

Related to the first item is the fact that political discourse in the US has become untethered from convention.

Anything goes now. Trump called Kamala Harris a ‘sh-t vice president’ an ‘idiot,’ ‘incompetent’ with a ‘low IQ,’ and a ‘Marxist.’ He accused Haitian immigrants eating peoples’ pets, and has raved about the size of Arnold Palmer’s penis. Joe Biden said Trump supporters are “garbage”.

Maybe the language of politics will go back to normal after Trump goes, but it’s hard to see it. His heir apparent, JD Vance, was on board with the eating cats and dogs thing, as well as the other extravagant stuff from Trump.

It’s also possible that political discourse everywhere has been changed forever.

Secret

Trump said he has a “little secret” with House speaker Mike Johnson. He said: “I think with our little secret we are going to do really well with the house. Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret. We will tell you what it is when the race is over.”

Then Johnson appeared to confirm it, putting out a statement that said: “By definition, a secret is not to be shared – and I don’t intend to share this one.”

OK, so what could it be? The Nation magazine’s Elie Mystal had a stab at it in this piece.

In a “contingent election”, where the electoral college is a tie of 269 each (out of 538), the House of Representatives must vote to install the president and it’s one vote per state. There are 26 Republican states out of 50, so Trump wins.

But Mystal suggests it won’t even get to that because a number of the state election committees that certify the electoral college delegates of each state have been stacked with Republicans.

Key dates

The states have to submit their 538 delegates to the electoral college by December 11; they have to vote by December 25; the new House gets sworn in on January 3; and then certifies the electoral college on January 6.

If some states fail to submit their electors by the December 11 deadline, the number of members of the electoral college shrinks and the majority needed to win gets smaller than 270. The electors that didn’t make the deadline would be Democrat voters, which is why Republican officials would delay, so Trump’s share of the remainder would be higher.

Normally, the speaker of the House would simply extend the deadline until the states all submitted their electors, but the “secret” probably is that Johnson won’t do that – December 11 will stand no matter what, and the Republicans in charge of some of the states will simply delay beyond that.

It all then goes to the Supreme Court, which has been stacked by Trump and would probably rule in favour of him.

From there we can use our imaginations. Democrats go berserk and say it was stolen; Trump goes through with his promise to lock up opponents and use the army against “enemies within”; he could even declare martial law or something.

That’s the worst-case scenario. Maybe Harris will win and Trump and the Republicans all say “well done, President Harris, we concede”, followed by a peaceful transition of power.

Yeah right.

Economics

To an extent, economics itself is on the ballot.

This week 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists signed an open letter endorsing Kamala Harris and denouncing the policies of Donald Trump.

Polls of economists generally lean heavily towards Harris.

That’s because Trump’s three main economic policies would be disastrous, according to economics:

• 60 per cent tariffs on China and up to 20 per cent tariffs on imports from everywhere else
• Cut the company tax rate from 21 to 15 per cent and a series of other income tax cuts
• Deport at least 11 million illegal immigrants.

Economists say that the tariffs and tax cuts would reignite inflation and stall the economy, causing stagflation, and that removing that many workers and consumers would cause a deep recession, if it could be done, which it probably can’t be.

Both candidates would increase the budget deficit – Harris by $US3.5 trillion, Trump by $US7.5 trillion, with estimates ranging up to $US15 trillion.

Gender

Enough said.

Austerity

Conservatives always talk about the need to rein in government spending, balance the budget and reduce regulation; Donald Trump says he will actually do it, and will appoint billionaire Elon Musk as “chief efficiency officer” with the responsibility and power to drastically cut the size of government.

Musk has promised to cut $2 trillion out of the government, which would be 30 per cent of this year’s entire government spending. To do it, he would have to cut out nearly all discretionary spending, so no money for, among other things, transport, education or space exploration, from which Musk has benefited.

Musk says austerity is imperative, and that a sound economic future “necessarily involves some temporary hardship today”.

Climate

The election of Donald Trump will spell the end of effective global action on climate change.

He no longer refers to it as a hoax, but has promised to roll back Biden’s so-called green revolution and repeal the Inflation Reduction Act subsidises for renewable energy and electric vehicles.

A Trump Administration, he says, will “end Biden’s assault on the internal combustion engine and cancel his harmful April 2023 emission regulations for light, medium and heavy-duty vehicles.”

“My plan will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam. Greatest scam in history, probably,” Trump said in a speech in September. “We will rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.”

His problem will be that there’s too much money going to too many companies, so Congress may not want to stop the flow of cash.

Nevertheless, Trump will do what he can to prevent action on climate change.

Alan Kohler writes weekly for The New Daily. He is finance presenter on the ABC News and also writes for Intelligent Investor