Landing at JFK

I arrived last night at JFK and took a yellow cab to Tribecca. It is nice to take yellow cabs again, prices are reasonable and the service is ok. Some of the taxis are even new and the seats are not broken and uncomfortable. Of course the drivers, the drivers are as usual people who have just arrived in New York and have no better job.

The blast from the past ended here.

My driver was from Kerala and though he said he and his extended family have lived in New York for a decade, his English was hard to understand. However, he wanted to chat about politics so we did.

He immediately introduced the topic of the election, frankly I did not even think he voted but he does. He told me that he, his family and his friends have all been naturalised and they are Americans now.

My driver liked Trump, he liked him a lot. He said that his brother works for a truck company, I guess he is a diver, and during the Trump administration the company was doing much better and his brother was also better off. When I asked me to be more specific he could not answer me, all he knew is that the pay check was higher. Do not forget that during the pandemic everybody received monthly cheques signed Donald Trump.

He did not like Joe Biden and when I pointed pout that Kamala Harris is now running instead of him he said he does not know anything about her but he will not vote her. I told him she is half Indian and he said so what?

From what I understood his community, which sounds very large, likes Trump because they feel secure with him, He projects the right image of a leader. And he was and still is a business man, so he knows how business work.

When I got to my friend and publisher' house we had a chat about the election and of course what emerged is that the more educated people are, the less they like Trump. But New York will play an irrelevant role in the elections, at the end of the day this is a state that always votes for democrats, not matter who they are. So my taxi driver, his friends and all the people that share their vision of Trump will not change the results. But peope like them in swing states could. If it is true that lo

w income people, working class people, less educated people really prefer Trump everywhere across America, the democrats will likely loose the elections.

More important, if this is the new normal in the bipolarity of the American system, then the country has dramatically changed, with the Republicans being more anti-establishment and gathering consensus among the poor and less wealthy and the democrats being better off and very conservative in the running of the country.