US Presidential Election | American-Finnish Hanna Wagner will definitely vote for Kamala Harris so that Trump does not make a comeback

Mixed the group had gathered at a friend’s house to watch the results of the presidential election. A little alcohol had been consumed, and the atmosphere was confident of victory.

Then someone asked why it’s taking so long to release Virginia state results. Why don’t things go as smoothly as expected anyway?

Virginia ended up going as the polls suggested. But bad news poured in from elsewhere.

Republican Donald Trump was rushing to victory in the US presidential election, albeit for the Democrats Hillary Clinton had been a clear early favorite and eventually received more than 2.8 million more votes.

However, the total number of votes did not matter in the electoral system, where the results of the states determine the winner who is counted among the electors.

American Finn Hanna Wagner burst into tears. The guys were crying too. The November 8, 2016 election watchers in Washington were ruined, and everyone went home.

“It was something so terrible. It was absolutely debilitating,” says Wagner.

Stateside Wagner, 67, who immigrated for the first time in 1981, had always put off completing his citizenship application for one reason or another. Before the 2003 law change, taking American citizenship would have meant rejecting Finnish citizenship, which Wagner could not have imagined.

“American society scared me terribly at first. My mother was widowed at a young age. I thought that if I stayed alone in the United States, I would have nothing left,” says Wagner, whose health insurance was linked to her American husband’s David’s for a job at the US State Department.

Filling out the application was also delayed by the fact that Wagner traveled with her husband on diplomatic missions around the world. It wasn’t until 2008 that David settled permanently in Washington, D.C., when he retired.

And then, by historical coincidence, a democrat came to power Barack Obama. Life was carefree, the citizenship issue seemed like a side issue.

All changed eight years later. Trump, who incited xenophobia in his campaign, unexpectedly won the election, and Wagner began to fear that foreigners would cause problems. If he were to get into a traffic accident, how would he be treated in a possible dispute situation?

“I was afraid of everyday things like this. I was afraid of being bullied,” he says in an interview during his visit to Helsinki.

Wagner did not want to be a stranger in a country whose president spoke ill of foreigners. After getting home from the November 2016 election supervisors, Wagner began filling out a long citizenship application form in the wee hours of the morning.

After about a year of waiting, he became a dual citizen of the United States and Finland. At the same time, he registered as a voter of the Democratic Party.

Wagner’s the vote will definitely go to the Democratic vice president in November Terrible for Harris. Wagner doesn’t even dare to think about Trump’s victory.

“My husband says he couldn’t stand another four years of Trump. Those were such difficult years.”

In Trump, Wagner is particularly upset by his meanness. Trump is known for speaking derisively about immigrants, minorities, women, and sometimes even veterans and the disabled.

“He is terribly mean. That was the first thing that struck me about him as a bachelor.”

Wagner tells something that seems awkward in a way. For him and 75-year-old David, the Trump years meant prosperity. Share prices set 126 new recordspension savings accumulated.

Although Trump brought angry and false speeches to politics, he created optimism in the economy. It was a strange contradiction that even made some of the Wagners’ Democrat friends say that “it wasn’t so bad.”

Wagner has not been completely dependent on her husband, as she has earned her own merits as a freelancer: as a Finnish language interpreter, translator and teacher.

There is it’s common to hear that Americans don’t really know Harris. However, in Wagner’s opinion, Harris has not been an exceptional vice president, even though he was not seen much in public before Harris became a presidential candidate Joe Biden after dropping out of the race.

Harris has not even been seen, says Wagner. “He has nothing else to do but run to the Senate and vote when there is a tie.”

In the United States, the vice president is the president of the 100-member Senate of Congress and a silent assistant to the president.

Along with Wagner, husband David and their two grown sons are voting for Harris. It’s kind of funny, because Wagner, who was born in Helsinki, grew up in a bilingual right-wing Finnish family.

David, who grew up in the conservative areas of Pennsylvania, was a Republican when he was young, but far from the kind of Republicans that Trump represents.

Wagner believes that Harris’s victory would be a landmark similar to Obama’s rise to the presidency with the 2008 election. Harris would be the first female president, she is black and the child of two immigrants – from India and Jamaica.

“I believe it would give hope to dark-skinned children and especially girls.”

According to Wagner, Harris’s big trump card in the election is the abortion issue. Trump has favored the Christian right on abortion issues, while Harris has placed himself strongly in the camp that supports abortion rights.

“No one per se supports abortions, but the right to abortion. It’s a really big deal for women.”

The abortion debate exploded in the United States to a new position when the Supreme Court overturned the broad right to abortion in 2022. 67 percent of Democrats considers abortion an important election issue35 percent of Republicans.

Wagner believes that Harris’s presidency would mean a politics similar to Biden’s, and “it has been good domestically.” There could be adjustments in foreign policy, for example with a stricter attitude towards Israel.

One answer gives the impression that the most important thing for Wagner in the election is who doesn’t win. He thinks positively of Harris, but there are no words of praise.

“Yes, I am aware that he does not have any great ideas. Except for the abortion thing.”

What worries Wagner is that elections in the United States can be won with clever short campaign slogans. For Trump, it is a promise to “make America great again”. Harris doesn’t have a similar hokeland.

“Those elections are won with them, even if they are equal to nothing. Harris is having none of that Yes we can [kyllä me pystymme]like Obama. This is missing. Maybe he is too practical to be a politician.”

HS told 21.9. Jouko Paavola, a Finn-American living in Florida, who votes for Trump. You can read the story from this link.