Ever since Barack Obama left office in 2017, being American has felt a bit like living inside of a pinball machine: We’ve been flying between extremes, pinging off edges, rolling toward what feels like end times and then shooting back into the game.

Stroll down memory lane with me: The promise of the first woman president crashed into the shock of reactionary Trumpism, which itself was met with defiant resistance—Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the Women’s March—each of which was in turn the subject of furious backlash. In the midst of a badly destabilizing pandemic and a chaotic Trump administration, and the lesson that running a woman after a Black man made entire segments of the country lose their collective minds, Americans elected Joe Biden: A moderate, predictable white guy. In response, Trump superfans rioted their way into the Capitol building, Trump’s vice president was threatened with lynching while much of Congress hid from the mob in fear for their lives, and then Republicans largely coalesced around Trump and his stolen-election lies.

Four years later, Donald Trump is running yet again, this time against Kamala Harris, who, despite being a groundbreaking candidate, has not led with her race or gender. And somehow this election is still a nail-biter, so close that even the usually confident numbers guys are saying it’s a coin toss. I’m an American living abroad, which means I’m often asked to explain to people outside of the U.S. how this election remains so close; the problem is, even when I’m back home or speaking with American friends, we’re all flummoxed: This guy might win again?

One thing, I believe, continues to explain the push-pull of Trump’s appeal: Fairness (and, often, a perceived lack thereof). Americans are a fairness-obsessed people, and no candidate in recent years has been as effective at pushing the it’s-not-fair button as Trump. No candidate has so completely perverted the concept of fairness, either. We can only hope that he has finally overplayed that same hand—but we’ll find out for sure on (or after) Tuesday.

As the campaign cycle nears the end, Trump has retreated to the far corners of his worst impulses: fearmongering, conspiracy-theorizing, self-pitying. His replaying of these greatest hits is good news for Democrats: Trump the Bigot may play well at a hardcore MAGA rally, but it turns off more voters than it draws in. Harris’ promise that she’ll be a president for everyone and a champion of individual freedom is far superior messaging. But much of what voters will be weighing when they head to the polls is which candidate they believe will give them and their loved ones a fair shake.

A strong sense of fairness has animated America’s most successful social movements. Americans love the concept of equality under the law: That’s part of why the cases made by the Civil Rights Movement, the feminist........

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