Moment of Truth 
With less than a week to go until polling day, there is the comforting illusion that, one way or another, the whole US election thing will be over in one long evening.
But of course everyone knows that it’s not going to happen that way. Barring a Biden victory of Brobdingnagian proportions across the board based on non-mail ballots only, it’s going to be an unholy mess.
The almost perfect storm has descended upon the American polity: an electoral system designed in the 18th century and not much modified since, ramshackle at the best of times, is now going head-to-head with an out of control pandemic, a mendacious president, a gangster administration and a stacked Supreme Court. What else could possibly go wrong?
Oh yeah, it’s legal to open carry guns into a polling place. Thank God there’s nothing aggravating about voting in the US, like an hours-long wait in line, with the distribution of food and water prohibited. Last, best hope of man, everybody.
There’s no even-handedness about this. Democrat-run states may gerrymander their districts — they have to, for parity — but it’s Republican states that suppress the voter rolls with lifetime voting bans on felons, removal of polling places and understaffing of those that remain. Now, with the universal right to mail-in ballots due to COVID-19, the brand-spanking new Supreme Court has ruled, on a Wisconsin case, that mail-in ballots stamped as mailed before polling day but arriving after will not be counted.
This, after the Trump-installed head of the US Postal Service initiated a campaign of withdrawing hundreds of mail sorting machines from service before workers refused to co-operate.
With state and county government determining most election conduct, the lawsuits are running wild. There are more than 300 currently underway, a large proportion focused on the key swing states of Florida and Pennsylvania. Should there be challenges to the result in these or other swing states, it seems likely that these will be the cases which are rapidly shuffled up to the Supreme Court — which has complete discretion to take up whichever appeals it likes.
In the Wisconsin decision Justice Brett Kavanaugh affirmed both the notion of “stopping the count” on election night or soon after to avoid “confusion”, and the supremacy of state government election codes over any challenge to their constitutionality by state courts. Since most of these governments are Republican, well.
The stage is thus set for a multi-directional car crash: hundreds of thousands of rejected votes, stand-offs at polling places, queues so long people are denied the chance to vote, followed by razor-thin state results which might be reversed into a final result in which an electoral college majority diverges from an overall majority.
This would test the system to close to breaking point beyond anything of recent decades. It’s an extraordinary situation, arrived at in no more than a decade and a half from a point of relative stability and consensus. It’s a product of the “wrecking crew” approach to government by Republicans — to do government so badly that all consensual norms collapse and power becomes sheer exercise of force.
This has relied on the establishment nature of mainstream progressivism, and its leaders’ ultimate commitment to order and legitimacy over success — above all in Al Gore’s capitulation to George W Bush in 2000. But that was then.
After years and decades of the slow remorseless advance of inequality, indeed of the increasing impossibility of life for many, of the steady fusion of capital and tech into monopoly dominance, of opportunistic captures such as the new 6-3 conservative constellation of the Supreme Court, in an era of Black Lives Matter and much more, there is far less likelihood of accepting such.
Would a real double cross of the popular vote push people beyond all restraint? For all the swagger of gun totin’ militias, it’s far more likely to be progressives who could field a mass movement against a barely legal powergrab.
None of it may happen this way, but it’s the logical conclusion to a process of power that is many decades old, and was initially projected outwards onto client states as “exported democracy” — manufactured elites, a dodged-up process, a systemic exclusion of progressive change.
That process of masking power with pseudo-democracy has become inwardly folded, as America lost its projective power. The USA has become its own client state — which accounts for the somewhat uncanny nature of the events, the simultaneous feeling of reality and unreality.
Maybe that will all end next week. But the questions of legitimacy will not be resolved by a Biden victory. A Biden era might be far more interesting than many are counting on.
And whether it is or not, whatever happens, there will be at least another two and a half months of the Trump administration. During which he could do anything…
Is Donald Trump setting up an election upset? Is the US bound for more chaos? Let us know your thoughts by writing to [email protected]. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
A lot can happen in 3 months.
3 months is a long time in 2020. Join us to make sense of it all.
Get you first 12 weeks of Crikey for just $12. Cancel anytime.
Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
Leave a comment
You might be interested to learn, Guy, that it was only relatively recently that one had to be of good character (a fit and proper person) to vote and receive a pension in the UK and the dominions. However, your article misses the point as to the Primaries.
Joe is what has been served up from the Democratic candidate pit to compete with Trump. In large measure the “rigging” of which you make mention is largely by the way or beside the main issue of candidate selection.
From a panoramic perspective, the “questions of legitimacy” have their origin in the fringe or identity brigade which has been (masterfully) played off against itself by the real authority sources.
As to “he” doing “anything” post the election it will be interesting to ascertain who is pardoned. The tail end (if Trump loses) could be some time because with the decisions of the Supreme Court as to legitimate postal votes the counting could take quite a while.
Yes Erasmus, the Biden candidacy is the outcome of a rigged Primary as was the previous that produced Hilary as candidate. I also believe that Kamala is sponsored by Hilary and Obama and will be seen as such by a large enough section of the electorate to make for future difficulties. As a candidate in her own right she didn’t break 2% of the vote and withdrew early to save further embarrassment. Hilary lost from Democrat voters not turning out, this time voters appear to be motivated to turn out, not by the candidates but in a desire for less excitement and stress. Unfortunately whatever the outcome of the election the next 4 years are most unlikely to be any less chaotic than the last four. The United States is a Great Power and the rest of us need for it to be run efficiently, predictably and within the Law for our own Peace and Wellbeing as a Country. We may be waiting some while.
I think that perhaps it is at least just as important that the Dems win the Senate, which is the real control that Obama lost in his second term. Get rid of that turd Mitch mcconnell.
Something of the problem with the article *is* the wishful thinking, BJ, but by no means confined to Rundle.
It was Charles Fox (himself a ‘Wig’) who described a career in politics as “nature’s lowest calling”. One might say that the antics haven’t changed from Henry III or that of the Roman Senate for that matter; the Civil Wars made little difference!
Both Don Watson and Hugh White have written excellent essays regarding Trump and his Administration.
The USA is swinging to the Right by the hour BJ. Barry Goldwater (the Republican nomination of almost 50 years ago) would look like a communist nowadays. The Senators don’t need to be told ‘which way is up’. As to Supreme Court Judges I would not be surprised to see Row v. Wade reversed by 2024 – irrespective of the Presidental result.
Observe by all means, BJ, but never dare to hope. Dickens made the same point in his novels; Hardy too – come to that.
I can’t help thinking that when the history of the collapse of the US is written, the key turning point will be the 2000 Presidential election and the hanging chads of Florida. If Gore had been proclaimed President there probably still would have been 9/11 (or maybe the intelligent briefings might even have moved up the food chain?). The folly of the Iraq invasion which led directly to other disasters – including the world wide and never ending refugee crisis would not have occurred.
Most importantly proper climate change policies may have prevented the melting of the Arctic permafrost.
Nailed it
Beg to differ on Iraq, Joanna.
The House voted 296 – 133, and the Senate 77 -23, in favour of destroying Iraq.
Presidents and ‘elected representatives’ don’t run Amerika, the ‘war economy’ does, enabled by the ‘unelected representatives’ in the intelligence services, and their conduits in the media.
I think you are wrong. You need to remember that the neocons around George W Bush came into power looking for a pretext to invade Iraq, which they saw as unfinished business from 1991. 9/11 provided the opening the neocons needed. I strongly doubt a Gore Administration would have responded to 9/11 with an invasion of Iraq.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a response to 9/11, Iraq 2 came at a later date.
As Grundle stated, the 2nd Iraq war was inevitable long before 9/11.
That was just a convenient hook.
Not at all like Pearlharbour or the Gulf of Tonkin incident.)
Thanks to FUX, 88% of its audience thought that Iraq was responsible.
Only (sic!) 54% of CNN audience believed that and around 35% of NYT readers (though how many of those move their lips when thinking is not recorded).
And, Clinton destroyed Yugoslavia in the 90’s on what high anti-war, humanitarian principle, exactly?
The pharmaceutical plant in Sudan? Which, I remind, happened ONE week after the Lewinsky scandal blew up?
O’Bomber and Killary in Libya? ‘We came, we saw, he died?’
O’Bomber and Maidan in Ukraine, in ’14? Victoria Nuland – wife of arch Bush neocon, Kagan -‘ F*** the EU!’?
O’Bomber launching drone strikes in abundance, across the ME and West Asia, on a ‘principle’ of a ratio of civilian deaths to ‘enemy combatants’ as acceptable? Weddings?
O’Bomber prosecuting and gaoling more whistleblowers, who blew whistles on Amerikan foreign bastardry, than all previous Amerikan Presidents combined?
Like me to move to Latin and South America, just to show there is not a cigarette paper between Demorats and Republicans, down the foreign bastardry ages?
A group of post grad and post doc engineers and I were chatting in one of the cafes at MIT in 2018. Two guys from Harvard (just a stroll up the road) were there also.
I stunned the entire table by pointing out that Kennedy (the index for a Dem) was the guy who sent troops to Vietnam in 1962 for a two year campaign – no declaration of war incidentally! Yep. A few reached for their phones to confirm with Google.
The terrible aspect is that they had to check.
Perhaps even post grad were too young to have know that from normal reading.
That generation was told NOT to learn stuff but to ‘look it up as required’ There was no ‘copying from the blackboard’ for them; even as a learning process.
I suggest that for the less able of that generation (and others) the phenomena of fake news and post truth is largely responsible. Very few (under 40) do ‘normal reading’ nowadays.
Agree.
As someone whose knowledge is broad but extremely shallow, I am constantly stunned by the realisation that so many know so little as to be unmoored.
Without their phones or net, they would be helpless.
Apparently it is now unusual to be able to use a street directory, let alone read a map.
The major scientific discoveries of the 18/19th centuries were achieved using tools & equipment which would look 3rdWorld in the average suburban shed.
Until the 50s, most of daily life and needs could be produced locally by processes understood by most artisans.
Methinks that is no longer true.
De-skilling began, in Oz and NZ, roughly, from the mid 70s. I suspect that my generation of apprentices was the last that repaired “everything”. As an aside, I went to varsity in my early 20s.
It was apparent during my first visit to the USA in the mid 70s (long summer break) that specialisation was well underway with transmission shops, muffler shops, tuning shops, engine, brakes, electrical etc. Even the frames for houses would turn up pre-constructed; the quality being what one paid for.
On the other hand the output (if one overlooked the quality of finishing) was impressive.
Specialisation appears to have reached the Ouroboros point with eyebrow sculpting salons & meal deliveries.
Add pet grooming and pet etiquette courses.
and the last line is critical. even if Biden wins and even if Trump agrees with that (unlikely) he still has three months to trash the joint before he leaves…..
It’s the cathartic endpoint of a psychotic episode that was seeded by the Gore-Bush election and then triggered by 9/11. Trump has already won the election. ‘From chaos, power. If anyone thinks those unhinged Trumpemberg Rally crowds are going to wake up on Nov 4 healed and united, you’re crackers. And if you think there will no contenders to pick up The MAGA Mantle and take it to the next level, you’re even more so.
America got broke. Ain’t no fixing it now. Not so it was like it was.
Surely to have the Benighted State to “…like it was.” would us nought?
The current imbroglio exemplified by Trump is the logical, the only possible, outcome of the previous 20, not to say, 200 years.
He is the very model of a modern amerikan, all surface and no interior, show not substance, sizzle sans sausage.
The situation is all the more dangerous because of there being no ‘there, there’ which means that there is no core of belief or ethic to provide a guiding principle.
… arghh – Surely to have the Benighted States “…like it was” would AVAIL us nought?
Yes too true, and why even a fairly thumping Biden victory, though obviously to be fervently hoped for, won’t really solve much. The MAGA ‘swamp conspiracy’ will just be further amplified, while any subsequent resetting of the policy and procedural landscape will likely be confined to the ‘softer’ cosmetic stuff of identity an culture war divisions. Black Lives Matter and all the ‘American divide’ stuff is vital, but it’s also more symptomatic of the deeper structural democratic and economic failures blighting America than it is causally underlying.
America’s accelerating decline into second world power is a function of its geographical peripheral isolation, its relatively small population, its chaotic, bolted-together Federal framework and the built-in Constitutional ‘locks’ that delude its population into defending its inherently fragmentary framework as a nation-defining virtue to be defended at all costs. Health care, gun laws, environment and energy policy, electoral voting arrangements and – very probably going forward now abortion rights, FFS – are all examples of domestic-narcissist ‘bitsy’ issues by which America insists on exhausting its strategic capacity for outward adaptation to and maintained competitiveness with a globalised economy and population which has more than closed the 20th century advantage gaps the US leveraged so brilliantly for so long – in optimistic aspiration translated into material achievement, in technological innovation, in democratic agility and capitalist firepower. Whoever is in the WH the stacked Supreme Court and a generation of money-captive, second rate Congressmen and Senators harried by opportunist spoilers and a populist-frenzied electorate will just ensure that a dying empire will remain helplessly suicidal captive to its own push me-pull-me paralysis.
None of this is any cause for anything other than bleak sadness. So much unprecedented human wonder and moral good game from ‘the American century’. They are a loving and decent people but their time in the world’s leadership role has passed. Australia needs to step away, and step up, to make sure the 21st century isn’t a retrograde step back.
Quote
‘None of this is any cause for anything other than bleak sadness.’
My thanks Jack, says it all.
Trumpism is not the problem, it’s simply a symptom of a declining USA, which does not bode well for any of us. The level of inequality and poverty in the US is obvious to even the most unobservant visitor. Until this is addressed, the US will remain hostage to the despots, driven by pure self interest.