Well, it is the eve. Any commentary on the imminent US election is best done from one of the states. Luckily I'm in one -- that being post-operative inflammation. So if the following reflections are a little more disorganised than usual, that's probably appropriate to the event itself.

The American state has lost its capacity to reproduce power in a stable manner over the course of eight years. The 2012 election, looked at in retrospect, was as formal and bounded as a game of chess, with some voter suppression and gerrymander that now seems trivial.

The US has been here before; the civil war was a collapse of that sort. After that the black vote was suppressed for 90 years and several elections -- 1884, probably 1960 and 1968, arguably 2000 -- were stolen. The mechanics of such were known to urban dwellers, a mystery to others. The rate of vote theft, ballot stuffing, etc, was held to even out over time.