Well it’s all gone mmm yeah, still. Despite President Donald Trump’s Thursday evening (US time) pre-emptive press conference doubling down on claims of a rigged election, Joe Biden is on track for a narrow victory, after the polls shifted in the two days of post-election day counting. Smilin’ Joe has picked up up Wisconsin and Michigan, with Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania in the balance.
The Trump campaign isn’t giving up, sending phalanxes of lawyers to every state in contention to effectively argue the same point in each: that irregular mail-in ballots are being treated as regular and ratified, and that the Democrats are manufacturing new ballots.
Trump’s rhetoric has evolved into a full scale assault on the very fabric of democracy. His list of grievances, all presented without evidence, is growing by the hour, fuelling the chaos in the streets. His targets include the media (as ever), the polls (“suppression polls”) and “secret” hands at work to steal his victory.
Legally, there doesn’t seem to be much likelihood of a decisive success for Trump, or of the Supreme Court taking up the case, but you never know. Equally, Trump could hold the lead on the east coast and flip the two western states and narrowly prevail.
That would mean a 6 million vote gap between the popular vote, and the electoral college, an absurd result but one unlikely to prompt structural change in the US.
The result otherwise has been no triumph for progressives. The failure of the “blue wave” to crash across the country has left the Democrats with a reduced majority in the House, a failure to flip the Senate — likely to remain in GOP hands — and no gains at the state level, which means that a majority of states will be gerrymandered/redistricted by Republicans.
The next thing that likely happens if president Biden takes office will be the squeezing-out of the left by the Democrat centre. Without control of the Senate, very little that the Democrats wanted to do can get done, and the four years of the Biden/Harris presidency will be messy, governing month by month through deals and tactical moves.
But that may not be unwelcome to a Biden administration. With Senate approval needed for cabinet posts, Biden can propose a series of centrists oriented to Wall Street, a new dominant foreign policy, and limited change, as the price of confirmation.
Expanding the Supreme Court, constitutional change, that’s all gone, as is much chance of a Green New Deal. The Republicans committed to austerity will be glad to shuck what remains of Trump’s expansive industry policy — such as it was — in favour of deficit and debt reduction. Who knows what will come during this period — we didn’t expect the Tea Party during Obama’s first term — but it won’t be programmatic progressivism.
But it won’t be the Biden administration at all if the right has its way. If there were any doubt about the anti-democratic spirit of the right, it has been dispelled by the sycophantic falling in line of the conservatoriat.
From Fox News across to Australia’s Chris Kenny and Miranda Devine, the entirely fictitious stories of suddenly found ballots, mysterious turnouts, sudden suspensions of counting — all part of the standard process — has been worked up into a crisis by a deeply corrupted right.
This is the final transition to a sleazy banana-republic right cynically manipulating a gullible public. At the popular end it is staggering to see the ease with which a section of the US public took to a whole new set of lies — red MAGA-hatted good ole boys drawling “we’ve always counted the votes on election night”.
It’s the next stage in the transformation of American politics, to a set of wholly imaginary relationships to reality — though it must be said that the right’s wilful and self-serving paranoia is only slightly less batty than progressives’ insistence that Trump’s close-run vote is due to pervasive “whiteness”.
Whatever the limits of the progressives’ achievement, they at least have the satisfaction of being represented, being part of a process. Those who saw in Trump someone who represented them will feel that the politics of our era — that some speak and others have no access to it — has simply reasserted itself after a four-year interregnum.
Will they go somewhere else? Or has politics wholly changed again. We shall find out. Unless of course, and after much reversal, Trump wins after all and the malarkey begins again.
“progressives’ insistence that Trump’s close-run vote is due to pervasive “whiteness” – I haven’t heard that mentioned by progressives I follow. They mention lack of bold popular policies like Universal healthcare, a Green New Deal, humane immigration policies, end to mass incarceration, financial assistance for people stuggling with lost work etc etc.
Where did Guy pluck that massive straw man from? And to describe it as slightly more batty than ‘the right’s wilful and self-serving paranoia’?
Seems pervasive to me, among both US and Oz elite progressives
“Seems pervasive to me, among both US and Oz elite progressives”
As repugnant as it is I feel it myself , i can remember that feeling cropping up fleetingly throughout my life, it is a daily inference of privilege, being white, us and them bigotry.
The path back will be about understanding our natural environment, being taught. Similar to learning recipes from other nationalities that give us small insight and familiarity with culture..
Yep.
True.
I don’t think a complicated explanation of support for Trump is needed. Republicans turned out and voted for Trump, just as they did in 2016, and despite his blatant incompetence and corruption and despite the pandemic. I think this just shows Republicans will vote for whoever is their candidate for President.
Agree, unfettered tribalism is the clear winner. Perhaps no surprise in times like these with friends like fox.
I think this is correct. Most of Trump’s voters were just stock Republican voters in 2016; Clinton wasn’t liked and didn’t do enough to win vital states. More Democrat voters have turned out this time, especially in vital states; that’s the only difference, apart from four years’ observation of Trump.
No, no-one in the US wins on their base alone. Trump shifted Dem leaning workers onto his column on both elections
“Trump shifted Dem leaning workers…” mainly because there was no appeal or anything holding them to the Dems.
Like the Bourbons, forgotten nothing and learned nothing since 2016.
There fact that repugs further down the ticket have done well enough to hold the Senate, States and threaten the House majority shows that Trump is actually a drag on their prospects.
True.
True to some degree, as Trump signed everything the right served up to him ie massive tax breaks for the rich, winding back of environmental regulation etc.
While I’m not expecting much from a Biden administration, I do think that there will be a few good things. Such as, expanding the roll out of renewable energy, some improvements to health care and better run federal departments, with a return to having a few adults in charge. It will also be nice to have a president, who will largely tell the truth, and who won’t be obsessed with pretending that he’s the real victim.
I also think it will be entertaining to watch the bloodletting in the Republican party. Surely there will be an unhinged fear and loathing, between dedicated Trumpists and those who would love to see the past four years expunged from the memory. It will involve some of the worst possible people, fighting over whatever remains of their power: a recipe for a truly vicious civil war. So, let the games begin.
Agree AB. Watching the GOP/Trump divorce is going to be fascinating. He has served his purpose and is now a loser, so of no further value to Mitch and the rest of the Muppets.
The next big question is how much damage he can inflict between now and the Inauguration. See whether “your law and order President” will be willing to foment civil unrest. And how the senior Republican leadership responds.
Yes, and I suspect that people like McConnell, Graham and Cruz, once they fully ascertain that Trump has gone, will start pretending that they never really supported him, and that the forces that they were fighting against, were just too powerful for them to publicly resist.
And after 4 years of massively blowing out the budget, I also fully expect the Republicans, once they’re in opposition, to become deeply committed to fiscal austerity.
They’ll certainly all try to slink quietly away in the shambles, to become a respectable middle-class dentist in Peru.
But.
But the deliciousness of dirtbags like Trump’s White House p*ss bois, and dirtbags like his Hill p*ss bois, is that they all operate to the same ‘Poo Parachute’ contingency planning. The fratricidal filth that will be thrown by Mitch at Meadows, by Lindsay at Rudy, by McCarthy at Jared, by Collins at McEnany….and vice versa all the way around …will make for a Republic p* ss bois Hunger Games death match, with carefully stockpiled insider rap sheets as the weapons. Heaven. Pure heaven. FFS stop fretting, you dumb self-sabotaging Pap Prog dopes. You’ve won. Learn how to. How to…win.
Put the popcorn on and settle in, Crikey progs, for the self-lancing of the rancid swollen putrid junk-DNA gland that was Trump’s Presidency. It will be grand.
Even with Trump gone, the malignity of the repugs, esp in the Senate, will not reduce.
One thing about time serving seat polishers, they know how to wait … fours years? pfft! some of the incumbents (on both ‘sides’) have been in office for generations.
They have far more in common with each other than with the electorate.
I don’t know if the party will actually lance that boil, but I am extremely certain, 100%, that Biden Derangement Syndrome among the internet Right is going to be hilarious.
Yes, when reading their reality free meltdowns, it will be hard not to use terms like, snowflake and triggered.
A certainty.
Yehh!
Fiscal austerity for the ordinary American, more money for the military, more corporate welfare for Wall Street, and the rest of the Vampire Squids that are corporate America.
The next 4 years should see laws such as , a president must have reasonable basis for what comes out of his mouth, decent health care, strategies that build and develop work that is environmentally and economically sustainable, and of course ethical media laws.
Develop and argue the policies for the next 4 years, appeal to the rust belt, break down the trump believers reasoning with fact,
offer alternatives that improve their lot, diffuse the bomb and we will never see another Trump.
Para 1 : there exists the same problem in Oz so why make a special case of the USA?
Para 2 : agreed – except that another Trump will appear (as sure as ..).
1) true & (2) too true.
And (2b) the next one will be far worse.
I have an embargoed post to Hardaker’s article (total) of four posts which constructs an argument contrary to Hardaker’s article and the posts. The argument extends the point which I have made here. Maybe Monday.
Who cares?
Para 1 : there exists the same problem in Oz so why make a special case of the USA?
Well we are discussing the US election Erasmus, I can’t count how many times I’ve described the need for a responsible educative independently regulated local media.
It follows that the other points made would be high on the agenda of responsible media.
You are ignoring the fact the Democrats cannot do any of that as long as Mitch McConnell runs the senate. And right now it looks like McConnell will stay in control there, so all that will happen in the next four years is… nothing, except as the Republicans allow. Remember that McConnell loves to crush anything dreamt up by the Democrats, just ask Obama. Arguably, even that is an improvement over the previous four, but during this time, as Rundle mentioned, the Republicans will cement their voter suppression & gerrymandering grip to ensure nothing will remove them for all the foreseeable future. So enjoy the next four years, it’s the last gasp of the poor old sick American democratic experiment. The future is one-party rule.
Small point re your last sentence – that has been the past as well, at least since Ike.
I agree , but I’m saying that these issues should be expressed and built into a developed narrative over the next 4 years, with a clear simple but educative message of support for those that are struggling with the aim of securing a senate and congress and rep majority, work on Trumps misguided base.
I think your suggested actions will be far too little to remedy the political sickness of the USA. I’ve just seen an article ‘Democracy’s Afterlife’ by Fintan O’Toole in the New York Review of Books that says it all far more eloquently than I could, and at much greater length. Unreserved recommendation.
Bring media back to something that is inclusive , educative, unbiased unless stated and ethical and the rest will take care of itself.
The world cannot afford media run and owned by vested interest that couldn’t give a rats about the general population or the natural environment.. Ships rat aside.
Yes, that sort of control of the media would certainly sort out our problems. A Ministry of Truth could handle it.
The 150yr history of the yellow press suggests otherwise.
I suppose I have to say something like there lies decency a good in all people, yous made me say it, I would have preferred not..
I can’t quite comprehend it but the control of information, or rather the deliberate misuse of power via information is more important than any politician or party.
A calculator is coming your way for Xmas Guy. (6/160) million i[total votes] s about 3.8% and that is not regarded as material in either stats or accountancy. In other words ‘structural change’ is unnecessry. In any event the ‘big boys’ like matters the way they are.
Agreed : the options for foreign policy are open (at least in principal) with some revision of the Obama perspective but I’m not holding my breath.
Lastly, and not for the first time, do you mind providing a definition of ‘progressive’ because, as it stands, it is a token that means anything to anyone. I suggest that Trump and his supporters deem themselves ‘progressive’ (as, I suspect does QAnon).
Even making an allowance for it being Friday this article is below the standard that you have atained of late but be that as it may.
Dunno what the blather in yr first para is. Question is whether one side wins with 6 million votes (on 120 million – 5%) less than the other. Matters to democracy, esp if it always goes one way
I appreciate the reply Guy. It seems that some have comprehended the “blather” but no matter.
Just where in Australia (or anywhere – UK?) is there a 1:1
correspondence between physical votes and eventual representation in a Senate, Congress, a Parliament or, in the current case, a president. Pauline would have about 1/5 of the H.of.Reps.
It is not uncomom (the data is there) for a president to be elected on a percentage of the total vote which happened to be less than their opponent.
if a 3.8% disparity causes you a degree of anguish (and it seems that it does) may I suggest a paper to any of the journals of policial science as to rectifying the matter.
Guy probably could have named names when he complained about a hot take, however, asking him for a precise definition of ‘progressive’ is pointless nitpicking. It is a vague term that doesn’t refer to any single group or individual, but a tendency within liberalism.
Half the reason to use it is the Progressives self identify as such, the other half is no one says ‘bourgeoisie socialists’ anymore.
On the contrary, the Greens (a recent parody appearing on these pages) are the model of bourgeois socialism. One could rub it in and Latham did so (The Monthly of about 18 months ago – if memory serves).
Besides Herman Hesse tattooed the definition of bourgeois (anything) over the first thirty pages of the novel ‘Steppenwolf’ (and hence the world) which saw the light of day in 1927.
Your ‘defense’ (para1) actually makes my case; that the article is heuristic at best and somewhat sloppy at worst.
You hear it much outside the kind of people who have read Engels, though? I say this as someone that loves to quote the old bit about hole and corner reformers.