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 letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
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.
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.
The United States of Anarchy, hoist by its own petard, the Capitol of greed and narcissism, bible bashing, gun toting , fake Christians looking for some one, anyone they can consider lower on their humanity scale to bully or look down on including their own citizens which is impossible, nobody, no thing could possibly be below them on any humanity scale , indiscriminate murdering of each other on a daily basis, millions living in abject poverty and homeless, no health care for the masses, education only for the rich, most of the once great middle class totally destroyed, jobs exported to China and who they now blame for taking advantage of their gullibility and economic stupidity, while China is lifting lifting millions of people from poverty and building a middle class of over 350 million and making themselves a totally self sufficient economy able to stand alone, the once mighty U.S sinks into political and economic oblivion, how could anybody feel sorry for this nation, ,since world war 2 an international bully, assassinating leaders and instituting regime change, invading countries to steal their resources, spending billions on ballistic missiles and surrounding other nations with them while criticising other nations for building defence systems in response to this, I sincerely hope Donald Trump wins the upcoming election the U.S deserves him and the GW. Bush`s of their world.
I can only agree with you, in everything but your last paragraph..
Unfortunately there are too many people in the US that have been caught up in the current level of chaos & madness, who really have no chance to protect themselves..
So many people are wishing that at least if Obama had been given another term, maybe they would have been able to prevent what is happening now, it brings too mind the Midnight Oil song, “Beds are Burning” “the richer are getting richer & the poor get the picture,” unfortunately highlights the issues that everyday American’s & immigrants struggle with, that for whatever reason find themselves at the bottom end of the pile, then find out the reality of homelessness in the US a country that is unwilling to help support these people while they get back on their feet..
The American forefather’s based the laws & constitution so that people could find a better life there, it was set up so that everyone in the US got a fair go, this was like it should have been in Australia as the government as well seems to have lost it’s way..
All the protections for the everyday person, the environment & the whole democratic process has been thrown out & deemed unimportant, because too many of their rich friends are getting too much money out of this wheeling & dealing…
That Oils line is from Read About It, 1982
Beds are Burning was five years later, 1987.
As much as we may want to dance on the grave of America’s deluded exceptionalism, we’re only half a dozen steps behind. Yes, we don’t have guns (yet) and our electoral system works (for now), but the gang running the joint here is working off the same plans that destroyed the US over the last 40 years – trickle-down economics, private sector outsourcing and the trashing of trusted public institutions, the politicisation of the public service, the capture of the two main political parties (Pepsi and Coke) by big money donations from the fossil fuel and banking industries, a media dominated by a crooked and malevolent crime family (actually we gave them that one), the marketisation of every inch of our lives and the destruction of public health and education (we”ll get here). Look to the UK, another mini-me America where a bombastic clown (backed by some seriously sinister people) is destroying one of the world’s great democracies inch by inch. Australia is heading down the same long dark tunnel.
Yep!
Well said. And the current gov’t is really going in 5th gear now under the guise of covid.
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…..