With record numbers of votes already cast and record voting anticipated today, 3 November, people remain uncertain as to whether the least challenging challenger, Joe Biden, will secure victory over the candidate who lied his way into the White House and may now have lied his way out.

A temporary 8 foot barrier around the White House, boarded up shops and offices speak to widespread concern about violence whatever the outcome of the election. Inflammatory remarks by the incumbent carry responsibility and should also bear accountability.

Many speak of partisanship as the proximate cause of the problem. As if two sides were equally responsible for the decline in political culture in the US. This is not the case. The Republicans and Democrats are not equally to blame. In this instance balance is the enemy of truth.

There is no doubt the Democrats have failed to articulate and defend the interests of what should be their natural base, working class voters in the rustbelt and other areas of industrial decline. The Democrats have also engaged in the sport of gerrymandering. And it was a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who reformed welfare programmes to be far more penal than supportive whilst simultaneously repealing the Glass Steagall Act to make banking far more risky than prudent.

Having said all this there is no comparison between the Democrats and Republicans in their naked pursuit of power at the expense of all else even at the risk of undermining the democratic process and Constitutional government.

Trump is not the cause of this but he is the logical conclusion of a process which starts some 40 years ago when theorists of the right started to map out a way to respond to the liberal innovations of the 1960’s and early 1970’s. A strategy which took gerrymandering and voter suppression to a new levels of brazen aggression.

In the current election the State of Texas, where the Republicans control the Governor, the State House and the State Senate, they have determined that there should only be one drop off ballot box for postal votes in each county. This is seen by many as disadvantaging poorer, disabled and black voters.

Harris County, an area with growing number of Democratic voters, has a population of 4.7m people, 40% more than the next largest. It has one box. This is equivalent to providing one postal ballot box for the whole of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cumbria. This, in an election where Covid-19 is running unabated and therefore postal ballots are a public health issue as well as a democratic process. The intent is obvious and inexcusable.

Interestingly, this decision was litigated in the Courts and appealed to the 5th US Circuit of Appeals. The three judge panel sided with the Texas Governor and confirmed the single ballot box model. In passing, all three judges on the panel were appointed by President Trump.

The capture of the independent judiciary has been a specific aim of the American right for many years. Lewis Powell who produced a counterrevolutionary memorandum for business in 1971 identified the judiciary as probably, “…the most important instrument for social economic and political change.”

This memo underpinned a move to massive private funding of “independent” think tanks to promote libertarian theories in a range of subjects. As Jane Meyer sets out, one of these institutions, the Olin Foundation, “…bankrolled a new approach to jurisprudence known as Law and Economics.” The aim being to disguise conservative constitutional law as something far less partisan. over time shifting the intellectual ground in the direction approved by big conservative donors such as the Koch brothers and the Mercers.

This focus on the Judiciary has paid off with many examples of voter suppression being litigated in favour of removing potential voters from registers, making it difficult for them to vote and allowing intimidation at the poll booths.

Eight months before President Obama left office the Republic majority in the Senate, abandoned all previous precedent and argued that a President should not be able to make an appointment to the Supreme Court in their last year of office. Four years later the same people insisted and rammed through President Trump’s appointment of Amy Coney Barrett within days of the election.

There is no comparison between the behaviour of the Democrats and the Republicans. Now the Republicans have gone all in behind a President who says he will not respect the result of the election unless he wins. If there is violence following this election it rests squarely on the shoulders of a Republican party captured by a small group of plutocrats.

People with money to promote extreme libertarian political theories and outmoded neo-liberal economic views. But worst of all see the acquisition and maintenance of power as crucial at all costs. Even at the cost of the Constitution, the Nation and the people.

This election is important for more than the future of the United States, its implications are global. We must hope democracy, despite all the efforts to undermine it, will speak clearly and with such authority those who believe violence is the way to secure power are overwhelmed. Fingers crossed.