Back in June I predicted Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential election under the contrarian headline “Why Joe Biden will not win the US Election”. My point was President Trump would lose it. However, for a second, I will bask in the glory of calling the outcome correctly so far out.
At the time I berated myself for thinking that the future was my specialist subject and I was correct. As the months went by and the CovEcon-19 leviathan killed people and employment I convinced myself we were in for a “blue wave” election with a Biden landslide.
I was wrong. President Trump actually secured an increase in his popular vote. He was only beaten by a record turnout which favoured Biden by 4m votes or just over 2% of the electorate. It pains me to say it but it is a real achievement for Trump to secure that much of the vote in a democracy.
Much will be made of this incredibly close and highly contested election. It will be called in evidence of the partisan divide. Illustrating how far apart Americans are. And it is true there is an enormous amount of reconciliation to be achieved by a Biden presidency, which will not be easy as some of the issues are not susceptible to a compromise solution.
However, the true winner here was democracy. Whether they supported Biden or Trump the American people, in unprecedented numbers, chose to do so by voting. Yes, there have been dark noises off, not least from the incumbent, but at the end of the day 70m+ Trump supporters thought the way to provide that support was through the ballot box.
It is early days and trumped up legal challenges, poisonous tweets and attempts at transition sabotage may well raise the temperature but 146m Americans have thrown their weight behind a system which provides for a peaceful transfer of power. Neither candidate may have secured a landslide but democracy did.
On the 9th August 1974 president Richard Nixon resigned from office in the face of almost certain impeachment. As president he broke a number of political, constitutional and moral norms.
He attempted to use Departments of state to “get dirt” on his opponents; he had a list of “enemies”; he hated the press; he expected loyalty to himself not the Constitution; he instigated the Saturday night massacre, his Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General resigning in succession when he ordered them to fire Archibald Cox the Special Prosecutor investigating the Watergate affair. He was a bad man. And he swore a lot.
Not since then has the US faced such a norm challenging president. Someone who threatens not just to do a bad job or make awful policy decisions but who actively undermines the foundations of the democratic system of government.
The parallels between Nixon and Trump are many and close however in the pantheon of awfulness Trump stands head and shoulders above even Nixon. He has been a far greater threat to US democracy and liberal democracy worldwide than Nixon ever was. There are two reasons for this.
Firstly, the character of the person. Neither Nixon or Trump could be said to be overly worried about questions of conscience or moral scruple. The difference is Nixon knew there was an issue, Trump doesn’t understand the question.
The second difference, is the the moral character of those about them. Nixon had loyal supporters, some of whom went to jail for him. However within the Republican Party and within Departments of State, most importantly Justice, individuals knew there were lines that must not be crossed.
They knew when partisan political focus strayed into an obsessive demand for control at the expense of Constitutional government. Not only did they know when something was wrong they did something about it. His political colleagues in the Republican party withdrew support from the president making the success of impeachment certain, lifetime public servants resigned rather than implement the actions of an increasingly irrational leader.
The threads connecting Nixon who was enraged by what he saw as the radical trends of the 1960’s in relation to issues like race, gender, youth, and Trump who has many of the same prejudices are fascinating.
Part of the Nixon legacy may be his support for a counter revolution taken up by libertarian oligarchs determined to overturn what they saw as a strengthening progressive agenda. The investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to change the intellectual landscape and build an alternative neoliberal agenda as promoted by groups like the Mont Pelerin Society.
An agenda of small government and privatisation, unregulated free markets, low taxation, a Washington consensus about the benefits of free trade Their activities contributed to a period where market-determined price became the measure of worth of all things to the exclusion of value. Government was portrayed as the problem, supply side economics with its tax cuts and de-regulation the norm with a Washington consensus about trickle down wealth distribution.
Over the years what may arguably have been a reasonable recognition of the importance of entrepreneurial dynamism became an ossified dogma incapable of addressing the problems of an increasingly integrated world with a dramatically different economic structure.
A weightless world of digital goods and instant communications facilitating global supply chains supporting just-in-time assembly processes. A world where offshoring, and mechanisation was destroying some jobs and shifting others to the other side of the world.
The impact of all this on, initially, non-graduate labour but as countries expanded their higher education, graduate labour was remorseless. Further, the deregulation agenda meant the ability of labour to defend itself was diminished if not removed.
The outcome in terms of growing inequality, an uncertain “gig”economy, loss of employment rights and benefits, and in the States the loss of health insurance created a sense of despair. Despair which had devastating consequence for the health and well being of many as described by Anne Case and Angus Deaton in their work “Deaths of Despair”.
These trends have meant the majority of the populations of many western democracies have seen their standard of living stagnate or decline. The political elites of these nations have seen this decline as an unfortunate consequence of economic progress.
Labour and Conservative, Democrat and Republican have argued, more or less forcefully the market economy is a self regulating machine which human interference can only damage. Ultimately it will make things better. Ultimately of course we are all dead. For those living, and possibly dying, through the transition, ultimately better days are of little consolation.
It is this context in which Donald Trump came to power. For Millions of Americans, no one was listening to them. It is a sign of the level of desperation they felt that a billionaire, foul mouthed, misogynist, racist could be seen as someone able to address their concerns.
What Trump did do was articulate their fears. He gave them a voice. He took the crisis of identity which unemployment, underemployment and marginal employment foster and gave it a series of targets which he claimed would “Make America Great Again”.
After four years the Trump record on the issues he said were his priorities is clear. He “loves” coal but coal production is lower as he leaves office than when he arrived, the balance of trade with China (ignoring the question of whether a deficit is necessarily a bad thing) in 2016 was negative $346bn in 2019 it was negative $345bn. (It is much lower in 2020 but there are reasons for that.) The $1bn reduction in the deficit has come at significant cost to the US economy. The New York Federal reserve has estimated that the trade war has wiped $1.7tn off the value of US companies.
In January 2016 US unemployment was at 4.9%. This was after six straight years of decline from a high of 10% in October 2009. In October 2020 the rate is 6.9%. The wall with Mexico remains to be built and Mexico have made clear their views on paying for it. Worst of all, close to a quarter of a million US citizens have died from Covid-19. A significant proportion of those would still be alive if the president had chosen to address the issue.
President Trump’s record is disastrous in his own terms which in the main are wrong anyway. This is before you address the issues of nepotism, self dealing, global security, national standing. I could go on.
However, the issues which created the space for a Trump presidency have not gone away. A radical agenda of change is needed and those that Hilary Clinton dismissed as in the “basket of deplorables” need to be reached out to and tangible support provided.
A president Biden has a massive task ahead. Despite appearances to the opposite winning the presidency is the easy bit. Crafting a consensus which secures real change in the balance of economic power to ensure areas like the rustbelt experience economic transition as benefit not just pain will be a massive challenge.
The agenda and the process of reconciliation is more than a one term exercise.and will mean hitting the ground running. There are those that doubt whether Joe Biden is up to the job. We will see, however, whatever his failings he is infinitely better than his predecessor. Democracy has rescued itself as it has done before. The political elites of all democratic parties must learn the lesson of how fragile it is and stand up for it against all who attempt to undermine it whichever side of the aisle they stand.
When he was forced to release the transcripts of the tapes of the conversations in the Oval office President Nixon insisted that the obscenities be deleted. This led to a huge number of text replacements with the term “expletive deleted”. Democracy has just ensured that an expletive has been deleted from the White House. It is a massive triumph for democracy.
At the moment the world is a grim place. In the UK we have just started our second lock down. One which runs into the depressing winter as opposed to the optimistic spring. Brexit is shambling along to a car crash close. The US election is on a knife edge and the incumbent ranting about having the election stolen from him.
There is however some good news out there. One thing is the progress that has been made in moving away from fossil fuel electricity production towards sustainable wind, sun and other alternative energy sources.
Carbon Brief produced this interactive essay showing how, in a decade from, from 2008 to 2018, the UK has moved from producing 80% of its electricity with fossil fuels to a position where 50% of the electricity needs of the country were met by low carbon sources such as wind. solar and nuclear. Only 10% of electricity in 2018 was generated using coal.
This is a remarkable achievement and world leading. It demonstrates what can be achieved if governments and nations decide to take action. We should not throw up our hands and say it is all too hard. A principle which applies to areas well beyond climate change.
I recommend the article and the interactive map of the UK’s evolving energy supply over the decade from 2008. It is as informative as it is impressive. A brilliant use of graphics.
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.
northerncomment 