Sooner or later there should be a result – even if, like four years ago, there is drama (or worse) all the way into the new year. And when there is some sort of result then there will be those who will explain why that was always the most likely result. Such is the nature of punditry.
But today, all is uncertain.
On the face of it, it would seem that Harris should win. Trump does not seem stronger than he did four years ago – or two years ago when his endorsed candidates did badly. He is also a more divisive figure than he was when he won eight years ago, and he is against a less divisive candidate.
But, we are not in times where such a rational view has much purchase. We are in a period of populism and hyper-partisanship and disinformation, of joyful cruelty and illiberal frenzy. One can too easily imagine Trump winning. Less likely things have happened in the United States and around the world in recent years.
And if so, we will have an extraordinary situation of a president with criminal sanctions and facing criminal trials using the might of his office to reduce his exposure to any proceedings.
And we will have a president who boasts of wanting to also use the might of his office against political enemies, both personal and general.
The only liberal hope would be that, again, he is too lazy to follow-through on his threats, and that the swings he takes will be on the golf course, and not from the Oval Office.
In the days, weeks and months to come, things may be clearer – though even that cannot be said with absolute certainty – but as of today, things are unclear and they are worrying.
So it seemed to be a moment worth recording, using this blogpost as a postcard.
And to adapt the wording of a postcard: I wish we weren’t here.
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For me, the thing that is more relevant is that if Trump does win, then the Republicans will almost certainly have the House and the Senate too, since the ‘down ballot’ tends to follow the Presidency (hence the fact that there is usually a swing back at the ‘midterms’). And that’s where the opportunities are. Whilst it is true that the rules mean that the Senate would be deadlocked on everything except some sort of Budget bill, and there are likely to still be some reasonable Republicans in the House (see how the current ‘majority’ has not been), legislation and admin posts, including judicial votes, will be entirely in the hands of the radical right. At that point, it almost doesn’t matter whether Trump is “compos mentis” or not; executive orders can only go so far, but legislation backed by a Supreme Court can do anything.
Whereas, of course, if the Democrats end up with the trifecta, the current Supreme Court seems absolutely intent on stopping anything that they may want to do.
“Less unlikely things have happened”
do you mean “less likely things” ? or “more unlikely things”?
Whoops, corrected.
Thank you, Mr Green. This is so well written. I find your hammer hits the nail square-on, hitting with particular force where you write, “We are in a period of populism and hyper-partisanship and disinformation, of joyful cruelty and illiberal frenzy. One can too easily imagine Trump winning. Less unlikely things have happened in the United States and around the world in recent years.” The general rule with the United States seems to be that nothing, no matter how bizarre, no matter how incapable a priori of being accepted into even a cheap and sleazy television screen play, is barred from eventual actualization.
I would like to highlight several particularly disturbing aspects of the current soap opera (“seebikas”, we say here in Estonia, “soapy thing”, “soapfest”):
* Yes, a few days ago Mr Trump really did simulate oral sex with a microphone stand. The crowd, as far as I can tell from the sound track (from C-SPAN?), is cheering him on.
* The hideous comedian comment in Madison Square Garden, comparing Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage”, was vetted by the campaign before the comedian spoke. Scrutinizing the scheduled speaker’s material, the campaign deleted an extreme sexual vulgarism directed at Ms Harris, but passed “floating island of garbage”.
* “Follow the money,” say the police detectives. “Oh puh-LEEZE, don’t get me STARR-did,” say people in the upscale cafeś of Seattle and Portland. Well, puh-LEEZE: (a) the Trump sneakers get hawked at https://gettrumpsneakers.com/; (b) the Trump trading cards get hawked at https://collecttrumpcards.com/; (c) the Trump Bibles get hawked at https://godblesstheusabible.com/; (d) the Trump watches, some priced at 100 000 USD , get hawked at https://gettrumpwatches.com/; (e) Trump campaign contributions in cryptocurrency get solicited at https://www.donaldjtrump.com/crypto; and (f) you can buy shares in “Trump Media & Technology Group Corp” on an American stock exchange. Regarding “(c)”, I would urge people to search Google News with the string ((SEARCH))oklahoma schools purchase order for trump bibles amended specification((/SEARCH)). Although “(f)” does not at first look too bad, we might reflect that where there is a buyer, there is also a seller; that the share price as in recent weeks gone sharply up (and then again down) without any seeming cause; that Mr Trump has since September been legally able to sell shares from his own holding in the corporation; and that this might therefore be a way of funneling well laundered, ultimately foreign, money into Mr Trump’s personal-and-yet-political pockets, without an adequate audit trail.
Some decades ago, when Charles de Gaulle visited the American west coast, he was driven out of the Los Angeles airport. On looking at the endless cookie-cutter subdivisions, he is said to have said, “This is not going to end well.”
One thing is certain. There will be an unpleasant fallout whoever wins.
Sadly, I think we are in for four more years of Trump. His foreign policy is likely to be disastrous for the rest of the world, especially regarding climate change. It could be fatal for Ukraine as an independent state.
Last time around he failed in most of his aims. He seemed to think he had absolute power. This time he might try to give that to himself. He’ll certainly pardon himself of the crimes he’s been convicted of. so much depends on how the election shapes Congress.
A vote for Trump is like a vote for Brexit. You feel a moment of joy/revenge/pride for sticking it to “the elites/system” and a lifetime of regret as the nation becomes poorer -on many levels- for it.
I too wish we were not here. But we are, and, to paraphrase others, we’ve been here before. The US has generated several oligarchies, all of them eventually overreaching (1820s, 1850s, 1890s, Great Depression/New Deal). This struggle against oligarchies can be understood as operating on two levels – economic (system) and personal (what the US calls civil rights). In the past, and today, the oligarchic folks attempt to maintain dominance inside the system (e.g., US Supreme Court) and outside, individually (slavery, Jim Crow, women as second-class citizens). Oligarchic power expands until it overreaches – Dred Scott, Dobbs (abortion) – at which point the public intervenes. So, yes, I think this election will be another of those inflection points, assisted by Mr Trump’s many missteps. That said, our oligarchy, like yours, is not going anywhere, and a resistance alone will not remediate the structural problems that continue to fester. It may be that a Harris presidency may be our last best chance.
You are right, today is uncertain, scarily so. We know that he and his party will use every trick in the book to undermine and challenge a Harris win to the point that that have planned for this and already stuffed state district election officials with MAGA supporters who will not accredit the votes if they are not for Trump, thus putting a hold on a states’ ability to allocate their electoral college votes. It will get very messy amid the lawsuits and counter lawsuits, and behind that is the gerrymandered Supreme Court. We may not get a result before Christmas.
Trump if elected has sitting behind him one JD Vance who will be the heir apparent when the party disposes of Trump, most probably on health reasons. Vance is just P Thiel’s sock puppet. And that is even scarier.
I find the worst thing about Trump is his blatant intentions to try to undermine the US Constitution, and the desperately sad fact that so many US Citizens don’t seemed to be scared by that prospect.
He won’t need to do that immediately if he wins the election, but it does show what he is happy to unleash (in defiance of his oath of office) should he be thwarted by other constitutional barriers. If he should lose the election, we know that he will not accept the result. In that case let’s hope that the US institutions stand firm again, as they did in 2020.
Nate Silver’s latest forecast, aggregating opinion polls, has it at almost exactly Evens. Translation, it could go either way. Trump winning is far from unlikely.
8 years Silver had Clinton at about 2:1 on. But Trump won, and with a degree of comfort, and some states thought in advance to be marginal in practice weren’t. Some people think that means Silver got it wrong. But that’s probably because they don’t quite understand the nature of these predictions. Some people might also think that because Trump won when he was 2:1 against 8 years ago, he must be a shoo-in at Evens. But, again, that’s an error of interpretation.
The thing about opinion polls – the data set these predictions are based on – is that they are always wrong for new reasons, and we don’t find out what those reasons are until afterwards. Maybe Harris will win with a degree of comfort this time. Maybe the events of 8 or 4 years ago, or something like them, will be replicated. We literally have no idea, on this occasion, because the margins are far too small.