This editorial was published yesterday.
Donald Trump’s presidency has been a horror show that is ending with a pandemic that is out of control, an economic recession and deepening political polarisation. Mr Trump is the author of this disastrous denouement. He is also the political leader least equipped to deal with it. Democracy in the United States has been damaged by Mr Trump’s first term. It may not survive four more years.
If the Guardian had a vote, it would be cast to elect Joe Biden as president next Tuesday. Mr Biden has what it takes to lead the United States. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden cares about his nation’s history, its people, its constitutional principles and its place in the world. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden wants to unite a divided country. Mr Trump stokes an anger that is wearing it down.
The Republican presidential nominee is not, and has never been, a fit and proper person for the presidency. He has been accused of rape. He displays a brazen disregard for legal norms. In office, he has propagated lies and ignorance. It is astonishing that his financial interests appear to sway his outlook on the national interest. His government is cruel and mean. It effectively sanctioned the kidnapping and orphaning of migrant children by detaining them and deporting their parents. He has vilified whistleblowers and venerated war criminals.
Mr Trump trades in racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. Telling the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, to “stand back and stand by” was, in the words of Mr Biden, “a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn”. From the Muslim ban to building a wall on the Mexican border, the president is grounding his base in white supremacy. With an agenda of corporate deregulation and tax giveaways for the rich, Mr Trump is filling the swamp, not draining it.
A narcissist, Mr Trump seems incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Coronavirus has exposed a devastating lack of presidential empathy for those who have died and the families they left behind. Every day reveals the growing gap between the level of competence required to be president and Mr Trump’s ability. He is protected from the truth by cronies whose mob-like fealty to their boss has seen six former aides sentenced to prison. A post-shame politician, Mr Trump outrageously commuted the sentence of one of his favoured lackeys this summer. The idea that there is one rule for wealthy elites and another for the ordinary voter damages trust in the American system. Mr Trump couldn’t care less.
The people’s enemy
Like other aspiring autocrats, Mr Trump seeks to delegitimise his opposition as “enemies of the people” to mobilise his base. In 2016, the institutions that should have acted as a check on Mr Trump’s rise to power failed to stop him. This time there has been some pushback over a Trump disinformation campaign about Mr Biden’s son. It is an indictment of the Trump age that social media companies acted before politicians in the face of a clear and present danger to democracy.
Mr Biden has his flaws, but he understands what they are and how to temper them. Seen as too centrist in the Democratic primaries, his election platform has borrowed ideas from the progressive wing of his party and incorporated a “green new deal” and free college for the middle class. Mr Biden should not retreat into his comfort zone. The failures of capitalism have been thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic. If elected, he will raise taxes on richer Americans and spend more on public services. This is the right and fair thing to do when a thin sliver of America has almost half the country’s wealth.
It’s not just Americans for whom Mr Biden is a better bet. The world could breathe easier with Mr Trump gone. The threat from Pyongyang and Tehran has grown thanks to President Trump. A new face in the White House would restore America’s historic alliances and present a tougher test to the authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing than the fawning Mr Trump. On climate change, Mr Biden would return the United States to the Paris agreement and give the world a fighting chance to keep global temperatures in check. With a President Biden there would be a glimmer of hope that the US would return as a guarantor of a rules-based international order.
Perhaps no country has so much to lose from Mr Biden’s victory as Britain. It has the misfortune of being led by Boris Johnson, whom Democrats bracket with Mr Trump as another rule-breaking populist. Mr Biden, a Catholic proud of his Irish roots, has already warned the Johnson government that it must not jeopardise the Good Friday agreement in its Brexit negotiations. Having left the EU, the UK can no longer be America’s bridge across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, Britain has a prime minister who led the country out of Europe just when an incoming President Biden would be looking to partner with it.
Faustian pact
Whether Mr Trump is defeated or not next week, Americans will have to learn to live with Trumpism for years to come. The first impeached president to run for re-election, Mr Trump avoided being the first to be removed from office because the Republican party has lost its moral compass. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become subsumed by the politics of grievance and entitlement. The GOP turns a blind eye to Mr Trump’s transgressions in return for preserving the privileged status of white Christian America.
The most obvious sign of this Faustian pact is the Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court — Mr Trump’s third justice. Conservatives now have a 6-3 advantage in the highest court in the land. Compliant judges are key to retaining the status quo when Republicans face a shrinking electoral base. The Republican strategy is twofold: first is voter suppression; if that fails, Mr Trump appears ready to reject the result. He has spent years conditioning his supporters, especially those armed to the hilt, to mistrust elections and to see fraud where it doesn’t exist.
We have been here before. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million ballots. The election turned on a handful of votes needed to capture the electoral vote in Florida. But the votes that counted were not found in the Sunshine State. They were cast by the five supreme court justices named by Republican presidents who gave the election to George W Bush.
In the 2018 midterms, a coalition of millions marched into polling booths to disavow the president. It is heartening that more than 60 million people have cast their ballot in early voting at a time when the president is doing much to call US democracy into question amid baseless claims of a “rigged election”. Americans are busily embracing their democratic right, and a record turnout in this election may show that voters, worried about whether democracy would endure, strove to save it. Anything other than a vote for Mr Biden is a vote to unleash a supercharged Trumpism. All pretence of civility would be dropped. The divides of race, class and sex would become even wider. Mr Trump is a symptom of America’s decline. Finding a solution to this problem begins with a vote for Mr Biden.
“Finding a solution to this problem begins with a vote for Mr Biden.”
Because We Don’t Have A Right to Vote…
Oct. 26, 2020 3:56 pm
By Thom Hartmann
America, the country that is supposed to be the world’s premier democratic republic, citizens do not have an absolute right to vote.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, red state governors can radically cut back on the number of polling places and voting machines so that working class people are forced to stand in line for five, six, in some cases 10 hours to vote.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, about 30 million registered voters nationwide have been removed from the voting rolls since 2014, so when they show up to vote they are given “provisional ballots” that, in red states, are almost never counted unless there is a lawsuit.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, back in the 1960s William Rehnquist helped organize “Operation Eagle Eye” in Arizona to pull together a volunteer army of large and often uniformed white men to challenge Black, Hispanic, and Native American voters at the polls. It was so successful it kicked off Rehnquist’s Republican political career, taking him all the way to chief justice of the US Supreme Court, and is now being emulated by the Trump campaign.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has been able to prevent almost a million Florida citizens from voting if they owe fines or fees to the government.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, Louis DeJoy can destroy the US Post Office and slow down the mail just in time for the election and not face any legal consequences.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, in 2000 then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush was able to take a felon list from then-Texas governor George W. Bush and compare it to the Florida voter list, throwing about 90,000 African-Americans off the voting rolls because they had “similar†names just before the election that his brother “won†in Florida by 537 votes.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, voter intimidation has been documented over the past week in Nevada city, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Miami, Florida; Fort Morgan, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Los Angeles – and its a virtual certainty that nobody will go to jail.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, the Supreme Court told the Republican governor of Ohio – and now all governors – that he could remove millions of registered voters from the rolls because they hadn’t voted in the previous election and didn’t mail back a postcard.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, red state legislators have been able to force through laws requiring citizens to jump through extraordinary hoops like getting IDs they normally wouldn’t need or use, just to vote.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, Republicans in multiple states have used the courts to make it extremely difficult to vote by mail or drop off your ballot at a convenient dropbox during a pandemic.
Because we don’t have a right to vote, Republicans are rushing Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court through the Senate so she can be part of a repeat of the 2000 Supreme Court lawsuit, which she, John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh all worked on, that stopped the vote count and handed the presidency to George W. Bush.
Republicans can’t win elections on their “ideas” of tax cuts for billionaires and eliminating protective regulations on polluting corporations.
People don’t agree with them that Medicare should be privatized, Social Security shut down, and Obamacare destroyed.
A clear majority of Americans (including Catholics and Republicans) don’t think police and politicians should insert themselves between a woman and her doctor.
The vast majority of Americans think weapons of war should not be carried on American streets.
Because the majority of Americans disagree with Republican “ideas,” they’ve increasingly used voter suppression and voter intimidation as a primary strategy over the past 40 years.
The first piece of legislation the House of Representatives passed this session, HR1, helped establish an absolute right to vote. Mitch McConnell and Republicans in the Senate have refused to even hold a hearing on it.
If you care about the survival and expansion of democracy in America, this may be your last chance to get out there and vote.
-Thom
“Anything other than a vote for Mr Biden is a vote to unleash a supercharged Trumpism.” Amen to that sentiment and are you listening, Chris Hedges? Trump is a menace to democracy and the whole voting process in the US.
Today, we celebrate Lady Liberty’s 134th birthday! The Statue of Liberty was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the American people, and was dedicated on October 28, 1886. The dedication was followed by a fireworks display and New York City’s first ever ‘Ticker Tape’ parade. end quote, from the Ellis Island web site
A supercharged Trumpism is less likely to affect privileged white folks, and some of them – on the right, moderate and left – aren’t much bothered about the people hurt by a supercharged Trumpism as much as they care about themselves.
So you have people who look at their wealth and investments and would vote for a racist, divider who would lock up anyone who disagrees with him, because they believe they will make even more money with Trump than Biden. You have people who look at their careers as professional Democrat-haters and don’t care if a racist demagogue wins because they benefit from white privilege. Probably President Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and Chris Hedges would still focus all of his hate and attacks on the entire Democratic party for being too corporate and insist that the primary focus must be on defeating the democrats.
“Americans will have to learn to live with Trumpism for years to come.”
This is all too true, especially with the courts fully packed and if the Senate is not taken along with the Presidency.
Apart from these immediate political issues are the Trump-inspired armed militias, and the crazies in QAnon who have positions in Congress and will find a way to worship Trump if/when he is out of office.
Should we also consider that tax giveaways and and ethic of corruption-is-fine demonstrated by Trump and Republicans have created a multi-trillion debt with little wiggle-room for present or future-oriented social and civic welfare programs or for needed work on our infrastructure.
The joy in vulgarity of Trump and his supporters will not vanish soon.
The path forward is being charted by people with excess wealth and the desire to privatize and profit from these troubles. Social impact bonds and pay for success investments are schemes for profiting from and controlling the behavior of people, local governments, and civic ventures.
The president deals in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Either he is somewhat paranoid, or the paranoia is another tool to divide the country. Trump continues to claim that Obama spied on his 2016 campaign despite the fact that an investigation found no evidence to support Trump’s assertion. He allies himself with cruel dictators and right wing fringe groups like QAnon and the Proud Boys while he alienates our allies. We need to vote for sanity and stability so we can effectively deal with Covid and build back better.
Boris and Donald
Sitting in tree
D-I-S-S-I-N-G
My thoughts exactly:
This is brilliant. And that woman pollster who told her what is important is which candidate those voters are leaning toward is spot on.
How many undecided people can there be by now? We are not going to earn anything new on the next few days.
The choice is abundantly clear, even “across the pond,” where the editors of The Guardian can plainly discern a swamp.
Six days until the Whiter House cleaning!!!!
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
Why Trump and Trumpism must go.