Days of whines and poses in America

V Sudarshan

Journalist and Author

Consider this enduring Texas poll scene from four days ago in the dying hours of the presidential bid 2020: A Biden campaign bus is swarmed by dozens of cars flying Trump-Pence flags boxed in, blocked, railroaded and prevented from going to its campaign destination. Incumbent President Donald Trump tweets the video, which goes viral, to his 88 million followers with a message: “Did you see how the cars ‘escorted’ the bus? I love Texas!” You would be right in guessing where the Texas electoral college votes are going when the Electoral College meets on December 14, six days after December 8 when the results of the American elections are expected to be finalised.

That is still more than a month away. Between now and then, there could be many a slip between the White House and ‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden. Even should he clinch that magic 270 electoral votes unofficially, from the way Trump has been running down the voting process, selectively, and from the increasing number of times the Trump campaign is using the word ‘fraud’ and threatening to take the legal way, federally and even nationally, to deny Biden victory, it looks as if America is bracing for a bruising photo-finish.

This is because Joe Biden has patently failed to demonstrate that he is by far and away the clear winner the pollsters were predicting he was. This is also because Donald Trump has proved to be more tenacious, if not more deeply rooted, in his substantial electoral base than was presumed. At least in almost half of a bitterly politically divided United States of America where the President himself has led from the front in sowing divisiveness, distrust and plain meanness all around. There has been a qualified sigh of relief that so far there has been no violence considering the plywood drawbridges and other defensive structures that have been erected in the business districts and shops and stockpiling in American homes, not least of firearms. According to the New York Times which quoted FBI data, Americans bought 15.1 million firearms in the first seven months of this election year. This apparently represents a 91 per cent jump over the same period in 2019. It is indisputably a symptom of anxiety that Donald Trump has wantonly wrought in his presidential years, cheerleading political hooliganism and plain bullying. It has also been evident that armed militias have been seen in many of the rallies. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that some of the lines in the gun stores were about as long as the bread lines in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania in the late eighties. It is frightening to think that all it requires is a spark, a tiny spark, and so far, Trump has shown no hesitancy in sparking. There is a whole laundry list, but you do get the picture.

As Trump called portions of the process, “a fraud on the American people,” “an embarrassment to our country,” he claimed, “Frankly, we did win this election.” And outlined his strategy, a threat to go to the US Supreme Court. The appeal process has already begun in Pennsylvania and is likely to spread to other states as well.

Biden’s hopes of winning hinges now on Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10) and Michigan (16), which have been traditionally Democrat but swung to Trump in 2016 and not by huge margins. North Carolina with 15 electoral votes and Georgia, with 16, are the other two states where the results have yet to be declared, are also too narrow to call, but were swinging imperceptibly towards Trump. The postal ballots, which Trump has discredited, as well as the overseas votes and the military votes have still to be counted. In America, it is manual counting, not the EVMs. It remains to be seen how cleanly Biden prises the remaining electoral votes out of this looming mess and how far the Republicans go to back Trump in subverting the established processes. For now, the jury is out. The point to note here is that even though the margins here in 2016 were low, it has been an uphill task so far for Biden, even though he concentrated his firepower here.

Trump hopes to exploit the legal route because the Supreme Court is packed with Republican nominees, six out of nine, and most of the legislatures in Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are in firm Republican control. That hasn’t changed with this election either. As Biden moves inexorably closer to 270, the Trump dirty tricks department will go into overdrive, playing with the perceptions and emotions of his followers.

If Biden emerges winner, then the transition remains. With a loose cannon in the waning White House and a larger world that has changed dramatically in the Trump years, there is residual scope for worry that Trump does not leave more mess for Biden to clean up after him. The first is the big knock that the image of America has taken.

What is happening in the US now is no different from what a petulant authoritarian figure from, say, Latin America did in in the eighties or an African despot who steals an election or two. Indeed, by attempting to deny a complete accounting of votes, how different is Trump from President Saddam whom Bush accused of rigging the elections? Think also Robert Mugabe. Indeed, the American position as a global leader has been substantially undermined by Trump himself. Already that position stands considerably diminished and dented and some of his alliances are under stress. Trump comes off as no different from Putin or even Xi Jinping. What the 45th President of the US has managed to do is take the sheen off the American model of democracy and bring it to the same level of say, Gen Pervez Musharraf, stealing the government from Nawaz Sharif. But let’s look at the bright side: The good news for India is, if Trump emerges out of all this unscathed, we should not have to explain the arithmetic of election results in, say, Jammu and Kashmir to the Americans anymore, if and when we get around to it.