No.180 - America Redeems Herself but Now Faces the Biggest Domestic Challenge since the Civil War
Dear James,
Early on Wednesday morning Donald Trump entered the White House Briefing Room and gripped the lectern. The usual energy was gone. He was running on empty. “This is a fraud on the American public,” he muttered. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win the election.” He was like a tired robot, mouthing the usual platitudes but running down through a rupture in the power lead. Later, before a wall of the stars and stripes, he rambled through a crazed attack on the election process, claiming it was being stolen from him. MSNBC cut away from his words almost immediately. ABC News followed soon after saying that they were lies. BBC fact checkers report that voting fraud in the USA is very rare – at a rate is less than 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice.
So were these the last ranting gasps of a demagogue undone? Or were they the rallying cry for his angry militias? Trump has run up against a second immovable reality that no populist is ever equipped to deal with. The first is Nature in the form of Coronavirus. This, the second, is a man made device called the US Voting system. ‘Be patient.’ said Biden, ‘Stay calm’. He knows that the one great winner of this election so far has been the technical excellence of the US voting process itself. It has emerged strong, efficient and meticulous - if a little slow. Democracy, that process by which the people not governments decide who will rule, shines brightly in the world again. Much of the world will be impressed. Many more will be scared. Think Belorussia. Think Putin. Think Farage! This is a moment showing what real democracy means. Trump will throw every legal measure that he can think of at the result but he will fail. Because the other great winner so far is the American legal system. All the lawsuits that the President is throwing at the process have so far been thrown out as lacking merit or being frivolous or vexatious. He will keep going until the votes are certified and then he will realize that the ‘red mirage’ created by the initial votes of his supporters was being overwhelmed by the ‘’the blue wave’ of Democrats who had voted by mail. Will he concede? Did Mussolini or Hitler concede? No they ended up dangling from lampposts or slumped across a sofa in a bunker. But the worst for Trump will, be the realization that he is a ‘loser’. ‘You’re hired Mr Biden, You’re fired Mr Trump’. How that will hurt the poor, damaged man!
But this is not a moment for triumphalism. America is divided. Biden won 74m votes but Trump still won 70 million. The Trump base will not go away. Trump engaged this base by becoming the angry mouth to the built-up resentment fomented during the recent decades of globalisation. From 1979 to 2016, the number of manufacturing jobs in the USA fell from 19.5m to 12m. In 1971 93% of them were employed. By 2016 that figure was only 80%. Each worker got a smaller share of the product. In the late 1970s CEOs of America’s companies made 30 times more than the average worker. By 2014 they made 300 times more. As Michael Sandel says in his book, ‘The Tyranny of Merit’, meritocracies valorize brains and by default disparage those without meritocratic credentials. The median income of American males has stagnated in real terms for half a century. White men without a college degree make less than they did in real terms in 1979. Only 68% of Americans with only a High School Diploma were employed in 2017. Those who do not succeed academically are burdened with disappointment at best and self disgust at worst. Most of the Mid-West are dispirited, angry and love Trump for his insouciance before the elites.
So when Biden takes over, he faces a massive challenge. The elites i.e everyone with a university degree, must begin to recognize the moral case for being i.e that everyone deserves respect and dignity no matter what level of society or economy they come from. Morally, no CEO or City financier is ‘better’ than a plumber or decorator. Policy needs to be built upon this thesis.
Biden has one shot at this. If we want to avoid the awfulness of the Trump era returning, we must see these last four years as a shock to the system, a wake-up call. If Biden fails, the Trumps will be back with us and next time it could be much worse. America may have redeemed herself this time, but don’t let’s kid ourselves that we haven’t been warned!
Kind regards,
BH – Your Concerned Constituent