Needless to say, I am delighted that Mr. Biden is now the President-elect. I suspect that there is little that Mr. Trump can do to change this outcome, but I also suspect that the transition will be ugly and perilous. The most important thing now is for President-elect Biden to outline his policies to address the many issues facing the American people.
One of those issues is how to deal with Mr. Trump. Much depends on how he conducts himself. In my lifetime, George Herbert Walker Bush and Jimmy Carter lost after serving one term in office. Both men conducted themselves with dignity and grace despite the deep emotional scar of failing to be re-elected. I think that Mr. Trump will not follow their footsteps.
It is probably important to divest ourselves as much as possible of the desire to seek revenge for Mr. Trump’s misdeeds. President Lincoln understood this well and was profoundly eloquent in his second inaugural address which is one of the most important speeches ever given. The speech was delivered on 4 March 1865 at the end of the Civil War, still the bloodiest conflict in American history. Lincoln’s task for the previous four years had been to save the Union; he was well aware that a successful end of the war for the Union forces was only the beginning of the final steps of his task: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
It is also important to separate Mr. Trump from his supporters. We need to understand and accept the fact that 70 million Americans voted for Mr. Trump. They cannot be dismissed. There are some supporters who deserve no sympathy: those who celebrate white supremacy, hatred for those with different gender identities, and those who believe that their brand of Christianity is the religion that should determine public policy and who show disdain for other religions. These Americans have always been a part of the American society and we should make every effort to teach our children that these patterns of thought are profoundly inconsistent with the better values of the American polity.
But the vast majority of Trump supporters are Americans who believe that they have been betrayed by the American political system. In truth, they are justified in their anger. Both the Democratic and Republican parties pursued policies that have led to the destruction of American jobs and the parties have constructed ways for the rich to concentrate wealth in this country that is probably worse than what the country experienced in the Gilded Age. President Obama was the best President in my lifetime, but I was crushed when he allowed the stimulus money to rectify the financial collapse in 2008 to go to the banks that created the crisis and not to the homeowners that lost their homes. We should keep in mind that corporations, not the government, sent jobs abroad. The fear of being labelled a “socialist” for making this observation is a page from Joe McCarthy’s playbook. We need to make this discussion legitimate and force it to the front of all our political discussions. Ignoring the growing inequality in American society will only aggravate the anger and resentment.
Finally, dealing with Mr. Trump and his enablers is essential, but must be done carefully. Too much of what happened in the last four years is completely unknown and the House of Representatives should be aggressive in uncovering all the details. We need to avoid two desires: first, to punish a person who took delight on inflicting pain on others; and, second, avoid the temptation to simply “move forward”. The US faced a similar problem in 1973 when President Nixon was forced to resign after the Watergate and other associated scandals. When his successor, President Ford (who was never elected to a position that gave him legitimacy to hold the office) pardoned Nixon, the US was in a bad state with the Vietnam War protests and the Oil Embargo. Ford probably did the right thing to pardon Nixon in order to help the country move forward. But this was true only because Nixon had the intelligence to resign from office.
Perhaps Mr. Trump will show similar intelligence in his fall from grace, but I doubt it. His need for public attention is insatiable and he will seize any circumstance and opportunity to force us to look at him and to talk about him. The country needs to be prepared for any attempts by Mr. Trump to rewrite history. Therefore, President Biden and the Congress should be willing to investigate Mr. Trump’s activities as thoroughly as possible and, if warranted, should be prepared to prosecute him as if he were an ordinary citizen because that is precisely what he will become in January 2021. The same is true for all the minions that supported any illegal activities.
The spirit of these investigations should be to re-establish the moral hazard of breaking the law and not to seek vengeance. It is crucially important that from now on we treat Mr. Trump as we would any other citizen. He has not earned and does not deserve any special favors. But we should also not allow ourselves to think that punishing Mr. Trump addresses the problems the nation currently faces. I understand fully the anger that many feel toward Mr. Trump because it burns deeply in my heart. We should heed the words of John Prine in his song, “Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)”:
You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder Throw your hands in the air, say “What does it matter?” But it don’t do no good to get angry So help me, I know
For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter You’ll become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there Wrapped up in a trap of your very own Chain of sorrow
We should also understand the extraordinary significance of this election. It signals the end of a generation that has dominated American politics for an extended period of time. Let us hope that we do not have another election in which the choices are between a person of 74 years of age and another of 77 years of age. It was also a transformational election. Biden won the election because of the hard work and commitment of people who are not well represented in American politics. Stacie Abrams delivered Georgia. Latinas and Latinos delivered Arizona. African-Americans proved to be the decisive voters in many US cities. Vice-President elect Harris should not be considered the exception; she should be considered the rule.
I did not raise my glass at 10:30 last night. Like many others, I was stunned by what unfolded. My prediction on the outcome of the election was significantly wide of the mark. Right now, it appears as if Biden is within striking distance of receiving 270 electoral votes but it would be premature to declare that he is the victor. I suspect that there will be many obstacles to a smooth transition to a Biden presidency. But everyone should be very suspicious of anything that I predict.
The reasons for my ill-fated predictions seemed obvious to me at the time I wrote them down and I genuinely do not believe that I was merely projecting my own biases. To me, the failure to respond effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic seemed clear and well-substantiated. In comparisons to other countries, such as South Korea, China, and Taiwan, the US situation is abysmal. I thought that the poor performance of the Trump Administration in what should be considered a very important matter would make Americans think seriously about getting new leadership. And I outlined all my other reasons for thinking that the outcome would be a convincing victory for the Democrats.
I am now stuck in the very uncomfortable position of not understanding at all the reasons why so many Americans support Trump and the Republican Party. The 2016 election was difficult for me to accept, but I thought I understood the anger and resentment that many Americans had toward the two parties. Trump represented a sharp divergence from the American political tradition and his election was for me confirmation that the American people wanted a decisive break from the old politics. Trump was the first Third-Party candidate to be elected President in American history. Indeed, elections in other countries, such as in France and in Great Britain, tended to validate the idea that many in the world were looking for something other than the headlong sprint into a fully globalized economy.
But the closeness of the election in 2020 undermines that explanation. Americans had four years to test out the “new” politics under Trump. And all the attributes that I thought were disqualifying–the xenophobia, the racism, the disregard of the environment, and the amplified economic inequality–are apparently not held to be negative to many of my fellow citizens.
So I am adrift. I pretend to be an analyst but I do not understand or comprehend the way the world actually appears to be to many of the people I purport to analyze. I live in a world where deaths from a virus can be considered “alternative” facts. I am, to crib the title of the novel by Robert Heinlein, a Stranger in a Strange Land. It is a disquieting feeling.
I have had a number of online discussions with a number of my friends about the election tomorrow and it is safe to say that there are high levels of anxiety about the outcome. I predict that we will know the result of the election no later than 10:30 pm tomorrow and that Biden will win convincingly. I make this prediction on the basis of these points.
The extraordinary number of early voters suggests to me that there are many people who are highly motivated to see Trump defeated. We are well aware of the devotion of Trump supporters. But their intensity of feeling is outmatched by the views of most that Trump cannot be allowed to remain in office.
There is little evidence to suggest that Trump has expanded his base from 2016 and more anecdotal evidence that some Trump supporters have been disappointed by the last four years. In addition, there are 4 million more voters than in 2016 and most of those voters are young people more likely to reject Trump’s view of what America should be.
The growing number of COVID cases is reaching into areas of the US that some thought would be unaffected by the pandemic. In the early days of the pandemic there was a widespread belief among Trump supporters that the pandemic would be confined to urban areas. That belief has proven to be wrong.
The economic downturn is proving to be deeper and more extensive than many expected. Given the rapid rate of increase in COVID infections, there is little reason to believe that the economy will perk up any time soon. The failure of the Congress to provide additional stimulus will most likely be attributed to Senator McConnell, and not to the Democrats.
If this prediction proves to be correct, then I invite you all to join me with a glass of single malt scotch at 10:30 tomorrow night. If, on the other hand, I turn out to be a dime short on my nickel bet, then I would encourage everyone to forget that they ever read this post. In the meantime, relax. There’s nothing that can be done between now and tomorrow night that will change anything.
French President Macron infuriated many Muslims by asserting that Islam is a religion in “crisis” after French teacher Samuel Paty was killed on 16 October after showing his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class exercise on freedom of speech. As reported by Al Jazeera:
“Top officials in the Muslim world have condemned France and Macron, including Pakistan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Iran; while tens of thousands have attended protests and called for a boycott of French goods.
“Tensions heated further on Wednesday after the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published a new caricature depicting Erdogan. In response the Turkish president has threatened to sue the magazine.”
The tensions are rooted in a decision by the French periodical Charlie Hebdo to print caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in 2015, a decision that resulted in widespread protests in France that left over 260 people dead. Those who are alleged to have murdered 17 people after the publication of the cartoons are currently on trial in France, the occasion which led to Paty’s class exercise. The BBC reports:
“Fourteen people are on trial in France over the deadly attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015.
“Most of the alleged accomplices are in court in Paris, but three are being tried in absentia.
“They are accused of helping the militant Islamist attackers who shot dead 12 people in and around Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office in January 2015.
“In a related attack, a third gunman shot dead a policewoman, then attacked a Jewish store, killing four people.
“The 17 victims were killed over a period of three days. All three attackers were killed by police. The killings marked the beginning of a wave of jihadist attacks across France that left more than 250 people dead.”
France has had a rather strict policy of secularism, or laïcité, in its governmental affairs since the French Revolution when the Catholic Church was held to have been too intrusive in French life. Macron reiterated that policy in a recent speech earlier this month. In that speech, President Macron was critical of some members of the Muslim community:
“Mr Macron said ‘Islamist separatism’ was a danger to France because it held its own laws above all others and ‘often results in the creation of a counter-society’.
“He said this form of sectarianism often translated into children being kept out of school, and the use of sporting, cultural and other community activities as a ‘pretext to teach principles that do not conform to the laws of the republic’.
“‘Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country.’
“The measures announced by the president will form legislation that will go to parliament before the end of the year.
“They include:
stricter monitoring of sports organisations and other associations so that they do not become a front for Islamist teaching
an end to the system of imams being sent to France from abroad
improved oversight of the financing of mosques
home-schooling restricted
“Mr Macron also said France must do more to offer economic and social mobility to immigrant communities, adding that radicals had often filled the vacuum.”
It is very difficult for a liberal society to enact laws against blasphemy. Indeed, liberal societies could not have been created without the decision to try and create conditions which would reduce the likelihood of religious conflict by essentially excluding religion from political debate.
In 2005, Evo Morales became Bolivia’s first President with almost pure indigenous roots, a rarity in Latin American politics which tended to favor candidates with European ancestry. He was an unabashed socialist and implemented many governmental reforms to favor Bolivia’s indigenous population and to reduce the severe income inequality that characterized the polity. Needless to say, his relationship with the US was strained and Morales forged close ties with other politicians in Latin America who favored the left, such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Morales tried to change the constitution in 2019 to allow himself to run for a fourth term. That attempt alienated the Bolivian military and Morales was forced to resign and go into exile in Argentina. His departure sparked a serious crisis in Bolivian politics:
“Morales left the country in November after a disputed presidential election sparked countrywide protests and led the military to withdraw their support of him. Morales’ exit from office after nearly 14 years was labeled a coup by some and to others, a consequence of a power grab. For others it was both. Though he’s not running in the do-over election, Morales’ legacy – and the controversy over his final days in office – will likely weigh heavily on voters. His recent travels from Argentina to Cuba for ‘health reasons,’ as well as his effort to run for a seat in congress from outside the country, have also kept him front and center in the run-up to May’s vote.
“The result is a divided electorate and polarizing group of candidates. And it’s more than a simple left-versus-right divide. Morales’ Movement toward Socialism (MAS) is fielding a single candidate, but divisions on the left mean its coalition is weaker than in past elections. Meanwhile, several candidates on the center and right are clashing for the mantle of the anti-MAS vote.”
“‘It hurts,’ confessed Eva Copa, the 32-year-old senate president from Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (Mas), her voice breaking and tears filling her eyes as she pondered what some thought might prove a fatal blow to their pro-indigenous project. ‘What has happened will leave scars.’
“Visibly exhausted, Copa admitted the outlook was uncertain, for her movement and Bolivia as a whole. ‘The last thing the Bolivian people want is more chaos,’ she said.
“But the young senator was adamant Mas could, and would rebuild. ‘We don’t need to refound ourselves. What we’re going to do is reorganise,’ Copa said. ‘We have faith we’ll pull through this.’
“That faith was well-placed. On Friday morning authorities confirmed a stunning political comeback with Mas’s candidate, the former finance minister Luis Arce, winning Sunday’s presidential election by a thumping 26.3% margin.
“His closest rival in the re-run of last October’s voided ballot, the centrist ex-president Carlos Mesa, received 28.8% of the 6.48m votes compared to Arce’s 55.1%. There was a record voter turnout of 88.4%.
When Morales was President, one of his most important initiatives was to control the exploitation of Bolivia’s considerable lithium reserves, an element that has become incredibly important in the production of batteries for electric automobiles. That policy triggered widespread speculation that outside powers engineered a coup against Morales in order to protect their access to Lithium:
“Bolivia’s tumultuous past year also features a powdery white subplot with worldwide implications. Not long after being forced out of the country, Morales and many of his supporters argued that he was ousted in part as a response to his attempts to nationalize the country’s lithium—a mineral used in batteries that power various clean energy technologies, including electric cars. “My crime, my sin, is to be an Indian,” he told American journalist Glenn Greenwald in an interview, “and to have nationalized our natural resources, removed the transnational corporations from the hydrocarbon sector and mining.” Morales had hoped that state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Boliviano, or YLB, would be able not just to mine lithium but refine it into lithium hydroxide and other compounds used in battery manufacturing. Tesla executive Elon Musk—whose renewables empire sources lithium mostly from Australia, not Bolivia—added to theories about a potential lithium coup this summer by tweeting, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
Morales will likely return to Bolivia, but MAS seems determined to govern without his return to power. We should keep a close eye on how Bolivia decides to extract its reserves of Lithium. One would expect that Bolivia will seek to have the help of either Russia or China to extract the element and Western companies may be shut out of the process.
“Young protesters first took the streets almost two weeks ago after a video showing a brutal police shooting went viral. They demanded the abolition of a notorious and corrupt anti-robbery police squad known as SARS, and days into the protest, Buhari ordered the unit disbanded. But protesters, who had heard similar promises before, said they wanted prosecutions and an end to corruption.
“So, the protests instead grew into the largest Nigeria has seen since the 1980s, when people took the streets to denounce military rule. On some recent days, Lagos, a metropolis of 14 million people, came to standstill.”
“‘We’ve entered a really new chapter. We are seeing a rapid unravelling of the average Nigerian’s respect for the state and government. The protests are about police brutality but that’s just the tip of the iceberg,’ said Matthew Page, an expert on Nigeria at the London-based thinktank Chatham House.
“The causes for discontent are diverse: a stagnating authority, soaring unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, deep inequality – and a widespread sense that nothing is likely to change. One slogan seen at the protests has been: ‘Stop killing the leaders of tomorrow’.
“Nigeria has some of Africa’s biggest and most globalised cities, and a population with a median age of 18. As elsewhere on the continent, protesters have been drawn predominantly from a young, urban demographic, with popular icons from the worlds of music and film playing high-profile roles.”
The protests have been met with force and there are reports that many protesters have been killed. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is viewed with suspicion by many Nigerians in the south of the country and it is not likely that he will be able to address many of the concerns raised by the protests. But Nigeria is one of the most important countries in the world and it would be a serious mistake for the world to ignore these protests.
The German magazine, Spiegel, has run an article that truly surprised me. It details the concerns that many European governments have regarding the outcome of the US national election on 3 November. The fear among some of those governments is that President Trump may prematurely declare victory on the basis of incomplete returns that give him a lead after the polls close. We tend to think of the politics of deciding an election is a purely internal matter, but the Spiegel article suggests ways that foreign governments may interfere with the domestic vote-counting.
“One could imagine a scenario in which Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rushes to congratulate the ‘re-elected’ U.S. president on election night, followed by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and maybe even Russian President Vladimir Putin. Soon, though, the first congratulations from Europe might find their way to the White House, from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, for example, or his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki.
“Should a constitutional crisis in fact develop in the United States following the election, there are widespread concerns in Europe that the EU could once again be deeply divided.”
What I had neglected to remember is that international recognition makes a real difference in the legalities associated with the legitimacy of a government. Generally speaking, states grant international recognition on the basis of an assessment on whether a government effectively controls the population within its established borders. But there are many examples of states granting recognition to governments that fail this essential test. One need only remember the long period between 1949 and 1971 when the US insisted that Taiwan was the legitimate government of China despite the overwhelming evidence that the Communist Party in Beijing was actually the government in control of the population of China. We need to remember that in international law elections constitute only partial evidence that a government should be recognized. There are many dictatorships and monarchies in the world in which elections play no role whatsoever.
“The Supreme Court effectively handed the presidential election to George W. Bush tonight, overturning the Florida Supreme Court and ruling by a vote of 5 to 4 that there could be no further counting of Florida’s disputed presidential votes.
“The ruling came after a long and tense day of waiting at 10 p.m., just two hours before the Dec. 12 ‘safe harbor’ for immunizing a state’s electors from challenge in Congress was to come to an end. The unsigned majority opinion said it was the immediacy of this deadline that made it impossible to come up with a way of counting the votes that could both meet ‘minimal constitutional standards’ and be accomplished within the deadline.
“The five members of the majority were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
“Among the four dissenters, two justices, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter, agreed with the majority that the varying standards in different Florida counties for counting the punch-card ballots presented problems of both due process and equal protection. But unlike the majority, these justices said the answer should be not to shut the recount down, but to extend it until the Dec. 18 date for the meeting of the Electoral College.”
The pressures from international governments who might prematurely recognize President Trump as the victor would only complicate the process of sorting out all the ambiguities of a contested election. And I have no doubts that some leaders, such as Russian President Putin, would hesitate to do everything possible to make the outcome as messy and ambiguous as possible.
Unfortunately, climate change has not emerged as a major issue in the media coverage of the US national election even though former Vice-President Biden has tried to make it one. But it seems clear that even though it is not a major topic for the talking heads, the US public considers it almost as important as the problem of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pew Research Center conducted a poll in several major countries and found that the issue is considered important in every one.
Interestingly, the US public is ideologically divided on the issue to a degree shared by few other countries.
The last four years have not seen major international efforts to reduce carbon emissions although there has been steady progress in the development of renewable sources of energy. During this time, we have become more aware of the future dynamics of climate change–the shift to the contribution of poorer countries to the problem. There is little question that the rich countries were responsible for the bulk of carbon emission in the 20th century.
But the future of climate change rests more on the developing countries who are beginning to experience more rapid economic growth.
Graham Allison has written an essay for The National Interest on the recent news that China has displaced the US as the largest economy in the world. The news should not be especially surprising given that the population of China is 4 times larger than the US and also given that China has historically been a dominant power, despite its travails in the 20th Century. The change from the 2nd to the 1st largest economy was based on a shift from measuring the economy in terms of market exchange rates (simply measuring yuans to dollars) to purchasing power parity (actually measuring what a yuan and a dollar actually buys). Allison describes the difference:
“In sum, while the yardstick most Americans are accustomed to still shows that the Chinese economy is one-third smaller than the U.S., when one recognizes the fact that $1 buys nearly twice as much in China than in the U.S., the Chinese economy today is one-sixth larger than the U.S. economy.”
The COVID-19 pandemic will only amplify the differences between the two economies. The Economist explains:
“The variation is the result of differences between countries. Most important is the spread of the disease. China has all but stopped it while Europe, and perhaps soon America, is battling a costly second wave. Over the past week Paris has closed its bars and Madrid has gone into partial lockdown. In China, meanwhile, you can now down sambuca shots in nightclubs. Another difference is the pre-existing structure of economies. It is far easier to operate factories under social distancing than it is to run service-sector businesses that rely on face-to-face contact. Manufacturing makes up a bigger share of the economy in China than in any other big country. A third factor is the policy response. This is partly about size: America has injected more stimulus than Europe, including spending worth 12% of GDP and a 1.5 percentage point cut in short-term interest rates. But policy also includes how governments respond to the structural changes and creative destruction the pandemic is causing.”
There is not much significance to this change. It would be hard for the US, with only 4% of the world’s population, to retain the spot of the world’s largest economy. Moreover, one should keep in mind that the Chinese have many people to satisfy economically–not an easy task with climate change altering the patterns of viable economic activity. But the important lesson of the pandemic is that globalization is not a seamless process and figuring out how to satisfy economic interests which require a high degree of interdependence with political interests which seem to be tilting in favor of narrow national interests will be a very difficult task.
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