U.S. Elections 2020: What About The Other “Half?”
By: Marguerite Arnold
Tags: USA, Elections, Trump, Democracy, Civil Rights

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

As the mail-in votes swing the votes in battleground states and Trump supporters chant “stop the count,” what next for a split country?

From Europe, more specifically Germany, the United States looks like it has finally gone nuts. Just under half of those who cast a (historically huge) vote have no issues with a fellow the other part of the country detests.

Don’t forget, in the midst of all those victory parties (or the planning thereof) of the blue persuasion, that the presumed outgoing resident of the White House had a rabid fan-base that:

A. Braved the Pandemic to go vote in person

B. Went up so much that Trump is now the recipient of the second highest vote for president in U.S. history.

These two issues, alone, put the next four years, if not the next four after that, in dire jeopardy. And for a lot of reasons.

Trump Has Half A Country Behind Him

Forget reasons for why Americans are voting. “The Economy” is code word for a lot of things. Including, for example, the opportunity to exploit your workforce for slave wages because labor law is not enforced. Or being able to benefit from the Trump tax breaks because all you care about, literally, is you and your immediate family’s survival.

However, that is also not telling the entire story. From the large turn out of ferociously anti Communist former Cubans in Miami to the assaults on vote counting caused by outbursts of the Orange One, Trump’s “base” as it is obliquely referred to by the media, ain’t going to take this one lying down.

The Country Is Fundamentally Split On World View

Photo by Michelle Ding on Unsplash

The great irony about all of this is that most commentators at least, misunderstand why people are so angry, if not Trump supporters in the first place. I don’t really understand a great deal of this, because for me, a lot of this comes down to a certain kind of logic. I.e., in a democracy, with rules about voting, generally it is not a good idea to grab power on global television by deliberately trying to obstruct even the most basic rules about the same. No matter how “good” it looks on TV (somewhere, somehow).

That said, my first cousin voted very differently than I did, let’s just leave it at that. And I think I have a good understanding of why this election may mark a moment in time. I don’t dismiss it.

What I dread right now? That this whole hullaballoo over who voted when and whose vote to count, has been clearly planned, literally, by Trump strategists from the outbreak of the Covid epidemic. It shows how terrifyingly cynical the people behind Trump are at least. Even if this is not something he gets credit for. He may be stupid, but the strategists behind all of this, whoever they are, clearly are not. And they are not packing it in and going away. They never do.

Namely, however, it is rather dreadful to realize (although not so dreadful to be inside U.S. borders to wake up and realize this) that by dismissing Covid and brushing aside concerns about the same, as of February, Trump set up his supporters to create a toxic trail of “democratic participation” that was easily avoided by those who thought to ask for a mail-in ballot ahead of time. That calls to “stop counting” the same came at a time when in more normal years, elections have been called (on TV) also came when expected. And this shows, in fact, how far Trump and his backers are willing to not only play with basic facts, but then act surprised (or hurt) when the world does not play along. Even after packing the Supreme Court. Or stopping a vote count that normally happens after elections — it just doesn’t normally take this long.

As more than one irked, if not slightly white-face member of the press repeatedly said in response to Trump’s comments on the same, “it just does not work that way.”

Ah, but that is ultimately missing the point.

Trump and his supporters want it to. And are angry that it does not.

And that, ultimately, is one of the reasons that the force behind Trump-ism won’t disappear from American life, politics, or economic affairs any time soon. And why the national polls will never tell the story until these issues are cleared up.

They don’t care about “normal” procedure. They want “their” way, whatever that is. Because all of their lives they have been told “it doesn’t work like that.”

The fact that most of his supporters hail from the demographics that they do, means that, by believing Trump, their most cherished dream, the American one, is still alive.

Because all of their lives, at least from their paychecks, they have also been told rather directly that indeed, the “American Dream” doesn’t really work like that either.

Don’t Blame The Electoral College

American politics are designed to prevent a region or group of people within a region becoming more powerful or powerless than they should be. However the concentration of urban groups, particularly in the swing states this year (if not most of this century, truth be told), has begun to upset that balance.

This means (and both sides play this game) that finding groups of people with common values who can be grouped and targetted, particularly via social means outside the control of mainstream media (that is also regulated) is going to stay as profitable as ever for those who have parlayed a reality show star into the White House.

Photo by annie bolin on Unsplash

No matter how much Twitter, Facebook and Google are hard at work trying to dampen this down, manually, at least for now, the idea of a group of more than 350,000 people joining any kind of social media group to do things like try to plan to stop vote counting should make the rest of us take note. The time for fear is over.

But what comes next? Beyond moaning about Tik Tok too?

You Stole and Wronged Us

Trump and his allies have acutely and accurately stoked the divisions and angers rife in modern America. But it is not new. It is a country that I began to not recognize somewhere around the end of the last century if not the beginning of this one after watching the eighties and wondering when the pendulum might ever swing back.

It is why I left the U.S. in 2013. Things keep on falling apart. And for a lot of people.

Yes, there have been advances (Obamacare, despite its problems was one of them, that may not yet survive the first Biden term). But the packing of the Supreme Court, along with Trump’s threat of taking the election results there, yet, is one more sign that it is not the actual, but rather the imagined threat that makes Trump’s supporters sit up if not attack.

Photo by Henry Ravenscroft on Unsplash

There is a passion behind the “left behind” that little but major conflict or major reinvestment and education will resolve. Namely, the idea that if one’s chosen leader announces, for example, that one has won the election, and that it will be stolen anyway (no matter the fact that in some states, Trump supporters returned their votes by mail and relatively late), it is time to go take that most American of ideals “back.”

That, at least for now, was one step too far for even Fox News, who has this election, begun to try to distance itself from the Orange One. And vice versa. Again, not something to necessarily cheer about. Most “mainstream” Republicans were content to let be Trump “be Trump” because they benefitted financially, or if not even that, somehow. And that, especially in these dog-days of Covid, is what people either with huge sums of money, or directly on the edge of falling off the monetary accumulations they have managed so far to scrape together, is a siren’s song so powerful in the U.S. right now that it easily overcomes other, more abstract considerations.

Might becomes right to the disenfranchised who find their populist voices. That is why this knife edge election is in fact, so incredibly dangerous. No matter who “wins.”

Dismissing The Anger Won’t Make It Go Away

I don’t have any patience with most Trump supporters. Even my cousin. I had to explain her that the reason her life is so “ok” right now is because she lives in a state where she gets the benefit of living in a state with generous benefits, created by high taxes. Starting with unemployment benefits.

And further, that things like regulated healthcare deductions from pay checks insure, among other things that every German has access to the same in a way that, while far from perfect, sure beats the hell out of anything in the U.S. these days.

But that is not the point. What is, is that there is about half of the voting public these days (non-participation is not the point with record turnouts) who believes that they have been fundamentally wronged by the powers that be.

And while, no, it is not the fault of paedophiles, or immigrants, or 5G, they are right about one thing. They have been screwed. They just don’t understand or recognize by whom.

For a populace which is ready to dismiss the right of the other almost half to vote by mail in the face of a public health crises (which they also do not recognize, as much), the idea of going quietly is as anathema as, say, remembering your sixth grade civics class when you learned all about the electoral college as well as the American right to vote, no matter who for.

The reason such people don’t care about authoritarian leanings is that here, finally, was someone who did what they would very much like to do right now, albeit on a national stage. And the reason for that is that they have been treated exactly the opposite for most of their lives in a country which lionizes consumption and indeed economic inequality.

The Horatio Alger road to riches depends, ultimately, on Alger’s willingness not only to work hard but then treat others as he perceived himself to be so deprived. After all, why not make those who come next “work as hard” as those who came before? Even if it turns out to be a whole lot harder in a world with less support or even stability.

Anger At This Next Perceived Loss Will Continue To Be Stoked

The response, not necessarily in the middle of winter, but almost certainly by next spring, is likely to be messy. There are too many broken issues floating about this discussion that will not resolve even if, magically, the Democrats manage to keep the Republicans from blocking a humane agenda through the Senate. This would among other things, basically entail a successful double-run off for the two representatives of Georgia, as of January as things are currently looking.

But beyond any voter-related, short-term problems? The United States is continuing to eat itself.

Trump was not wrong about who these people are. Nor how to appeal to them. And that anger will only continue to get more toxic until something a bit more revolutionary than “Uncle Joe” and the current Democratic Party shows up and by nefariously “clever” planning “steals” an election with the help of the (federally funded even if appallingly inefficient) U.S. Post Office.