Elections

Ding-dong, the jerk is gone. Finally, we have come to the end of Donald Trump’s season of extreme misrule. Voters have rejected what can only be described as the crassest, vainest, stupidest, most dysfunctional leadership this country has ever suffered.
Congratulations to Joe Biden for doing what Hillary Clinton couldn’t, and for somehow managing to do it without forcefulness, without bounce, without zest, without direction and without a real cause, even.
It is a time for celebrating. Let us praise God for victory, however meagre and under-whelming. But let us also show some humility in our triumph. Before we swing into a national sing-along of the Hallelujah Chorus, I urge you to think for a moment about how we got here and where we must go next.
We know that 2020 has been a year for reckoning with the racist past, for the smashing of icons and the tearing-down of former heroes. Also for confronting the historical delusions that gave us this lousy present.
In the spirit of this modern iconoclasm, let me offer my own suggestion for the reckoning that must come next, hopefully even before Biden chooses his cabinet and packs his bags for Pennsylvania Avenue: Democrats must confront their own past and acknowledge how their own decisions over the years helped make Trumpism possible.
I know: this was a negation election, and what got nixed was Maga madness. The Democrats are the ones who won. Still, it is Joe Biden who must plan our course forward and so it is Biden who must examine our situation coldly and figure out the answer to the burning question of today: how can a recurrence of Trumpism be prevented?
Biden’s instinct, naturally, will be to govern as he always legislated: as a man of the center who works with Republicans to craft small-bore, business-friendly measures. After all, Biden’s name is virtually synonymous with Washington consensus. His years in the US Senate overlap almost precisely with his party’s famous turn to the “third way” right, and Biden personally played a leading role in many of the signature initiatives of the era: Nafta-style trade agreements, lucrative favors for banks, tough-on-crime measures, proposed cuts to social security, even.
What Biden must understand now, however, is that it was precisely this turn, this rightward shift in the 1980s and 90s, that set the stage for Trumpism.
Let us recall for a moment what that turn looked like. No longer were Democrats going to be the party of working people, they told us in those days. They were “new Democrats” now, preaching competence rather than ideology and reaching out to new constituencies: the enlightened suburbanites; the “wired workers”; the “learning class”; the winners in our new post-industrial society.

For years this turn was regarded as a great success. Bill Clinton brought us market-friendly reforms to banking rules, trade relations and the welfare system. He and his successor Barack Obama negotiated grand bargains and graceful triangulations; means-tested subsidies and targeted tax credits; tough-minded crime measures and social programs so complex that sometimes not even their designers could explain them to us.
In the place of the Democratic party’s old household god – the “middle class” – these new liberals enshrined the meritocracy, meaning not only the brilliant economists who designed their policies, but also the financiers and technologists that the new liberalism tried to serve, together with the highly educated professionals who were now its most prized constituents. In 2016 Hillary Clinton lost the former manufacturing regions of the country but was able to boast later on that she won “the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product … the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”
However, there are consequences when the left party in a two-party system chooses to understand itself in this way. As we have learned from the Democrats’ experiment, such a party will show little understanding for the grievances of blue-collar workers, people who – by definition – have not climbed the ladder of meritocracy. And just think of all the shocking data that has flickered across our attention-screens in the last dozen years – how our economy’s winnings are hogged by the 1%; how ordinary people can no longer afford new cars; how young people are taking on huge debt burdens right out of college; and a thousand other points of awful. All of these have been direct or indirect products of the political experiment I am describing.
Biden can’t take us back to the happy assumptions of the centrist era even if he wants to, because so many of its celebrated policy achievements lie in ruins. Not even Paul Krugman enthuses about Nafta-style trade agreements any longer. Bill Clinton’s welfare reform initiative was in fact a capitulation to racist tropes and brought about an explosion in extreme poverty. The great prison crackdown of 1994 was another step in cementing the New Jim Crow. And the biggest shortcoming of Obama’s Affordable Care Act – leaving people’s health insurance tied to their employer – has become painfully obvious in this era of mass unemployment and mass infection.
But the biggest consequence of the Democrats’ shabby experiment is one we have yet to reckon with: it has coincided with a period of ever more conservative governance. It turns out that when the party of the left abandons its populist traditions for high-minded white-collar rectitude, the road is cleared for a particularly poisonous species of rightwing demagoguery. It is no coincidence that, as Democrats pursued their professional-class “third way”, Republicans became ever bolder in their preposterous claim to be a “workers’ party” representing the aspirations of ordinary people.
When Democrats abandoned their majoritarian tradition, in other words, Republicans hastened to stake their own claim to it. For the last 30 years it has been the right, not the left, that rails against “elites” and that champions our down-home values in the face of the celebrities who mock them. During the 2008 financial crisis conservatives actually launched a hard-times protest movement from the floor of the Chicago board of trade; in the 2016 campaign they described their foul-mouthed champion, Trump, as a “blue-collar billionaire”, kin to and protector of the lowly – the lowly and the white, that is.
Donald Trump’s prodigious bungling of the Covid pandemic has got him kicked out of office and has paused the nation’s long march to the right. Again, let us give thanks. But let us also remember that the Republicans have not been permanently defeated. Their preening leader has gone down, but his toxic brand of workerism will soon be back, enlisting the disinherited and the lowly in the cause of the mighty. So will our fatuous culture wars, with their endless doses of intoxicating self-righteousness, shot into the veins of the nation by social media or Fox News.
I have been narrating our country’s toboggan ride to hell for much of my adult life, and I can attest that Biden’s triumph by itself is not enough to bring it to a stop. It will never stop until a Democratic president faces up to his party’s mistakes and brings to a halt the ignoble experiment of the last four decades.
Should Joe Biden do that, he might be able to see that he has before him a moment of great Democratic possibility. This country has grown sick of plutocracy. We don’t enjoy sluicing everything we earn into the bank accounts of a few dozen billionaires. We want a healthcare system that works and an economy in which ordinary people prosper, even people who didn’t go to a fancy college. Should Biden open his eyes and overcome his past, he may discover that he has it in his power to rebuild our sense of social solidarity, to make the middle-class promise real again, and to beat back the right. All at the same time.
Thomas Frank is the author of The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism. He is also a Guardian US columnist More

It happened. Let us all take a deep breath and recognize: a disaster has been averted. Like when the car coming straight at us swerves at the last moment, when the Covid-19 test results come back negative. Donald Trump is no longer going to be president of the United States. Can it really be?
It’s pleasant to imagine life without Trump in the White House. But it’s also painful, in a way, because it forces us to confront how we’ve been living for the past four years, the compromises and accessions we’ve made, what we’ve accustomed ourselves to absorb, to tolerate, to endure.
The pandemic rages on around us. But it is a relief to not feel that thousands of people are dying and the person who is supposed to be leading our country doesn’t care.
It will be a relief not to have to brace ourselves for the next act of cruelty, the next mocking of the disabled, the next racist or sexist tweet, the next vicious nickname or insult.
It will be a relief not to watch the president of the United States take pride in his own ignorance and bigotry, not to have to steel ourselves for the next embarrassment, the next example of rudeness and bad behavior that makes us look selfish and foolish in the eyes of the world.
It will be a relief not to have to confront how much we have learned to ignore, not to consider how many outrages we have witnessed and then forgotten because the next outrage had already taken its place. It will be a relief not to feel the daily dose of astonished disbelief, not to ask ourselves how we could have let this happen, why there is no one smart or brave or powerful enough to control it.
It will be a relief not to know that we are being lied to, every day, about matters of life and death. It will be a relief to go through a day without feeling that we have become characters in a real life dystopian version of The Emperor’s New Clothes, one in which the Emperor won’t listen to the truth – about his nakedness – that the little boy is telling, the version in which the Emperor humiliates the little boy. It will be a relief not to think that our president hates and has contempt for the poor – that he mocks and despises the same people who vote for him, who support him.
It will be a relief to not worry that our democracy is in danger, that Donald Trump and his cohorts would like nothing better than to see our nation transformed into a fascist kleptocracy that steals from us even as it restricts and deprives us of our constitutional freedoms. It will be a relief not to feel that the president and his family are profiting from the forces that contribute to so many Americans’ suffering.
It will be a relief to get through the day, to be able look at our phones or our TV without hearing Donald Trump’s strident voice and the maddening rhythms of his speech, without seeing his red face twisted with fury, without listening to his insults and meanness, without observing his untiring efforts to divide our country, to make us despise and fear one another, and above all to glorify himself and the terrific job he seems to imagine he’s done.
Of course I don’t believe that Donald Trump is the sole source of our country’s problems; I understand that he’s the symptom of our larger, deeper, more systemic problems. Nor do I imagine that a Biden presidency will offer an immediate (or even a lasting) solution to the nightmares that keep us awake: income inequality racism, sexism, climate change … the list goes on. But I also feel that this is not the moment to emphasize the fact that Biden will not solve all our problems. The posters said: Vote as if your life depends on it, and it’s true. Our health, our future, our democracy may very well depend on Donald Trump’s ouster.
When I imagine life without Donald Trump, what I’m picturing is something like the final scene of the disaster film: the zombies have been beaten back, the Martians have returned to their planet, the dinosaurs are extinct once again, the floods have receded, the wildfires safely extinguished. The sun is shining, the sky is clear, the birds – those birds that are left – are sweetly singing. The last living humans find one another, and we know what they are thinking even if they don’t speak.
They are thinking: it’s over. We’ve survived. Our country has been restored to us. We can breathe again.
Francine Prose is a novelist. Her last book is Mister Monkey More

The question Americans faced in this election was clear. What were they prepared to do to protect their democracy?
Americans saw the “hail Trump” Nazi salutes shortly after his election in 2016. They have endured the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists that have killed police, massacred Jews in a synagogue, plowed a car into a crowd in Charlottesville, killing a young woman, slaughtered Latinos in El Paso, sent bombs to those whom the president blasted as his “enemies”, and murdered African Americans in Louisville.
Americans witnessed Trump’s nonchalant attitude as domestic terrorists plotted to kidnap and “put on trial” a governor who dared to stand up to him. They were barraged with his brags and taunts about how he had packed the US supreme court to intervene if he wasn’t declared the winner on 3 November. They heard him repeatedly intimate – threaten, even – that if the votes didn’t go his way, there just might not be a peaceful transition of power. They have also seen his absolute inability to denounce the white supremacists whom he summoned to “stand back and stand by” on election day.
But Americans had to fight more than just Trump. The Republican National Committee, recruited a 50,000-member army of “poll watchers” who are little more than a goon squad used to intimidate voters in 15 states, particularly in minority precincts.
Then there were the Republican governors and secretaries of state, who tried to weaponize a global pandemic and make it another barrier to the ballot box. By election day, Covid-19 has killed more than 230,000 and infected at least 9 million Americans. But instead of working overtime to protect their citizens’ health and right to vote, like the Jim Crow politicians of days of yore, they were determined to make people choose between casting their ballot or avoiding death. The CDC noted that with indoor transmission, “people farther than six feet apart can become infected by tiny droplets and particles that float in the air for minutes and hours, and that they play a role in the pandemic.”
In Mississippi, those basic public health warnings were shredded by a policy that made masks optional at polling stations and also gave poll workers the latitude to ask voters to remove their protective face coverings to verify identity. South Carolina, Alabama and Texas went to court multiple times to ensure that a viable solution to voting during a pandemic – absentee ballots – would become less and less viable. They fought numerous legal battles to require absentee ballots to be notarized, or have witness signatures, or be used exclusively by those over 65-year-old. Texas was clear. Voters under 65 must have a valid excuse to receive an absentee ballot. Fear of contracting Covid-19, however, was not one.
Trump added to the difficulties by deliberately kneecapping the US Postal Service. He bragged about withholding funds from the agency so that it would be unable to handle the exponential flood of mail-in ballots. He appointed Louis DeJoy as the postmaster general, who then ordered the dismantling of sorting machines, banned most overtime, commanded that trucks leave on time even if the mail was not on board. Then the president and the Republicans, after wreaking havoc, went to court to force states to invalidate ballots that the post office could not, would not deliver by election day.
The disdain for democracy dripping from Trump and the Republicans has done its damage. They had subverted and perverted many of the pillars of democracy – the protections of democracy. A US Senate run by flag-lapel wearing saboteurs let bills rot that would have expanded accessibility to the ballot box, blocked foreign interference in our elections, and repaired the Voting Rights Act. That same Republican-led Senate stacked a federal court system whose rulings aided and abetted voter suppression and packed a US supreme court that planted a poison pill in the Pennsylvania decision that it would be more than willing to decide the merits of mail-in ballot deadlines after the election (apparently if the vote totals were close enough to tip it towards Trump in this electoral college-rich swing state).
While the forces arrayed against the United States looked formidable, they were not invincible. Instead, they ran into something that is even more powerful than a president, a senate, or the US supreme court. The American people themselves and their belief in and devotion to democracy.
Of course, the hints were there all along that this regime and its supporters were in trouble. In 2016, there was so much wrong with that election, including Russia, that Trump’s victory had a huge, de-legitimizing asterisk beside it, starting with 2.9 million more votes for his opponent. Then there was the 2018 mid-term, which was a referendum on and repudiation of Trump when the House of Representatives flipped and the Democrats picked up more than 40 seats. What became obvious, as the Republican party shrank, as Never Trumpers gained an important toehold, and as he could only speak convincingly to his base supporters, what Trump brought to America simply was not acceptable or accepted. Then, what he did to America – the lies, the corruption, the stoking of white supremacist violence, the damage to the nation’s international reputation, the debasement of its institutions, the stealing of Americans’ joy and celebrations, the contempt for their lives – sealed his and his enablers’ fate.

Americans used, in the final words of Congressman John Lewis, “the most powerful nonviolent change agent” at their disposal, the vote, to fight for this nation and this incredible democracy. And fight they did. Americans maneuvered around, under, and over every barrier to get to the ballot box. With the help of an impressive array of legal and grassroots warriors, like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, the League of Women Voters, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, March for Our Lives, FairFight for Action, Black Voters Matter Fund, Voto Latino, the Native American Rights Fund, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the New Georgia Project, the NAACP, Democracy Docket, VoteRiders, and more, Americans fought for this democracy.
They stood in lines up to 11 hours.
They covered themselves in plastic to wait to vote and protect themselves against those who defined freedom as the right to hurl a deadly virus at innocent bystanders.
They volunteered and they donated, in the midst of an economic recession, with millions of people out of work, more than a billion dollars to fund candidates who did not have nor want access to unseemly dark money.
They used their age to motivate them in the war for democracy. A married couple in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, both over 100 years old, sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot while waiting to ensure that their votes counted. Indeed, Black people 65 and older, clearly with memories of Jim Crow, voted in higher numbers during early voting than they had overall in 2016. And, Americans between 18-29, seeing a planet ravaged by climate change and their very future imperiled, came out in force to ensure that democracy and Earth had a fighting chance.
Americans refused to be stopped by all of the court shenanigans and bureaucratic rabbit punches. While Trump threatened the ability of the Post Office to deliver the ballots on time and the courts put an electoral timebomb on the due dates, the majority of Americans launched a pre-emptive strike and sent their ballots in even sooner, often weeks before the deadline. Others, leery of the disruption that Trump, DeJoy, and the courts had caused, bypassed the Post Office altogether and took their ballots to local boards of elections or put them in drop boxes. Tens of millions of ballots.
Americans were not going to be stopped. Those who did not or could not vote in 2016, cast their first ballot ever in 2020 and accounted for 20% of the record-breaking early voter turnout for this election.
In the end, every maneuver by Trump and his enablers was met with a more powerful and effective counter-maneuver. It had to be. One voter out of the record-breaking millions who braved Covid-19, the assault on mail-in ballots, the threats of violence at the polls, and the reality of what four more years of an anti-American regime would mean, explained simply: “This election is for saving the US.”
Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy. She is a contributor to the Guardian More

Joe Biden parece estar a punto de ganar la presidencia de Estados Unidos, pero su victoria no será aplastante. Y eso está bien. Un triunfo es un triunfo y el margen de ese triunfo tan solo hace más dulce la victoria. Los demócratas pueden y deberían celebrar este triunfo si, en efecto, llega a ocurrir.Y, a pesar de todo, muchos de nosotros estamos decepcionados, con justa razón. Es probable que los republicanos mantengan el control del Senado, lo cual provocará que la promulgación de una legislación progresista sea casi imposible. Algunos políticos odiosos como Mitch McConnell y Lindsey Graham fueron reelegidos. Aunque Biden probablemente ganará más votos que cualquier otro candidato presidencial, el solo hecho de que el presidente Donald Trump haya sido un contendiente es una desgracia. El hecho de que Trump haya recibido más de 70 millones de votos es una desgracia. Y es un hecho que habla mucho de este país y que demasiada gente se niega a enfrentar.Esto es Estados Unidos. No es una aberración. En efecto, es nuestro país y quienes somos, el proverbial “nosotros”. No debería ser ninguna sorpresa la manera en que se desarrollaron estas elecciones, si has prestado atención o si entiendes de racismo y qué tan sistémico es en realidad. Las encuestas pueden representar muchos factores importantes pero, si no preguntan hasta qué grado el racismo motiva a los votantes —y encuentran la manera de obtener respuestas honestas sobre este tema—, nunca podrán representar este problema.Algunos partidarios de Trump están orgullosos de su afiliación política. Asisten a sus mítines. Andan en autos cubiertos de afiches, banderas y otra parafernalia de Trump. Alardean con arrogancia sobre Estados Unidos, el orgullo y el nacionalismo. Son los sujetos de perfiles serviles que buscan explicar sus tendencias electorales como el resultado de una “ansiedad económica”, como si fueran trágicamente incomprendidos. No lo son. No tenemos ninguna duda de quiénes son.Y luego están los otros simpatizantes de Trump, los que sienten vergüenza. Los que quieren lucir sofisticados. Los que quieren ser invitados a todas las buenas fiestas. Mienten en las encuestas. Les mienten a sus familiares y amigos. Y cuando llenan las boletas, por fin dicen la verdad. Ese es su derecho. Vivimos en una democracia, o al menos decimos que es así.Los próximos meses, sé que escucharé una gran cantidad de discursos políticos delirantes. Me imagino que los comentaristas intentarán comprender cómo concluyeron las elecciones de 2020 y por qué ocurrió así. Habrá demasiados liberales blancos obsesionados con las primeras encuestas de salida que indiquen que el 20 por ciento de los hombres negros y una cantidad significativa de las amplísimas categorías de latinos y asiáticos votaron por Trump. Harán esto en lugar de reflexionar sobre el aumento en la cantidad de mujeres blancas que votaron esta vez por el presidente y cómo los hombres blancos siguen siendo el sector demográfico más importante de su base. Dirán que, una vez más, las mujeres negras salvaron a Estados Unidos de sí mismo, lo cual hicimos, claro está, aunque algunas cosas no merecen la salvación.Muchos dirán que la política identitaria —la cual, en sus mentes, significa que los demócratas se enfocan en las experiencias de la gente marginada, y a algunos les parece de mal gusto— evitó que Biden ganara por un margen más amplio. Tal vez estén en lo correcto, pero no por las razones que ofrecen. No hay política identitaria más importante que la de la gente blanca que intenta construir cortafuegos alrededor de lo que queda de su imperio mientras la demografía de este país sigue cambiando.Estados Unidos no está unido para nada. Vivimos en dos países. En uno, la gente está dispuesta a enfrentar el racismo y la intolerancia. Reconocemos que las mujeres tienen derecho a tener autonomía sobre su propio cuerpo, que todos los estadounidenses tienen derecho a votar, derecho a recibir atención médica y derecho a percibir un salario mínimo justo. Comprendemos que este es un país de abundancia y que la única razón que explica la existencia de una desigualdad económica es un rechazo continuo de parte del gobierno a cobrarles impuestos proporcionales a los ricos.El otro Estados Unidos está comprometido a defender la supremacía blanca y el patriarcado cueste lo que cueste. Sus ciudadanos son personas que creen en las teorías conspirativas de QAnon y consideran que la desinformación de Trump es el evangelio. Perciben a Estados Unidos como un país de escasez, donde nunca habrá suficiente de nada, así que cada hombre y mujer debe valerse por sí mismo.No les interesa lo colectivo, porque creen que cualquier éxito logrado en virtud de su privilegio blanco ocurrió en virtud del mérito. Consideran la igualdad como opresión. De hecho, están tan aterrorizados que cuando se contaron los últimos votos en Detroit, un grupo de ellos llegó en manada al lugar gritando: “Detengan el conteo”. En Arizona, otros llegaron en manada al lugar gritando: “Cuenten los votos”. Los ciudadanos de esta versión de Estados Unidos tan solo creen en la democracia que les beneficia a ellos.No sé cómo superaremos este momento. Por supuesto que soy optimista. Me emociona que Kamala Harris sea la primera vicepresidenta negra. Me emociona que Biden no gobernará ni legislará por medio de las redes sociales, que es competente y que tal vez no lidere la revolución, pero, sin duda, liderará al país.También estoy preocupada. Me preocupa cómo afectará el incremento de jueces nombrados por Trump a los derechos al voto, la libertad reproductiva y los derechos civiles de la comunidad LGBTQ. Me preocupa que mi matrimonio esté en peligro. Me preocupa que la policía siga actuando como si las vidas de las personas negras no importaran y cometa asesinatos extrajudiciales con impunidad. Me preocupa que los abismos profundos entre los pobres, la clase media y los ricos se ensanchen todavía más. Me preocupa que haya tanta gente tan cómoda con sus vidas que no le importan estos problemas.Seré sincera. Los últimos cuatro años han destrozado mi fe en casi todo. Me siento ridícula de tan solo decirlo. Me siento ridícula de haber tenido tanta confianza en la victoria de Hillary Clinton, de haber creído que, si una persona terrible era elegida a la presidencia, el sistema de controles y equilibrios iba a minimizar el daño que podría hacer. Desde la elección de Trump, lo hemos visto a él y al Partido Republicano ejecutar sus planes de forma sistemática e implacable. Han desmantelado las normas democráticas con vigor. Hemos visto un desfile interminable de horrores, desde las familias separadas en la frontera mexicana y una economía destrozada hasta un gobierno completamente insensible frente a una pandemia que sigue haciendo estragos en el país. Y la lista sigue y sigue. La atrocidad tan solo engendra más atrocidad.Al mismo tiempo, los últimos cuatro años me han llenado de energía. Me han movido más hacia la izquierda desde la comodidad de la centroizquierda. Me he vuelto más activa y comprometida en mi comunidad. Veo que mis posturas sociopolíticas han cambiado para convertirse en valores progresistas verdaderos. No soy la misma mujer que era y estoy agradecida por ello, aunque odie lo que me trajo hasta aquí.Durante gran parte del ciclo electoral de 2020, muchos de nosotros queríamos que cualquiera excepto Donald Trump fuera el presidente, porque literalmente cualquier otra persona sería una mejora. Dejó la vara muy baja, hasta el subsuelo. A medida que el campo democrático se reducía, hubo tiempo de considerar quién iba a servir mejor al país pero, aunque encontramos a nuestros candidatos preferidos, era claro que sacar a Trump del cargo iba a ser solo el inicio del trabajo. Ahí se encuentra el país. El estado de este país mejorará cuando Joe Biden sea nombrado el cuadragésimo sexto presidente de Estados Unidos —si lo llega a ser—, pero muchísimas cosas seguirán exactamente igual si no nos mantenemos tan comprometidos a progresar durante su gobierno como lo estuvimos durante el de Trump.Esto es Estados Unidos, un país con una división profunda y una inmensa cantidad de defectos. El futuro de este país es incierto, pero no es un caso perdido. Estoy lista para pelear por ese futuro, sin importar qué nos depare. ¿Y tú?Roxane Gay (@rgay) es columnista de Opinión. More

El 4 de noviembre por la tarde, con la carrera presidencial sin resolver, un manifestante en Nevada interrumpió la conferencia de prensa de un funcionario electoral gritando: “¡La familia criminal Biden se está robando las elecciones!”.Ese momento no fue casual. #BidenCrimeFamily es parte de una campaña efectiva de desinformación de alrededor de un año de duración contra Joe Biden; una campaña que fue difundida por las redes sociales, los influencers políticos y el propio presidente.En los días finales de la contienda presidencial, se usó la etiqueta en Twitter y Facebook, así como en las partes más oscuras de internet, incluyendo a 4chan y Parler. Fue repetida en el ecosistema de medios de derecha, como el pódcast de Steve Bannon y The Gateway Pundit.En el último mes, tan solo en Facebook tuvo al menos 277.000 “interacciones” (como reacciones y comentarios), según la herramienta de análisis de datos CrowdTangle, y esa cantidad únicamente se refiere a páginas no privadas. Sin la etiqueta, el eslogan ha tenido más de un millón de interacciones públicas este mes en Facebook.Y el presidente Trump hizo su parte. A las 2:32 a. m., hora del Este, del 30 de octubre, les dijo a sus 87,3 millones de seguidores en Twitter: “¡Tenemos una gran ventaja en Texas! ¡Miren la Gran Ola Roja!”.Minutos después, tuiteó la etiqueta #BidenCrimeFamiily (familia criminal Biden) con un error de dedo en la palabra “family”. Eso fue todo. Sin contexto ni vínculo.#BidenCrimeFamily y el dedazo son un curso intensivo de cómo captar simpatizantes con una teoría de conspiración y al mismo tiempo neutralizar los intentos de las compañías de redes sociales de detenerla. Con la campaña #StoptheSteal (#DetenganelRobo) Trump ha usado esta misma táctica para sembrar dudas sobre los votos por correo y la integridad de la elección.Es efectiva porque es sencilla. La etiqueta tomó un tema complicado con preguntas legítimas sobre los negocios de Hunter Biden con Ucrania y China, y lo redujo a un eslogan que podría usarse para difundir falsedades sobre Joe Biden. (Una investigación realizada en el año electoral dirigida por republicanos en el Senado no encontró evidencia de influencia inapropiada o actos ilícitos por parte de Biden).La repetición constante hace que las acusaciones contra Hunter Biden suenen verdaderas, en tanto que desvían la atención de las acusaciones de comportamiento poco ético contra los propios hijos de Trump. Con la etiqueta, Trump encontró una manera de decirles a sus simpatizantes: aquí está todo lo que necesitan saber sobre el candidato demócrata.¿Y el dedazo de Trump? Seguramente no fue accidental. Esa “i” adicional elude los esfuerzos de Twitter de esconder la etiqueta en los resultados de búsqueda. Llamada #typosquatting (#OcupaciónMedianteDedazo), esta táctica a menudo es usada por troles y manipuladores de medios para no seguir las reglas de las plataformas de redes sociales. More

WASHINGTON — We expected more of Donald Trump.An epic, Jack Nicholson-in-the-Overlook-Hotel meltdown, not just Rose Garden-variety mewling. A conspiracy with grandiosity, not merely pathetic blathering about pointless lawsuits from his entitled children and oddballs Rudy Giuliani and Richard Grenell.The president has had all this time to hatch a spidery plot to ruin democracy on the way out the door, and this is the best he can come up with?The election has been stolen!What’s your proof?Because I’m losing.This, from the man who has been hailed as an evil genius of media manipulation?Trump can’t hold a candle to the well-oiled machine — Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, James Baker and the Supreme Court — that purloined the Florida vote, and thereby the presidency, for W. in 2000.It was the same old tired Trump routine we’ve watched for four years, right through the pandemic failure: Beat your chest and bleat that you’re king of the world. Then do nothing except screw up.But you can’t con your way past 74 million Biden ballots any more than you can con your way past a microbe. The masked Americans counting the vote just kept on counting, impervious to the president’s evidence-free conniptions.Trump campaigned hard and his coattails worked even if a lot of Republican voters were ready to hand him his hat.Even with the Republican National Committee seeking to rake in $60 million to support Trump’s sore-loser piffle, I was getting the distinct impression that many here were not waiting for the final tally. They have happily channel-surfed away from Trump’s egomaniacal bluster.John Roberts was no doubt relieved that the president’s legal feints were so lame and threadbare that the Supreme Court would probably not have to do another indefensible Bush v. Gore decision to save their benefactor.Mitch McConnell was certainly savoring the prospect of being the top Republican in town. Trump had served his purpose as a useful tool to get a tax cut and three Supreme Court picks. Mitch thought he was headed to minority leader, doing his usual obstructionist schtick, but lo and behold he could still be majority leader, controlling the Biden agenda.Lindsey Graham told Sean Hannity on Thursday night that he would cough up half a mil to the president’s legal defense fund but his heart no longer seemed to be in the lap dog routine. The next day, he was spreading some sunny optimism about bipartisanship in a Biden era. If Joe Biden won, he said, “I’ll give him my input about who I could vote for as secretary of state, attorney general.”As Trump howled at the moon, denizens of Trumpworld were looking over the horizon, plotting new jobs or book deals.Even The New York Post, which was game to slime Hunter Biden on the eve of the election, started sniping at the Trumps on Twitter: “Downcast Trump makes baseless election fraud claims in White House address” and “Panic-stricken Donald Trump Jr. calls for ‘total war’ in clueless tweet.”Jared Kushner got in touch with Rupert Murdoch on election night to convey the White House’s white-hot anger over the early Fox News call of Arizona for Biden. But Fox News stood by the call. As Bret Baier calmly asserted, it’s all in the math. (But they couldn’t go all-in — initially Fox brass told talent not to call Biden “president-elect.”)The president who had managed to superimpose his own reality on the world with startling success was suddenly being yanked into the same reality that the rest of us share. The Superman shirt wasn’t working.“I think what the president needs to do is, frankly, put his big boy pants on,” said Philadelphia’s Democratic mayor, Jim Kenney.Biden may not be the most thrilling candidate ever, but there was a real buzz watching the votes come in because our unwieldy, county-by-county system seemed to work. No one was scared by Trump’s protestation.And I can’t help but be bewitched by Biden’s Cinderfella story. He was knocked out of the ’88 race and couldn’t make a mark in the titanic battle between Hillary and Obama in 2008. He was a loyal vice president but was ushered out of the arena by President Barack Obama, who thought that the gaffe-prone Uncle Joe had hit his ceiling. After being cut loose by the first Black president, and moving aside for the Clintons’ restoration — something his dying son, Beau, did not want to happen — Biden was revived during the South Carolina primary with the help of Jim Clyburn and Black voters. This week, he got a vital boost from Black voters in Georgia, thanks in part to all the work Stacey Abrams did. And Biden, friendly with John McCain, got buoyed by Latinos in Arizona.After accepting in 2015 that he had missed his moment, that he was too white and too old and too male and too befogged by grief over Beau, the soon-to-be 78-year-old has seen his moment come back around.F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong. There are second acts. And what could be more American than that?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Supporters of Donald Trump, some of whom are armed, have continued to mass outside an election counting centre in Phoenix on Friday, as Joe Biden’s lead narrows slightly in the state of Arizona. The Trump campaign is angry that the state was called for Biden by media organisations including Fox News and Associated Press, despite thousands of ballots still to be counted. Biden led by around 29,000 on Friday night, down from 47,000, but is still expected by most observers to win.
US election live updates: Joe Biden edges toward victory with leads over Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Nevada More