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      in World Politics

      The Post-Election Art of Drawing Hasty Conclusions

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      In a Fair Observer column this week analyzing the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, Steve Westly echoes the tendentious conclusions of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party. Not only do they seek to place the blame for the ambiguous outcome of the election on the rhetoric of the left, they clearly want that wing of the party simply to shut up.

      Westly finds himself in the company not just of subtle political thinkers like Representative and former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger, but also of apostate Republicans such as John Kasich and Meg Whitman. These are people who have discovered — thanks to the four-year run of Donald Trump’s White House reality-TV show — that the Democratic Party feels a lot like the Republican Party of old.

      Alex Acosta and the Guidelines of the Elite

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      Westly makes the following bold claim: “Democrats need to understand that America is still a center-right country with a large, highly motivated evangelical base.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Center-right country:

      A nation that in its majority seeks to believe in and fulfill the ideals of democracy and equality but whose power brokers have the clout to convince the media that it prefers the stability of oligarchic control

      Contextual Note

      The Democrats seized on the idea of Russian meddling in 2016 to explain their defeat in the presidential election. This time, the scapegoat is the group of Democrats who pledge allegiance to “democratic socialism” and shout “defund the police.” Those words and ideas must now be stricken from the vocabulary of the party. All language must be formulated to soothe the fears of “moderates.” 

      This exercise in pre-digested, reductionist analysis leading to the simplification of discourse and debate seeks to brand an entire swath of the population as un-American. The US is increasingly divided and visibly fragmented. The Democrats apparently want to use President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral success to dictate to the American people who they are as a group and how they should think of themselves.

      Embed from Getty Images

      There may be a statistical sense that justifies calling the country “center-right.” But this has no meaning when a wide range of cultural values are at play. When people are pushed toward the edges, no statistical mean accurately identifies a center. Westly is right to mention the existence of a highly motivated evangelical base. But even that fact requires further analysis. The Republicans have to a large extent created the fiction that it exists as a coherent voting bloc.

      There are two reasons not to think of the US as a center-right country. The first is that it has never been more diversified and divided. That two extremes may exist does not mean that the mid-point between them defines the nature of a people.

      Furthermore, polls taken during the election campaign have consistently shown that issues identified with the left and branded by Republicans and Democrats alike with the deliberately toxic term “socialism” are in fact endorsed by a large majority of the population. The most obvious is Medicare for All, consistently denigrated by centrists and the right as “socialist medicine” and rejected by Biden, but massively approved by Americans (70%) and even by a near majority of Republicans.

      Even Andrew Yang’s theme of the universal basic income (UBI) — a “socialist” measure of redistribution if ever there was one — also has majority support. If we consider single-payer health care and UBI centrist policies because a majority approves them, then we need to redefine who is a centrist on the political spectrum. Certainly not Joe Biden.

      The second reason concerns the nature of the two extremes. They are radically different. In the US, the extreme right is indeed a powerful force, as the tea party movement demonstrated. It expresses its extremism by eschewing all forms of rationality, insisting that personal beliefs, opinions and prejudices trump any form of reasoning. Evangelical faith is one example of this, but not the only one. Blind nationalism is another, but to a large extent that is also a feature even of the Democratic center, which embraces the slogan of American exceptionalism. The idea of exceptionalism itself is anti-rational, an implicit rejection of the democratic principle of equality, if not of the rule of law itself.

      The extreme left contrasts radically with the extreme right. First, just in terms of comparative size, the extreme left is marginal. This imbalance may contribute to the mistaken impression that the nation can be defined as center-right. More significantly, the left as a whole, with its many variants, clings to the value of rationality. It is fundamentally an intellectual movement promoting reasoned rather than emotional approaches to addressing social problems. 

      In Shakespearean terms, the left is Hamlet, the thinker, as opposed to Polonius, the busybody focusing on executing the will of King Claudius, the wielder of power. Hamlet rebelled intellectually, but Claudius ruled Denmark until he was replaced in the final act by the Norwegian Fortinbras (literally “strong-in-arm”).

      Like most establishment Democrats, Westly singles out “democratic socialism,” treating it as a kind of virus that has infected the Democratic Party. It encourages the idea that the incoming Biden administration’s essential task will be the production of a vaccine to eliminate it or at least contain any further contamination.

      That theme of ostracizing the left seems to be the flavor of the month. Just now, Al Jazeera informs us that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has declared that the US will label the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign — a movement focused on contesting the politics of the Israeli government — as “anti-Semitic.” It is a theme the Labour Party in the UK has just used effectively to purge the left. The left everywhere is accused of toppling statues. The center, both right and left, topples people.

      That kind of purge may not be what Westly has in mind, but it’s becoming more and more likely that that’s what the Democrats will be seeking to do.

      Historical Note

      The history of 21st-century elections tells a tale that contradicts the characterization of the US as a center-right country. The center-right epithet implies the public’s preference for stability and adherence to the status quo. But recent elections have revealed a profound and growing unease with the status quo.

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      The presidential election of 2000 should have resulted in the election of a center-left candidate, Al Gore. Instead, the Supreme Court crowned George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote and even failed to win the Electoral College. Bush managed to get that close to winning by defining himself as a “compassionate conservative.” That was his way of claiming to be dead center: conservative to please the Republicans, compassionate to please the Democrats.

      President Bush very quickly abandoned the compassionate side and sought to impose an aggressive neocon, neoliberal agenda that Americans had not voted for. It began with the notorious Bush tax cuts at a time when polls showed Americans were ready to accept tax hikes if the goal was to repair a crumbling infrastructure. Bush doggedly pursued his agenda rather than the people’s.

      Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 promising hope and change. His first challenge was to resolve the financial crisis Bush left in his lap. This may have sobered his impulse to effectuate change. President Obama spent the next eight years consolidating the status quo. Then, in 2016, the status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost to an irresponsible clown promising an irrational, undefined program of radical change.

      These recent elections show that voters regularly come out to vote against the status quo. It defines a nation that consistently expresses its impatience with the center-right but is repeatedly given little choice. The centrist Republicans invented the idea of “anyone but Trump.” The voters have shown an attitude closer to “anything but the center.” The Democrats fared poorly in 2020 because “anyone but Trump” trumped “anything but the center.”

      The massive go-out-and-vote campaign in the wake of the George Floyd killing helped the uninspired and uninspiring candidate, Joe Biden, to attain nearly 80 million votes as opposed to Clinton’s 65.85 million. Without the mobilization of those protesting the status quo, Biden’s numbers would have been closer to Clinton’s. He most likely would have lost massively in the Electoral College to Donald Trump’s 74 million.

      As a new Democratic administration prepares to take office in January 2021, it would be wise to take the time to assess the deeper meaning of the vote.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Happy birthday, Joe: 78-year-old Biden will be oldest US president to enter office

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      Joe Biden is celebrating his 78th birthday on Friday, an age that will make him the oldest president ever to enter office when he is inaugurated on 20 January.
      Biden’s age, which Donald Trump – four years his junior – sought to make an issue throughout the election campaign, including the nickname “Sleepy Joe”, is 23 years above an average 55 years of age for accession to the presidency.
      Ronald Reagan, who also drew attention for his advancing years, was 69 when he entered office in 1981. Donald Trump was 70, making him the oldest person to be elected to the presidency – excluding Reagan’s re-election at 73.
      The youngest elected president is John F Kennedy, who was 43 at the time of his inauguration and 46 at the time of his assassination on 22 November 1963, while the youngest to assume the presidency, after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, was Theodore Roosevelt at 42.
      As far as Biden’s physical health is concerned, his most recent publicly-issued medical assessment, released in December 2019, reported him as “healthy, vigorous … fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as chief executive, head of state and commander in chief.”
      He was listed as 5ft11in tall, weighed 178 pounds, and had a blood pressure of 128/84 at that time. He had two brain aneurysms in 1988. In 2009, he had episodic atrial fibrillation. Biden does not smoke or drink alcohol and exercises five days a week, according to his physician.
      Throughout his election campaign and into the current, contentious phase of transition, Biden’s handlers have taken steps to counter age-related misgivings – in part stemming from his light election campaign schedule know as the the “basement strategy” during the coronavirus pandemic. This included often having the now-president-elect jog to the podium at speaking engagements.
      In an interview with CNN, Biden promised to be “totally transparent” about all facets of his health if elected. However, he hasn’t said how he’ll do that.
      “It’s crucial that he and his staff put himself in the position early in his presidency where he can express what he wants with a crispness that’s not always been his strength,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who has advised legislators from both parties.
      “He has got to build up credibility with the American people that he’s physically and mentally up to the job.”
      According to Baker, Biden’s advanced age puts greater emphasis on the quality of his staff picks. Indeed by selecting his vice-president Kamala Harris, 20 years his junior, who emerged during the democratic nomination campaign as one of his fiercest critics, was a tacit acknowledgment of his age issue. Biden himself has described his role as “transitional” for the future of the Democratic party. More

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      in Elections

      Trump one of the 'most irresponsible presidents' in US history, Biden says – video

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      US president-elect Joe Biden says Donald Trump will go down in history as one of the ‘most irresponsible presidents in American history’, labelling his challenges to the election results ‘incredibly damaging’. Biden said he was not concerned that Trump’s refusal to concede the election would prevent a transfer of power, but added it ‘sends a horrible message about who we are as a country’.
      Biden condemns Trump as one of the ‘most irresponsible presidents in American history’ More

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      in US Politics

      Biden nears record 80m votes as Trump persists in trying to overturn result

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      [embedded content]
      Joe Biden is approaching a record 80m votes, with ballots still being counted and having already recorded the highest number of votes for a US presidential election winner, as Donald Trump persisted on Thursday in denying the result and trying to overturn it.
      In a gigantic turnout of the US electorate, Trump has now got a record number of votes for a losing candidate.
      With more than 155m votes counted and California and New York – Democratic bastions – still counting, turnout stood on Thursday at 65% of all eligible voters, the highest since 1908, according to data from the Associated Press and the US Elections Project.
      The rising Biden tally and his popular vote lead – nearly 6 million votes – has been overshadowed by Trump escalating his false insistence that he actually won the 3 November election and his campaign and supporters now intensifying efforts to stop or delay results being certified by state officials.
      “It’s just a lot of noise going on, because Donald Trump is a bull who carries his own china shop with him,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “Once the noise recedes, it’s going to be clear that Biden won a very convincing victory.”
      Indeed, some experts are saying that the way the lame duck president is digging in on his false claims of victory and an election stolen from him by widespread fraud, as all the while his legal challenges fall one by one is actually serving to entrench his failure.
      “Each [legal] loss further cements Biden’s win,” said election law expert Richard Hasen, Axios reported on Thursday.
      But Trump’s last ditch could also be dangerous.
      “History shows that any leader who constructs a major myth, that is later shown to be false, will eventually fall,” Harvard science historian and Merchants of Doubt author Naomi Oreskes further told Axios.
      She added: “The risk is that he takes his country down with him.”
      Trump has made up to 30 legal challenges so far and by Thursday morning, more than two weeks after the polls closed for in-person voting and the bulk of mail-in ballots were received, 19 of those lawsuits had been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn, NBC reported.
      He is fighting the result in various ways in Pennsylvania, which tipped the election to Biden when it was declared for the Democrat on 7 November and he passed the crucial 270-electoral college vote mark, also in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.
      Biden currently has an electoral college lead of 290-232. But that does not include electors from Georgia, where Biden leads Trump by 0.3 percentage points as officials conduct a hand tally which concluded on Wednesday night with every expectation that Biden would be confirmed the winner on Thursday.
      The Associated Press, the news agency whose projections of winners in each state are followed by the Guardian, had not called the race in Georgia on Thursday morning, even though CNN has already called it for Biden.
      If Biden’s lead holds he will win the electoral college that determines the victor for the White House with 306 votes to 232 for Trump – the identical margin Trump won in 2016 over Hillary Clinton, which he then described as a “landslide”.
      On Thursday, Trump mounted an all-out assault on the election result in Michigan, reportedly planning to fly state lawmakers to meet with him in Washington and phoning county officials in an apparent attempt to derail the certification of Biden’s 150,000-vote victory in the state.
      Some analysts believe the noise and confusion being generated by Trump is an end in itself, and sowing chaos is the goal rather than a real attempt to overturn an election Trump – and increasingly those around him – must know he has lost.
      “This is all about maintaining his ego and visibility,” said Judd Gregg, the former Republican governor and US senator from New Hampshire.
      He added: “He’s raising a lot of money and he intends to use it.”
      The scenario of confusion and doubt is exactly what Trump spent much of 2020 laying the groundwork for, particularly with his unfounded claims that mail-in ballots would be subject to systemic fraud. That wasn’t true before 2020 or in this election.
      “His response should surprise no one. He foreshadowed it well before the election and it continues his pattern of declaring victory, regardless of the actual facts,” said Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota. More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump mounts all-out assault on election result in Michigan

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      Donald Trump has mounted an all-out assault on the election result in Michigan, reportedly planning to fly state lawmakers to meet with him in Washington and phoning county officials in an apparent attempt to derail the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 150,000-vote victory in the state.
      On Tuesday night, Trump placed phone calls to two Republican members of a county-level vote certification board the night before the pair tried to reverse their previous endorsement of a large chunk of the vote in Michigan.
      The news emerged as Republican lawmakers in Michigan prepared to fly to Washington on Friday to meet with Trump at his request, the Washington Post first reported.
      While no explanation for the meeting has been given, Trump has been pressuring Republican state lawmakers to try to hijack the electoral college by advancing slates of electors that could compete with those selected by the states’ voters.
      There was no indication that Trump’s strategy, which in addition to the consent of legislatures would require a string of highly unlikely court victories and ultimately participation by Democrats in Congress to succeed, had any remote chance of overturning the election.
      But Trump’s full-court press in Michigan has raised concerns about the integrity of the state’s election result, which has an election certification deadline of Tuesday 23 November.
      As members of the Wayne county board of canvassers, William Hartmann and Monica Palmer played a crucial role this week in transforming Michigan’s popular vote into all-important electoral college votes for Biden. Michigan has 16 electoral votes.
      But at a meeting on Tuesday night, Hartmann and Palmer at first refused to certify the vote in Wayne county, which hosts the city of Detroit and where more than 80% of the vote is African American, citing minor irregularities. Biden won the county by more than 330,000 votes – his largest margin of any county in Michigan.
      After three hours of discussion among community members attending the meeting virtually, some of whom accused Hartmann and Palmer of carrying out a brazen, racist assault on the right to vote, the pair certified the Wayne county vote. In the past the process has been treated as routine.
      Trump spoke with Palmer on the phone later that night, she told the Detroit Free Press. “He was checking to make sure I was safe,” she said. Palmer said that she and her family had “received multiple threats”.
      The next day both Hartmann and Palmer filed affidavits in court seeking to reverse their certification of the Wayne county result, claiming that they had been promised internally that the vote would be audited, only to discover it would not be.
      The White House did not reply to a request for comment. Neither did Hartmann or Palmer. Trump inaccurately tweeted on Tuesday night that the board had declined to certify the Wayne county vote, indicating that he was following the process closely.
      The Michigan secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said through a spokesperson on Thursday that the certification was final. “There is no legal mechanism for them to rescind their vote,” she said. “Their job is done and the next step in the process is for the board of state canvassers to meet and certify.”
      The vice-chairman of the Wayne county board of canvassers, Democrat Jonathan Kinloch, denied the substance of the affidavits, telling the Washington Post that the Republican pair understood the process and knew what they were certifying.
      Ever since Trump’s election loss two weeks ago, the Trump campaign has been filing lawsuits and applying pressure on Republican officials in multiple states in an effort to overturn the election result or, barring that, to spread the false belief that Biden’s victory was illegitimate. Polling indicates that they are succeeding in the latter objective with a majority of Republicans.
      Trump campaign tampering had not caused a serious hitch in the process of vote certification, however, until Tuesday night.
      Biden needs electoral votes to make his win over Trump official, although he defeated Trump in a sufficient number of states that he still would win in the electoral college even if the Trump campaign managed to steal the election in multiple big states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
      Separately in Michigan on Thursday, the Trump campaign withdrew an election-related lawsuit in federal court, making the false assertion in court documents that the Wayne county vote had not been certified. The Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was leading that case.
      The Trump campaign’s legal strategy came under question in a separate case in Pennsylvania, where on Wednesday the campaign proposed that the campaign itself should conduct a review of mail-in ballots and let the court know what it found. As of this writing the court had not taken up the offer from the campaign, which has failed to advance any of its dozens of lawsuits since election night. More