https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/donald-trump-s-3-step-plan-to-cling-to-power-1.1084113

It starts with making voters question whether they can even trust the elections at all.

With five weeks until the November 3 election, US President Donald Trump isn’t really running against his opponent, former vice president Joe Biden. Instead, the Republican President is campaigning against the election itself. I identified the beginning of this pattern in these pages on August 3, noting that Mr Trump was preparing to manage defeat rather than to win.

He has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and has implicitly outlined a three-phase strategy for managing an election he appears to be losing. But what’s crucial isn’t what the President does to cling to power. It’s what other Republicans do to help him. On his own, Mr Trump can’t do much.

Phase one, discrediting the election and preparing to challenge the results, has been under way for weeks. Mr Trump has been angrily denouncing postal voting as irredeemably tainted, even though he invariably votes by post himself, and many states as well as the US military have been using postal voting with high security for decades. Repeated surveys have indicated that Democrats – members of Mr Biden’s party – are more than twice as likely to vote by post than Republicans.

He is also creating a fictional distinction between absentee voting, in which US citizens abroad vote by post, and regular postal voting. In reality, there is no difference, and in championing the first while denouncing the second, Mr Trump has signalled that he is preparing to dismiss millions of votes.

Meanwhile, he has repeatedly urged his own supporters to vote twice, both by mail and in person, an act which in many states would be felony vote fraud. Some Republicans worry that Mr Trump’s actions, in effect, may discourage some of his followers from voting at all.

Phase one also features Mr Trump vociferously insisting that if he loses, the only explanation could be that there was massive fraud – even though Mr Biden has held a comfortable or large lead in virtually all polls for months.

Phase two mainly involves election day. Mr Trump has called on his supporters – who often carry firearms in public – to serve as ad hoc “poll watchers”. This makes at least a widespread atmosphere of voter intimidation alarmingly possible.

Without explaining why, Mr Trump and his aides have repeatedly insisted that, despite the pandemic, only results tabulated on the night of the election should be considered legitimate. Republican Senator Rick Scott is even pushing legislation to limit vote counting and reporting around the country to a mere 24 hours for all federal elections. The underlying motivation seems both clear and nefarious – postal votes inevitably take longer to tabulate.

The implied scenario is that Mr Trump, if he possibly can, will declare himself the winner no matter how many votes remain uncounted, and dismiss all subsequent votes as fraudulent. US Attorney General William Barr’s compliant Justice Department may be weaponised to fight the ensuing legal battles, including possible efforts to seize uncounted ballots. This would be the heart of phase three, which involves all-out, multifaceted efforts to challenge as many votes as possible – not only those by post, but also those from urban centres, where the Democrats are strong – providing the President’s camp with a simple means of distinguishing likely friend from probable foe.

In such a scenario, given the current US political climate, the potential for unrest and violence is obvious. Mr Trump may try to bring American security forces coming into play in order to amplify the sense of chaos and danger.

The endgame of phase three becomes murkier, but the intention would be, of course, for Mr Trump to declare or secure victory, the actual ballots notwithstanding. Unfortunately, there are a number of possible paths for attempting to do this that are technically within the letter of US law.

For example, Republican-controlled state legislatures could appoint their own electors for the electoral college poll, to be counted by Congress on January 6, 2021, that formally decides the presidency, regardless of the public vote.

This is unheard of, but may be technically within their constitutional authority. According to Barton Gelman in The Atlantic, it is being seriously considered, at least by Republican leaders in Pennsylvania.

Senior Republicans in Congress will set the early tone. Republican-controlled legislatures in swing states will probably be urged to discount the votes of thousands of their constituents. The Supreme Court may be asked to stop vote counts or invalidate millions of ballots. The President has bluntly said he is counting on the Court to secure his victory, and is rushing to add another right-wing justice, Amy Coney Barrett, before the election, giving Republican appointees a possible two-thirds majority.

Unless the presidential election result is very close, however, the choice will be clear cut between deploying power in a brazenly antidemocratic, even if perhaps technically legal, manner or, as all losing US parties have in the past, acknowledging defeat and preparing for the future. Republican Richard Nixon in 1960 and Democrat Al Gore in 2000 both had other options, but accepted close and questionable losses in order to protect the credibility and viability of the American political system.

Mr Trump has made his personal disregard for democratic principles evident. And his three-phase strategy outlined here for potentially bypassing a negative election outcome is not speculative. He has made his intentions perfectly clear, and the process is already underway.

But it’s ultimately not up to Mr Trump. The decision will fall to the Republican Party as a whole.

If Mr Biden clearly wins at the polls, as seems likely, we will discover whether the leaders of an entire American party have finally given up on democratic processes and values, and the principle of securing the consent of the governed, and will happily jettison them to hold onto power.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-22/time-for-palestinians-to-make-their-own-peace-plan?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

They’ve depended on the Arab consensus on Israel for too long, and now it’s gone.

Palestinians are understandably furious at the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for agreeing to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, but it leaves them with no choice but to formulate their own strategy for ending the occupation.

The Palestinian leadership has been remarkably passive in recent years, especially since the announcement of the Trump administration’s so-called peace plan last January. Instead of replying with a constructive and compelling counterproposal, the Palestine Liberation Organization simply rejected the plan out of hand. President Mahmoud Abbas didn’t have to persuade the 22-member Arab League and the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation to fully endorse his rejection. Most European governments also dismissed the Trump proposal.

This surge of international support may have given the Palestinians a false sense of security. Instead of coming up with their own plan, they have been relying mostly on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which promised Arab recognition of Israel in return for the creation of a Palestinian state.

This was a huge mistake, because the Palestinians didn’t control the API’s implementation, or even its interpretation. When first promulgated, the API was generally understood to make normalization contingent on an agreement. However, some Arab countries began contemplating mutually reciprocal steps, with Israel easing (or promising to ease) the occupation in return for Arab diplomatic overtures. The idea was to create a virtuous cycle that would eventually lead to ending the occupation and normalization of relations around the same time.

Now the UAE and Bahrain have effectively inverted the original concept, front-loading normalization and leaving the bigger questions over the occupation to some future date. For now, they are satisfied merely with the understanding that there will be no further Israeli annexation in the West Bank.

The main strength of the API for the Palestinians was that it could be presented as an Arab consensus. Now that has been broken, the API provides them with no leverage.

This means Palestinian leaders now must come up with their own approach to ending the occupation or be left with none at all. And they have to face the fact that they will be dealing with Israel directly, not as part of a cohesive Arab bloc.

Palestinian paralysis stems not only from a lack of good options, but also political cowardice and crippling disunity within the leadership. This can best be rectified by elections. If the vote is restricted to the West Bank —  because Hamas won’t let people in Gaza participate and Israel may exclude East Jerusalem — it’s still worth doing.

A fresh mandate is essential to restore the credibility that the leadership will need in order to make the Israelis a bold counter-offer. That must perforce contain significant concessions on emotive issues like refugee return and land swaps.

There must also be a serious effort at national reconciliation among the Palestinians themselves. This could be pursued through collective bodies such as the Palestinian Legislative Council, or through a national-unity arrangement with Hamas. Even if it can’t be accomplished overnight, it must be credibly attempted.

A serious Palestinian counterproposal would’ve been a lot more effective in January or February, but it’s never too late to demonstrate diplomatic credibility. If Joe Biden wins the U.S. presidential election, that would be a perfect opportunity for Palestinians to issue their own plan, on the grounds there is now once again an American leader they can take seriously.

Gulf Arab countries, including the UAE and Bahrain, would welcome an opportunity to demonstrate that they haven’t turned their back on the Palestinians. As they develop stronger relations with Israel, they should be in a much better position to help.

But this can only happen if Palestinian leaders drop the crutch of the API and act decisively, in the name of the undoubted national emergency their people now face.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/ruth-bader-ginsburg-s-death-brings-more-chaos-to-a-messy-election-1.1080476

The fight over the next US Supreme Court justice will be anything but straightforward.

The death of US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, leader of the court’s liberals, will reshape the upcoming election and, quite possibly, the future of the court itself.

The justice was 87 and in deteriorating health. Despite a valiant effort, she could not hold out for the next president. She reportedly said her dying wish was not to be replaced until the next administration begins on January 20. Those wishes are unlikely to be respected.

Now, a remarkable series of variables come into play. Normally, the process is straightforward: the president nominates a candidate for the court who must then be confirmed by the Senate.

However, in this case it is by no means so simple.

That’s because when Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the Senate majority leader, then as now Mitch McConnell, refused to grant the president’s nominee a hearing, let alone a vote.

Mr McConnell invented a preposterous theory, supposedly based on historical precedent but obviously and crudely concocted, arguing that although there were 10 months to go in Mr Obama’s presidency, the Senate should wait to see what happened.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice,” he insisted. He has described that breathtakingly cynical manoeuvre as one of the proudest moments in his career. And because Donald Trump won in 2016, his alternative nominee, Neil Gorsuch, joined the court instead of Mr Obama’s candidate, Merrick Garland.

If 10 months is too soon for a confirmation process, the 45 days now remaining before the November 3 election must surely be even more implausible. But of course, Mr McConnell is insisting that Mr Trump should nominate someone and the Senate vote immediately.

This remarkable ethical contortion is, if anything, being outdone by Senate Judiciary committee chairman Lindsay Graham, who insisted in 2016 “I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”

Now that this is exactly what has happened, however, to no one’s surprise he insists, “the rules have changed.”

Mr Trump says he will nominate a woman shortly. If she is confirmed, he will have appointed three of nine Supreme Court justices and finally created the long-sought but elusive six-three conservative majority that Republicans have been seeking for decades. But it will have been done in such an underhanded manner that Democrats may seek extraordinary redress in the future.

The refusal to consider Mr Garland was outrageous enough. But if Republicans now ignore the very standard that they bucked all traditions to set four years ago, Democrats are likely to conclude the court is hopelessly politicised and that the other side has decided to stop at absolutely nothing in order to ideologically shape its rulings.

Moreover, many Democrats will view this looming six-justice court majority as yet another manifestation of a growing crisis of sustained minority rule in the US, which is grossly at odds with the country’s democratic ideals.

Mr Trump is president because of the electoral college, not majority will, since Hillary Clinton got almost 3 million more votes than he did. Yet he may appoint one third of the Court’s justices. And the Republican Senate majority represents an even smaller minority of American citizens than he does, because the Constitution gives each state two Senators without regard to population.

The final straw will be the shamelessness of this manipulation, first creating new rules and then ditching them, despite passionately insisting they would never do that.

Since the Garland fiasco, some prominent Democrats have been quietly discussing the need to redress the conservative stranglehold on the Supreme Court and other high appellate courts by, when possible, using legislative authority to reshape and expand these courts.

There is nothing in the Constitution specifying nine justices on the Supreme Court. That is a function of 19th century legislation. A co-operative Congress and president could decide that 13, 15 or 17 justices should serve.

If Democrats take control of both houses of Congress and the White House next year, as they might well, they will probably attempt such “court balancing.” Republicans will denounce it as “court packing,” and compare it to a notorious failed effort to expand the court by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. But given their recent conduct, Republicans will not have much credibility when championing traditions, propriety and norms related to the court.

Democrats may seek similar structural changes to many appellate courts, which Mr Trump and Mr McConnell have been busily packing, often with unqualified candidates.

The looming fight over the next justice could have a significant impact on the election, but it is extremely hard to tell which side, if either, may be advantaged, although turnout will be decisive.

This will certainly remind many conservative voters, who are uneasy with Mr Trump’s personal conduct and style, why they voted for him in 2016, and it should be very good for his turnout.

But there is a good chance it will be at least as energising for an infuriated Democratic base, especially those women and men who are justifiably concerned this new court majority could spell the end of reproductive freedom in much of the country.

Just when it seemed the stakes couldn’t be higher for November 3, they have been significantly amplified for both camps.

But there is a possible wrinkle. Four Republican senators, fearful for their own re-election chances or appalled with their leadership’s behaviour, could join Democrats in preventing the confirmation of a new justice before the election. But that would mean going into very serious potential post-election litigation with an even number of justices, possibly incapable of making a binding decision.

It seems more likely that Mr McConnell and Mr Trump will get their way by the narrowest of margins, but that this could spell the end for the familiar nine-member US Supreme Court.

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-normalization-with-saudi-arabia-will-be-a-lot-more-complicated-1.9159397

Saudi Arabia would be taking far greater risks than the UAE and Bahrain in establishing relations with Israel. It’s up to Israel and the United States to reassure and incentivize Riyadh.

The agreements Israel has made with the UAE and Bahrain are a good thing, because states should have relations. It will strengthen the coalition that opposes regional chaos and the spread of Iranian hegemony.

But they are not peace agreements. They do not end a conflict or resolve a dispute. Nor will they help resolve the actual conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, they may even complicate request for such an agreement by reducing the incentive for Israel to compromise.

Israel and the Palestinians must resolve their differences on their own terms. Gulf Arab countries were never a significant obstacle and will not be a major part of the solution. But, like Egypt and Jordan, they may be able to intercede with Israel on behalf of Palestinian quotidian, daily life issues.

The relationships being formalized are not new. But in public the partnerships can be taken a lot further, particularly between the UAE and Israel which are both technologically and militarily sophisticated states with ambitious research and commercial agendas.

This should encourage others to normalize with Israel. But the short list is also the long list, with one exception: Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh has a very complicated set of calculations to consider. It is up to Israel and the United States to make sure that this is seen as working well for the UAE and Bahrain in order to reassure and incentivize Saudi Arabia to take the far greater risks it would incur, both internationally and domestically.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-16/the-israel-uae-deal-would-benefit-from-a-biden-win?sref=tp95wk9l

He would be better placed than President Trump to overcome Democratic resistance to crucial arms sales to the Emiratis.

The agreement to normalize relations between the UAE and Israel, two key American allies in the Middle East, is arguably President Donald Trump’s most significant foreign-policy achievement. But it has a better chance of being fully realized if Joe Biden is elected in November.

The deal is the one instance in which Trump can plausibly claim that his personalized and transactional approach has achieved something traditional American diplomacy couldn’t. It will have a cascading effect: Bahrain has announced a similar arrangement with Israel, and there are indications other Arab states are interested in following suit.

The Israeli-Emirati agreement hit an early hitch over weapons sales. This seems to have been papered over for now, but it could re-emerge as a major complication if Trump is reelected. The UAE was promised access to F-35 fighter jets, EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones and other advanced American weaponry. It hasn’t been allowed to purchase these in recent years because of an American commitment to maintaining Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” or QME, in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave both US and UAE officials the very strong impression in private that he wouldn’t object  to these sales in the context of normalization. But after this set off a political firestorm in Israel, he declared he would fight the sales

Very quickly, however, Israeli officials realized the Trump administration is keen on the sales. QME isn’t an Israeli veto on American weapons sales, as presidents as far back as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan demonstrated by allowing Arab nations to buy cutting-edge aircraft such as F-15s, over Israeli objections.

So, the Israelis have come up with a solution: The Emiratis can have the weapons systems they want, if Israel gets even more high-tech weaponry, including the F-22 Raptor, which hasn’t been sold to any other country.

But even if Israel doesn’t oppose the sales to the UAE, Democrats in Congress still might. Some on the far left of the party are skeptical about Israel, hostile to Gulf Arab countries and, more generally, highly suspicious of international weapons sales.

If Biden wins, centrist Democrats will be ascendant. He has welcomed the Emirati-Israeli deal, and will not hold up the sales. But if Trump is reelected, and Democrats keep their majority in the House of Representatives — and perhaps even take the Senate — the picture would be quite different.

The Democrats would have a partisan incentive to try and derail Trump’s signature foreign-policy achievement, and the left wing will gain sway over the party’s agenda. Already one senior Democratic lawmaker, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has vowed to block the sales.

Israel, keen to please its new Emirati friends, could conceivably lobby the Democrats not to stand in the way. But the party’s left wing is less than enamored of Netanyahu. The issue could easily descend into a raw partisan and ideological fight based entirely on domestic considerations.

Depending on the balance of power in Congress, that could force Trump to again turn to esoteric loopholes he did in 2019 to push through weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE over bipartisan congressional objections. He had to protect that move by exercising a rare veto.

Congress could again try to block him on new sales to the Emiratis, either with legislation or through the courts. This would set off a protracted and ugly standoff — one of many, no doubt — between a second-term Trump and an angry Democratic Congress.

So while the Israel-UAE deal is Trump’s foreign policy baby, a President Biden would be in a much better position to deliver it.

Why Bahrain is Embracing Normalization With Israel

While the UAE had a complex range of goals, Bahrain is focused on Iran.

A White House Declaration of Peace signing ceremony on September 15 will not only include the official proclamation of a normalization process between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, but now Bahrain has announced that it, too, will make such a commitment at the event. This is another significant win for the administration of President Donald J. Trump and adds substantially to the diplomatic breakthrough Israel is achieving with Gulf Arab countries.

The Bahraini decision to follow the UAE’s lead is another blow to the Palestinians’ hopes of using Arab recognition of Israel as leverage in their efforts to end the occupation that began in 1967. And it’s yet another indication that the Arab Peace Initiative – initiated by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and unanimously endorsed by the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Cooperation – is effectively defunct.

The Arab Peace Initiative was intended to initiate a process that would end the Israeli occupation, with normalization following the conclusion of that process. In recent years, many Gulf Arab countries reconceptualized that timeline, opening the door for mutually reciprocal steps in both directions, positing that if Israel took measures to ease or pull back from the occupation Arab diplomatic overtures short of full recognition. Though the UAE and Bahrain insist they continue to support the Arab Peace Initiative, by committing to normalize relations with Israel they are effectively finalizing the reversal of the initiative’s trajectory: Normalization will come first, eventually followed by steps to end the occupation. That is, at least, how they explain their position, emphasizing that they have preserved the viability of a two-state outcome, and therefore also the Arab Peace Initiative, by getting the United States to commit to not backing any new Israeli annexations through at least 2024.

But why did Bahrain take this step so quickly on the heels of the UAE? There are several other Arab countries that are open to normalization with Israel, including Oman, Sudan, Morocco, and Qatar, if Doha’s boycott-induced dependence on Turkey and Iran were to ease. In going first, the UAE took the really bold step, leaping effectively into the unknown. However, the days following the UAE’s announcement demonstrated that the diplomatic and political price for smaller Gulf Arab states in taking this step would be limited.

Almost no Arab countries have strongly denounced the UAE’s move. Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered his officials to stop criticizing the UAE after many of them got it off their chests and since these condemnations have not been echoed by other Arab leaders. There has also been no measurable political blowback for the UAE. The Emiratis demonstrated that the costs, in the immediate term at least, for committing to an opening with Israel are minor.

In addition, Saudi Arabia almost certainly did not raise strong objections to such a move, given the degree to which Manama tends to defer to Riyadh on matters of defense and foreign policy. That could indicate a degree of openness for Saudi Arabia to take such steps in the future if conditions are right, although Riyadh’s calculations will be much more complex than those of its smaller neighbors. It also reflects a growing closeness between Bahrain and the UAE and the push by both to diversify their strategic options in the context of deepening doubts about U.S. commitment and reliability as a guarantor of national security and regional stability.

As for motivations for normalizing relations with Israel, the UAE is the proverbial fox, with many agenda items, while Bahrain is the hedgehog, focusing primarily on one thing. The UAE is interested in: countering Iran and Turkey, outreach to the United States (including the Trump administration and mainstream Democrats), accessing advanced U.S. weapon systems, forging a partnership with Israel on high tech and cybertechnology and commerce, and a number of other factors. However, Bahrain is almost entirely driven by the threat posed by Iran, which has multiple times insisted that Bahrain is part of its sovereign territory.

In addition, while Bahrain has a Sunni ruling family and political elite, it also has a restive and politically marginalized Shia majority. Extreme elements within the Bahraini Shia population have proved more receptive to Iranian overtures than Shia communities in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, and there is considerable evidence that Iran has been attempting to exacerbate unrest in the country and encourage anti-government violence and even terrorism.

So, while all Gulf Arab countries, to varying degrees, regard Iran as a threat, for Bahrain the existential anxiety posed by Tehran is uniquely acute. Israel is Iran’s most potent regional adversary and is responsible for most of the low intensity countermeasures against pro-Iranian militia groups in the form of repeated airstrikes in Syria and, increasingly, Iraq. Bahrain sees itself as Iran’s most vulnerable target and Israel as Tehran’s most significant foe. Therefore, while the UAE seeks a range of specific benefits, such as the ability to purchase U.S. F-35 fighter jets, for Bahrain the prospect of closer relations to Israel is more straightforward. The other major benefit is simply strengthening ties to Washington, but these are already very strong as Bahrain hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is largely dedicated to Gulf security, and has the valuable distinction of having been formally identified as a major non-NATO ally. While Bahrain may hope for more sophisticated weapons from Washington, and new commercial or tourism opportunities from Israel, these are secondary considerations. For Bahrain, closer ties to Israel are almost an end in themselves given Manama’s laser-like focus on the threat from Iran.

Yet Bahrain may, in some ways, be taking more risks than the UAE. While the UAE demonstrated that regional blowback to an opening with Israel is extremely limited, Bahrain may encounter some negative domestic political reactions. Although Bahrainis have, for years, seen their government increasingly interact with Israeli officials, there is always a risk that formal recognition could be the impetus for unrest in some Shia communities. Insofar as Iran views this as an anti-Iranian entente, and is able to convince its supporters in Bahrain of that, it could become a key grievance driving another round of anti-government protests. As Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington Senior Resident Scholar Kristin Smith Diwan explains, “Opposition to normalization appears to be widespread across Bahraini society and was expressed in a statement signed by 17 political and civil society groups representing both Sunni and Shia Islamists, leftists and nationalists, and professional and labor organizations.”

If Bahrain can contain such potentially destabilizing domestic political consequences, as well as the regional diplomatic consequences, its moves to normalize relations with Israel could encourage others, especially Oman and Sudan, to follow suit. Israel and the United States have a powerful incentive to make this process go well for both Gulf Arab countries. The other Arab candidates for potential diplomatic overtures to Israel will be closely watching the process and its consequences.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/how-donald-trump-can-still-win-re-relection-1.1077043

This contest is still essentially Trump versus Trump, which means victory is still in his hands.

With less than eight weeks to go, US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is in serious, and apparently growing, trouble. But, although he just suffered two of the worst weeks of a troubled presidency, it’s not too late for him to turn it around.

The news is not all disastrous for Mr Trump. A better-than-expected jobs report certainly helps, although his claims that employment figures are doing “fantastically well” are jarring, given the ongoing economic crisis.

The Republican Party is so centred on him it appears to stand for little else. And, most encouragingly, the race seems to be measurably tightening in some swing states, notably Florida and Nevada.

But the latest polls don’t fully measure the impact of two devastating revelations that could severely harm his chances, especially since he cannot afford to lose many voters in his passionate but narrow coalition.

The new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward, Rage, may prove to be one of the biggest blows ever to Mr Trump’s political career. He rashly granted Mr Woodward 18 late-night interviews, most of which the reporter recorded with permission.

Among many damaging revelations, one of the tapes from early February documents Mr Trump explaining that coronavirus is airborne, extremely deadly, much worse than the flu, and incredibly infectious. At the time and for many weeks after, he assured the public that the virus was under complete control, would magically disappear, was no worse than the flu, and everything would be perfectly fine.

What is it with Republican presidents and self-incriminating “smoking gun” tapes?

The potential damage with swing voters, a decreasing but still crucial group, could be devastating.

The White House at first denied Mr Trump had downplayed the virus, but he then conceded he had done so in an effort to prevent public panic. But given his penchant for stoking existential terror, especially on racial and ethnic grounds, this is highly unconvincing. And naturally there was no panic when these realities became widely understood.

Moreover, his aides confirm that the President was mainly concerned about a potential negative impact on the stock market if he had been truthful.

It’s hard to estimate how many died as a consequence of this deliberate, admitted deception. But it is certainly a considerable figure as the US death toll from coronavirus is rapidly approaching 200,000.

Indeed, what’s striking is not only how clearly Mr Trump understood the nature and likely impact of the virus, including a very early appreciation of its deadly nature even for younger people, but also his relatively well-informed, fairly lucid and reasonable tone. It almost sounds like a different person. Even though he was a successful reality TV star, it’s still jarring to realise how much of his caustic, blustering public personality is in many ways a well-honed act.

Perhaps almost as damaging is a report by The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg that quotes highly placed former administration sources that Mr Trump routinely disparaged dead and injured US soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”. The President has strenuously denied this, and allies have come to his defence.

But notably silent are two key former generals widely understood to be Mr Goldberg’s sources: former defence secretary James Mattis and former White House chief of staff John Kelly. Both men have said that Mr Trump is unfit for office, and neither has denied being a source for, or contested, Mr Goldberg’s report.

While Mr Trump has tried to dismiss the article as a “fabrication by the bad editor of a hostile publication”, much or all of it was confirmed by Fox News, Associated Press, The Washington Post, The New York Times and others.

George W Bush’s former speechwriter David Frum, who also writes for The Atlantic and The National, argues that, in effect “everybody knows this is true”, not only because its presumed sources are confirming the account by their silence, but also because it is consistent with Mr Trump’s overall mentality, previous comments about killed, wounded and captured soldiers, and apparent incomprehension of the concepts of national service and personal sacrifice.

For a politician who poses as an ultranationalist and champion of the military, the revelation is potentially devastating. Surveys indicate his support within the military rank and file has dropped considerably from 2016, and that was before Mr Goldberg’s article.

Despite appearances, Mr Trump is not immune from political damage. At some point such attrition take its toll.

Yet there is time.

He still faces three debates with his Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, who could stumble badly or Mr Trump might perform brilliantly. The President has reportedly not been preparing much, but given his habitual reliance on “alternative facts” evidently conjured on the fly, he may not need to. But the debates probably won’t be a turning point.

Mr Trump keeps speculating about a coronavirus vaccine before the election, but he knows he can’t count on that or any other suddenly transformative event.

Instead, he’s trying to forge a broader coalition than in 2016, including the Republican base, white working-class voters in the Midwest, non-multinational business interests and his strikingly strong support among Hispanic men under the age of 50 (many of whom consider themselves white).

Mr Biden has held a lead of around seven points consistently for many months, a highly unusual feat. As it stands, the election is shaping up to be a referendum on Mr Trump, which is bad news for a historically unpopular president.

He could still change the narrative and alter the equation, but he’s going to need some unanticipated dramatic development, a spectacular blunder by his opponent, or, the only one of these he could guarantee, a new way of presenting himself. But he seems to have only one political persona, and it doesn’t appear well-suited to the moment.

With little time left, he almost certainly needs to change the basic parameters of the election in order to win. It is still essentially Mr Trump versus Mr Trump, and the President is clearly losing.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-or-biden-us-democracy-will-need-fixing-1.1074495

From gerrymandering to the filibuster, the system from top to bottom has become a tool for partisan exploitation.

Less than two months before the November 3 US presidential election, anxiety is growing that it could generate the worst American political and constitutional crisis in at least a century. The nightmare scenarios are so obvious, they have prompted a raft of reports, articles and even books about what could go horribly wrong.

One potential outcome, although at present seemingly the least likely, would be relatively smooth and uncontroversial. Although few think he can prevail in the popular vote, if incumbent President Donald Trump secures a clear electoral college victory then the outcome and transition will be relatively seamless.

For all the Republican talk about them being a “radical left-wing party”, in fact the Democrats remain much as they have been in recent decades: a coalition between a powerful, centre-left majority and much smaller far-left factions. That the most centrist candidate on offer, veteran moderate Joe Biden, decisively won the Democratic primaries eviscerates the claim that the party has veered wildly to the left.

If Mr Trump emerges, when all the votes have been duly counted, as the victor in the electoral college, Democrats will almost certainly accept the result – as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, though she won the popular vote by almost 3 million. Republican Richard Nixon in 1960 and, even more dramatically, Democrat Al Gore in 2000, are also part of the noble bipartisan tradition of accepting questionable and unpalatable outcomes to defend the system’s credibility.

Republicans castigate Democrats as extremists, but there is no doubt which party has been captured by an extreme fringe, increasingly including QAnon conspiracy theorists.

Four years ago, Mr Trump refused to promise to accept the results, which he insisted would be “rigged”, unless he won. When he did, all sides accepted it.

This year he has again refused to commit to accepting the outcome if he doesn’t win. To the contrary, he has been vehemently insisting, entirely without evidence or any factual basis, that if he loses it can only be the result of fraud.

He has been especially fixated on the supposed dangers of voting by mail, even though that has been common since the Second World War and it is his own usual personal practice. He groundlessly insists that it is bound to be the subject of enormous fraud.

But given that mail voting leaves a physical paper trail – as opposed to the alarmingly hackable electronic-only voting equipment in some states, while mail ballots might be more susceptible to fraud at a small and local level than some other methods – at a national level they will clearly be relatively secure and confirmable.

If Mr Biden wins a clear victory, whether broad or narrow, it has become increasingly difficult to imagine Mr Trump accepting that. In addition to the psychological and political factors, the presidency may be the only thing immunising him from a wide range of potential criminal charges. His incentive to stop at nothing to stay in office is enormous.

November 3 will be a very unusual – and dangerous – election night.

Americans typically expect to learn the winner before dawn. That is unlikely in this case, given the probable amount of mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic. The concomitant potential for profound mischief and confusion is huge.

Surveys suggest that Democrats will be twice as likely to vote by mail as Republicans. And many states do not allow mailed votes to be tabulated before election day. So, it is likely that the President will appear to register an overwhelming, almost landslide, victory on the night of November 3, which could then completely collapse as mailed voting is counted in key swing states in the subsequent days.

One obvious nightmare scenario is that, if this happens, Mr Trump might declare victory and demand all mailed ballots be discounted and he be confirmed the winner, as he has done in several other recent elections involving his political allies.

Even if Mr Biden secures a strong victory, the timing of vote tabulations alone could produce chaos. And the profoundly litigious Mr Trump is almost certain to take everything to court, endlessly. If the results are close, contested, and still being litigated, it is even possible that, on January 20, 2021, two competing presidents, both claiming victory, could be sworn-in by different judges in alternate ceremonies.

It is no longer fanciful to imagine such a catastrophic scenario – or others involving the presidency being decided by the Supreme Court or the House of Representatives, both of which have happened before.

If Mr Biden’s victory is clear early on, Mr Trump may be so isolated that he will be forced from office. But Republican leaders seem unconditionally committed to his political survival.

There is also a real potential for violence. Mr Trump has consistently promoted a vigilante culture. His rhetoric during the unrest in some US cities this summer felt like a test run for violent rage if he is defeated. Many Americans are bracing for tumult. The prospect of an American “colour revolution”, perhaps also previewed this summer, to enforce the election results, is no longer absurd.

The political system itself appears antiquated and dysfunctional. While it was designed for institutional balance, partisanship has become paramount, as Mr Trump’s impeachment proceedings, with no witnesses and a predetermined acquittal, demonstrated.

Structures created for a very different time no longer function as intended, if at all. The electoral college and the Senate are now mainly tools of a protracted, but unsustainable, minority rule. In the House and at the state level, partisan gerrymandering makes a mockery of democracy. The once rarely used Senate filibuster has become a standard tool of gridlock and veto by empowered minorities.

Worse, the Trump era has demonstrated how few meaningful non-partisan institutional checks thwart a brazen and rapacious President.

The test coming in November will be decisive for American democracy. Even if the country passes it, there will be an enormous task not only repairing the damage, but in correcting the fatal flaws in the US political system that have been so terrifyingly exposed.