Trumpism’s Long Tail

Among the most widespread conclusions in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election is that, while Donald Trump may have been repudiated by the American public—who elected Joe Biden by a majority that appears headed to the 6 million mark—Trumpism (however defined) has nonetheless been powerfully reinforced within the Republican Party. Therefore, the argument suggests, Trump’s brand of politics will define the Republican future for many years to come. This debatable assertion, and the underlying assumptions behind it, require careful unpacking.

First of all, was Trump himself repudiated? Among the broader U.S. public, clearly the answer is “yes.” Given current levels of political polarization along geographical lines, and far sharper distinctions between red and blue states, twentieth-century-style landslides are no longer plausible. Biden appears headed toward 306 Electoral College votes, the same number Trump won when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, as well as the aforementioned popular vote majority. One can certainly imagine a candidate doing better than this. But not all that much. Too many states are simply noncompetitive, with little apparent chance of being flipped under current circumstances. In other words, Trump was delivered a decisive defeat, considerably more robust than the one he called a “landslide” and “the greatest election ever” in 2016.

However, and this is the important point, within the Republican Party, Trump can still claim a strong level of vindication. He actually performed quite well as a vote-winner, turning out most of his 2016 supporters and adding gains among Latinos and African Americans, particularly among young men. Nearly 73 million Americans voted for him, a huge number. But between Trump’s even greater power of repulsion than attraction and Biden’s evident appeal to Trump- and COVID-weary Americans, the Democratic candidate did considerably better.

One could argue that any first-term presidential incumbent who is defeated these days has suffered a catastrophic failure, but it’s unlikely Republicans will see it that way, especially given their strong chances of retaining control of the Senate and unexpected gains in the House of Representatives and in many crucial state legislatures. These congressional successes invite the interpretation, quietly spreading among many on the Republican right, that the problem is not Trumpism but Donald Trump himself. Such arguments suggest that, while Trump is a candidate with unparalleled popularity among Republicans, for the general public he is too combative, erratic, mercurial, and obnoxious for long-term success. The implication is that a more disciplined and focused purveyor of the same policies and attitudes would be the ideal Republican standard-bearer in a post-Trump political landscape.

This assumption does not rest on a great deal of evidence. First, there is no indication the country and the Republican Party are actually entering a post-Trump phase. At time of writing, virtually the entire Republican leadership is united in supporting Trump’s refusal to recognize the outcome of the election, with the exception of just a few senators. The rest are all effectively backing what amounts to a bitter repudiation of American democratic processes without any evidence whatsoever of fraud or improprieties. Many reportedly privately say they are merely “humoring” Trump in order to slowly and gently talk him into accepting the inevitable and allowing a peaceful transfer of power and the transition to a new Administration, even though he will never admit defeat. “What’s the harm?” they reportedly ask.

But to ask that question is to answer it. Out of fear of Trump and his base, these Republican leaders are sowing the gravest mistrust of the most fundamental American democratic institutions at home and abroad. It’s hard to imagine anything more unpatriotic and unprincipled, and that’s a measure of the continued power, largely stemming from fear, that Trump continues to wield over most other senior Republicans. And what reason is there to believe that, even if he is ultimately dragged away from the presidency, he will likewise relinquish his grip on the party? Power, attention, and adulation without the burden of governance and with one of the greatest grievance narratives in recent American history—the “2020 stolen election” would make birtherism seem reasonable and constructive—combined with the prospect of huge profits and a potential media empire could be far more enjoyable for Trump than the presidency itself, at least on a day-to-day basis.

The real threats to Trump’s continued dominance of his party have nothing to do with other Republicans. One could be dramatic aging or ill health, in which case one of his children may well take up his mantle. The obvious other significant threat is potential prosecution and conviction on one or more of the myriad potential criminal charges of which he may well be guilty. That, too, doesn’t necessarily mean he and/or his children will continue to dominate the party, but it opens the possibility of a non-Trump alternative that presently does not exist.

Moreover, a second question remains: Is there really such a thing as “Trumpism” without Trump, beyond the personality cult that has developed around him? The Republican Party of 2020 doesn’t seem to think so, given that its party platform amounted to simply a commitment to doing whatever he thinks is best. The inability of Republicans to put a Trumpian vision in writing is perfectly understandable because there is, concretely, no such thing. There are some vague attitudes—xenophobia, chauvinism, grandiosity, an impulse toward white nationalism, Christian supremacy, and nostalgia—but nothing that could amount to a set of predictable policies. Judging from his term in office, Trump did not deal in policies at all, insofar as those are linked to intended outcomes. Instead, he was engaged in a permanent campaign, with all his decisions made on the basis of how something might play to his base on television in a rapidly evolving news cycle.

Efforts to define “Trumpism” beyond Trump himself and the atavistic attitudes listed above have been strikingly underwhelming. The December 2017 National Security Strategy document is an excellent case in point on foreign policy, incongruously and incoherently mashing together traditional idealistic American exceptionalism with a realist and ultimately mercantilistpursuit of self-interest in a Hobbesian world. In the first paragraph, the document insists the strategy is based on “realism” and “is guided by outcomes, not ideology.” Two sentences later it proclaims that “American principles are a lasting force for good in the world.” This bizarre document reflects that Trump’s Republican Party included both isolationists and internationalists, and rather than coming down on either side or reconciling them, he simply accommodated both and navigated between the two in order to maintain his leadership.

Forget about intellectual content; mere coherence has been elusive in the extreme. Some consistent Trump positions, which he mainly adopts because they are popular, are shared with the left and the far left: economic nationalism, non-interventionism bordering on neo-isolationism, the drift toward a mercantile foreign policy, hostility to multilateralism and fixed alliances, and skepticism about immigration. With the exception of immigration, which may be the one area in which coherence can be consistently identified, these are simply populist and demagogic forms of pandering. And all of them have their advocates on the Democratic and even socialist left. There is also no evidence that, apart from hostility to all forms of immigration, Trump would necessarily stick to any of these if he suddenly thought it was in his interests to reverse course. He has spoken for and against NATO, loves his own multilateral trade agreements, such as the USMCA, and can be as easily imagined driving the country into conflicts as extracting us from them. And while he poses as an insurgent Republican outsider,in some key ways he has governed as a typical Reaganite Republican, pushing tax cuts, deregulation for its own sake, and Federalist Society-approved judicial appointments, all of which again points to the essential hollowness of a distinctive “Trumpism.”

Far from suggesting that a transferable “Trumpist” ideology has been reinforced among Republicans while Trump himself has been widely repudiated by the American public, the election results point instead to the continued dominance of Trump and his family over the Republican Party until at least the next midterm elections. The loss of practical political power may break the spell for other Republican leaders, but if he’s able to wield tremendous influence with the party base from the sidelines, the fever may persist. As long as Trump and his progeny remain dominant, Trumpism of a kind will rule the GOP. Yet Trumpism in practice simply means whatever is politically and financially in the interests of Trump and his nuclear family. So, without a Trump at the helm, it’s hard to imagine it bequeathing anyone a coherent set of policies on a wide range of issues or serve post-Trump Republicans as the core of a governing national coalition.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-18/how-biden-should-deal-with-iran?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

He should use the Trump sanctions as leverage to get more concessions from the Islamic Republic.

After international inspectors reported that Iran has yet again significantly increased its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, President Donald Trump considered attacking the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities. He was reportedly dissuaded by his top aides, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice-President Mike Pence. Although both of them are generally thought to be hawkish on Iran, they seem to have calculated that an attack on nuclear installations could spark an uncontrollable conflict.

Incoming president Joe Biden will inherit an extremely difficult conundrum regarding Iran. For all its flaws, the 2015 nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic and world powers had at least paused the Iranian charge towards a nuclear arsenal. Now Tehran is reconstituting its nuclear capability, despite the Trump administration’s hard-hitting economic sanctions.

That Trump even considered, then called off, strikes on Iran’s installations demonstrates the limitations of his strictly coercive approach: Its logic leads inexorably towards a war no one wants. Trump has spoken of the need, ultimately, of a new agreement with Tehran, but there is no framework for any dialogue that might lead to a deal.

There is every indication Biden will look for an early return to diplomacy with Iran, but that’s going to be extremely difficult. Trust is shattered on both sides. First, as soon as the ink was dry on the 2015 nuclear deal, Teheran intensified its destabilizing and predatory regional behavior. Then Washington walked away from the deal.

Many Democrats have urged a return to the deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. That may be how renewed diplomacy is politically marketed to all those who opposed Trump’s unilateral abrogation, including the Iranians and the other signatories.

But in truth, the original Obama deal is finished. It was based on an exchange of sanctions relief for a 10-15 year pause in Iran’s nuclear activities. Because both the timeline and the relief have been effectively invalidated over the past two and a half years, any “return” to the original agreement will in fact require new negotiations.

Iran is demanding compensation for economic harm. But they know that’s out of the question. Their real policy is plainly a compliance-for-compliance return to the terms of the JCPOA. But compliance with what?

If Iran is really willing to dismantle its reconstituted nuclear program, that will require some time and verification. Agreeing to those terms will be a strong indication of Tehran’s seriousness.

Iran will certainly demand the removal of all new sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. But many of them were issued under counterterrorism and other administrative provisions. These cannot and should not be simply or quickly rescinded. They provide a Biden administration significant potential leverage with Iran that must be used to full advantage.

One of the most difficult maneuvers facing the Biden foreign-policy team will be easing sanctions just enough — and quickly enough — to facilitate serious new discussions, without squandering this leverage.

American terms for further sanctions relief must include extending or modifying the so-called sunset clauses in the JCPOA, which would allow Iran to emerge from the deal just two or three months away from breakout range to a bomb less than a decade from now.

Biden officials will also have to secure the buy-in of two key constituencies that felt excluded from the original agreement. Congress will have to be minimally comfortable with the new understandings. And American partners in the Middle East — especially Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel — must be reassured at every stage that their core security interests will not be jeopardized, and that there will be no surprises in any new deal.

But these countries must also be reminded that the U.S. cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon and that Biden will use all available means to achieve that goal diplomatically. This is ultimately in their interests as well.

One means to begin a new dialogue would be with measures designed to help the Iranian people cope with the coronavirus pandemic. Significant humanitarian gestures would send an important message without unduly rewarding the Iranian regime or placing anyone’s security at risk.

Once a discussion, even if it is oblique, is resumed, the key for the Biden administration will be to build on the workable formula developed in the JCPOA, of economic carrots for nuclear restraint, while utilizing the new leverage provided by the Trump sanctions. The goal must be a compliance-for-compliance arrangement as the basis for additional, more-for-more agreements that reckon with Iran’s missile program and support for violent, sectarian non-state militias in neighboring countries.

The effort should be sustained, patient and serious. But it should also never be lost on anyone that Iran, internationally isolated and its economy shattered, needs an understanding more than the U.S. And although Trump was wise to decide not to use them, Washington retains options Iran simply does not have.

How Saudi Arabia Can Mend Fences with Biden and the Democrats

After the Obama and Trump eras, mutual suspicions abound, but Riyadh has several potential approaches to improve relations with an incoming Biden administration.

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s emergence as president-elect following the November 3 U.S. presidential election presents a number of implications for the relationship between the United States and Gulf Arab countries. One of the most immediate and difficult of the likely challenges will be Washington’s relations with Riyadh under a Democratic administration. An indication of these challenges is clear from several comments by Biden and his senior campaign advisors as well as other leading Democrats in recent months: Biden has said some Saudi leaders should be treated as “pariahs” and has vowed to curtail U.S. support for Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen. This would be a significant break with the policies of the administration of President Donald J. Trump, which emphasized strong and personalized relations between the president and his family and the Saudi royal family, strong commercial and energy ties and military contracts between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and steady U.S. support for Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war, particularly through weapons sales.

Democratic Party Grievances

U.S.-Saudi relations have remained strong since the 1940s, despite repeated periods of strain. But during the Trump era, they became a partisan issue in the United States, as a series of substantial grievances created an unprecedented crisis in confidence between the Saudi government and many Democrats. The reciprocal bear hug between Trump and the Saudi government at the beginning of 2017, marked by a high-profile maiden international voyage by the new president to Saudi Arabia, ignited suspicions about the relationship among Democrats.

As the principal opposition party, Democrats criticized Trump’s attack on multilateralism, fixed alliances, and existing trade and arms control agreements. They targeted Saudi Arabia and, to a much lesser extent, the United Arab Emirates, suggesting they were questionable U.S. allies, and they became proxy targets for the Trump administration’s international approach.

The most substantial criticism of Trump’s international policies by Democrats concerned the Yemen war and the administration’s resistance to efforts to limit or prevent any form of U.S. support for the Saudi war against the Houthi rebels. Though the administration of former President Barack Obama had also supported Saudi military engagement in Yemen, the humanitarian crisis greatly intensified and the de facto stalemate in the conflict in northern Yemen became far more evident during the first half of the Trump administration.

The killing of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi government agents at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 outraged Democrats and Republicans in Congress. When the Trump administration, especially the president, responded by consistently downplaying and dismissing the killing, it greatly added fuel to the Democratic fire against Saudi Arabia and the U.S.-Saudi relationship. It also helped significantly alienate internationalist Republicans in the Senate, such as Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio. After Khashoggi’s death, Congress became more serious about legislating limitations on U.S. involvement in the Yemen conflict, including through weapons sales. That reached a crescendo with the first effort by Congress to prohibit U.S. engagement in a conflict via the War Powers Resolution, which received bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress but was vetoed by Trump in April 2019 and therefore did not take effect.

In addition, critics of the U.S.-Saudi relationship under Trump, particularly Democrats, expressed grave concerns about the political crackdown in Saudi Arabia, especially the jailing and alleged abuse of women’s rights activists, such as Loujain al-Hathloul, and writers, such as Raif Badawi. They have also complained about Saudi surveillance of and pressure on government critics living in the United States and Canada and efforts to coerce them into returning to the kingdom to face an uncertain future. An additional source of tension emerged from accusations, which have been supported by the FBI, that Saudi diplomats in the United States helped Saudi nationals flee U.S. jurisdiction to avoid trials on serious criminal charges. Many Democrats also blame Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for being principal instigators against the nuclear agreement with Iran, suggesting they have attempted to drag the United States into a war with Iran on their behalf.

These grievances helped to fuel a narrative among Democrats during the Trump presidency that recast long-standing bipartisan support for the partnership between Washington and Riyadh as a specifically Republican policy orientation. In its more extreme forms, this narrative viewed the U.S.-Saudi partnership as a blunder attributable to Trump personally and his son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, who had reportedly developed close relations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Many Democrats simultaneously developed a narrative about the Obama administration policies toward the Gulf that deemed outreach to Iran and relative distance from Gulf Arab monarchies as their party’s characteristic approach. While largely fictional, this account harmonized well with perspectives viewing the 80-year-old U.S.-Saudi partnership as a wrongheaded, and possibly corrupt, innovation by the Trump administration.

Saudi Suspicions

Many Saudis also misread Obama-era policies as not only solicitous of Iran at the expense of long-standing Arab friends but also as sympathetic to or supportive of Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in post-dictatorship Arab republics. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined in a policy-defining speech on November 11, 2011 that the Obama administration was willing to regard Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated parties as legitimate participants in the Arab political scene, particularly in newly emerging democracies, but only insofar as they met certain conditions and respected basic democratic norms. Yet once the Obama administration had effectively abandoned support for Egypt’s strongman president and long-standing U.S. ally, the perception began to take hold, particularly in the Gulf, that Washington had decided to effectively support Muslim Brotherhood rule in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. Saudi media and others have been openly fretting that a Biden administration could mean a return to such a policy.

In addition, most Gulf Arab countries felt excluded from the nuclear negotiations with Iran and were skeptical of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. They feared that the renewed U.S.-Iranian dialogue would come at their expense, with the unlikely outcome that Washington could abandon Gulf countries to form a regional security arrangement in partnership with Iran. However, Iran’s increasingly belligerent actions and support for regional proxies confirmed that a Washington-Tehran partnership in the Gulf region is practically inconceivable. However, the sense that the Obama administration was unreliable and had failed to give due weight to fundamental Saudi security considerations in this major policy shift toward Iran persisted.

The willingness of the Trump administration to walk away from the JCPOA and impose harsh sanctions against Iran in its “maximum pressure” campaign is a major reason for the Saudi government’s close relations with the Trump White House. Conversely, there are now fears among Saudi leaders that Biden could return to a policy that they felt shortchanged the value of their contributions over many decades to the partnership and threatened their core national security concerns.

A Biden administration would be likely to prioritize efforts to resuscitate the dialogue with Iran, probably under the broad rubric of revitalizing the JCPOA (although that would require negotiations for a new agreement). So, there is potential for renewed tensions if the administration is perceived as making overtures toward Iran again at the Saudi expense, or if Democrats conclude that Saudi Arabia, perhaps along with Israel, has actively impeded efforts to resurrect constructive U.S.-Iranian diplomatic engagement.

Saudi Options

The reputation of Mohammed bin Salman is badly tainted in the eyes of many U.S. officials, particularly Democrats, especially because of the Khashoggi killing. Yet, Saudi Arabia needs a partnership with a major global power to secure its interests and only the United States is in a position to play such a role.

The Saudi government will effectively have three potential approaches to repair this rift: quietly implement a series of modest measures to address existing grievances and hope this is sufficient; make a major overture toward U.S. interests while making it clear that assuaging U.S. concerns was a significant factor in a dramatic and risky policy change; do little or nothing and adopt a take it or leave it attitude and hope for the best.

Small Steps

One option for Saudi leaders would be to begin a quiet dialogue with the Biden administration and senior internationalist Republican leaders in the Senate to address many of the grievances about Saudi conduct without a major policy shift. Saudi Arabia could release women’s rights activists and other prisoners of conscience whose imprisonment doesn’t actually enhance Saudi national security or political stability. Immediately after U.S. news outlets announced Biden’s victory over Trump, senior Saudi diplomats began publicly musing about the possibility of releasing some of the more prominent women activists on humanitarian grounds, possibly linked to the G-20 summit.

In addition, even if it denies that its diplomats had helped Saudi nationals flee U.S. criminal prosecution, Riyadh could quietly assure Washington that steps would be taken to ensure that this won’t happen in the future. Saudi Arabia might even consider returning some of the more egregious suspects even though there is no formal extradition treaty. Saudi Arabia has many options for measures that would convince U.S. leaders that it is trying to bring a modicum of justice to the Khashoggi killing and ensure no such action is ever undertaken in the future, including demonstrable consequences for nonroyal figures widely believed to have played a key part in the killing. And, most important, since a Biden administration would be likely to emphasize the renewed centrality of U.S. diplomacy in foreign policy, Saudi Arabia would be able to work more closely with the United States to help develop a pathway for ending the war in Yemen.

Dramatic Moves

Even the Trump administration made it clear that it wanted Saudi Arabia to end the Yemen war. And Saudi Arabia, too, wants an exit strategy, but Houthi rebels have achieved dominance in most of northern Yemen and demonstrated the ability to threaten Saudi territory directly. As things stand, the Houthis have little incentive to cooperate in helping Saudi Arabia extricate itself from this costly stalemate.

It is unrealistic to expect Saudi Arabia to simply withdraw from Yemen without enforceable security guarantees. But such conditions could be negotiated with help from the United States. At the very least, Saudi Arabia could make clear to a Biden administration the redlines that are minimally required for a Saudi withdrawal: an end to cross border incursions and missile and rocket attacks on Saudi Arabia from Yemen. In addition, Saudi Arabia would surely seek assurances regarding limitations on Iranian and Hezbollah activities in Yemen, but those might prove considerably harder to enforce.

Washington’s assistance could be helpful in rallying the international community to help pressure the Houthis to cooperate with U.N. peace efforts, especially the joint declaration. And it can also help persuade the Yemeni government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to go along with the arrangement. Should Saudi Arabia seriously commit to ending the conflict, lay out its broad terms, and even begin drawing down its presence in the country, that would be seen by Washington as a very significant step forward. If that withdrawal were primarily based on, and legitimated by, more rigorous antimissile defenses and border protection systems, and especially if Riyadh were to acknowledge U.S. government support for these measures, that would be a major breakthrough with Democrats and Republicans.

At least one other major gesture might score points with Democrats. Even though Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain all went to great lengths to heavily credit the Trump administration with the Abraham Accords, which began a process of normalized relations, mainstream Democrats warmly welcomed the development. It corresponds to their model of how international relations in the Middle East should proceed: through diplomacy, the integration of Israel into the region, the strengthening of ties between pro-U.S. powers, and other initiatives to strengthen a multilateral and rules-based international order. As a result, the UAE was able to ingratiate itself with Democrats, undoing a good deal of damage from its involvement in the Yemen war, human rights concerns, and a close association with Saudi regional policies.

Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman could repair the kingdom’s image in the United States, especially with Democrats, by also agreeing to normalize relations with Israel. Of course, Saudi Arabia has a series of major concerns its smaller Gulf neighbors don’t share, including the impact on its regional Arab leadership role, its pan-Islamic leadership role, and far more complicated, and potentially volatile, its domestic political scene. Yet it is precisely for those reasons, and because of Saudi Arabia’s prominence and strategic importance, that a diplomatic breakthrough with Israel would be seen as so important by a Biden administration. It would also bring much closer together two of Washington’s key partners in the closely linked efforts to contain the spread of Iranian hegemony and maintain stability and the status quo in the Middle East. It could prompt many Americans to reassess their attitudes toward Mohammed bin Salman personally. Since he is likely to inherit the throne in coming years and potentially remain the Saudi monarch for decades, such reputational restoration is going to be necessary.

Take It or Leave It

Saudi Arabia’s third option is risky but plausible: to effectively do nothing. Riyadh may feel that while it still needs Washington, Washington also needs Saudi Arabia. If the United States wishes to remain a major, if not dominant, global power, it cannot abandon the Gulf region and its energy resources to other regional and global powers or to rampant instability. Even a “pivot to Asia” reinforces the continued strategic and economic centrality of the Gulf states because East and South Asian economies are dependent on Gulf energy. And, while Saudi Arabia needs a global patron, the United States requires a local partner in the Gulf.

The key reason for the longevity of the U.S.-Saudi relationship and its ability to survive numerous major stressors is the value both countries continue to place on it. This was recently again made apparent during the Saudi-Russian oil price war in March. Saudi Arabia demonstrated its unique ability to quickly impact prices. It has two key advantages over most of its competitors, including Russia. It can stop and start production without damaging most of its oil fields, and it remains far more able to borrow money to cover immediate losses. This gives it enormous flexibility regarding production and therefore power over raising and lowering prices. The importance of this to Washington was demonstrated by Trump’s appeal to Saudi Arabia to cut production to raise prices to defend U.S. oil-producing companies and states.

Reviewing the long-standing history of the U.S.-Saudi partnership, Riyadh might believe it remains indispensable to Washington and adopt a “take it or leave it” attitude. This option would be bold and risky, but, given that a Biden administration would undoubtedly seek to reassert U.S. global leadership with an emphasis on traditional alliances and stability, isn’t necessarily doomed to failure either.

With Biden in the White House, Saudi Arabia will be suddenly confronted with significant new challenges in dealing with its indispensable ally, the United States. The good news for Saudi leaders is that they have several potential strategies. The challenge for Riyadh is to choose carefully among the options before it based on a careful reading of early signals from the administration regarding the terms on which it is ready to rebuild trust with the kingdom.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/has-trump-destroyed-america-s-two-party-system-1.1111886

With most Republicans supporting his refusal to concede, how can the US democratic process recover?

The refusal of President Donald Trump and almost all senior Republicans to concede that he lost the November 3 election is easily the most degraded spectacle in modern US political history. It can’t go on much longer, but the damage to democracy the world over could be profound.

For over a week it has been clear that Joe Biden soundly defeated Mr Trump.

In 2016, Mr Trump won the presidency with 306 electoral college votes, though he lost the popular tally to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million. Mr Biden has also secured 306 electoral college votes, but won the popular vote by over 5 million.

Despite this decisive outcome, for the first time in US history a losing candidate is stubbornly refusing to concede. Mr Trump insists he actually won, but the election is being “stolen” through some massive fraud.

There is no evidence for this whatsoever.

To the contrary, no state election officials report significant irregularities. Although Mr Trump is championing a bizarre conspiracy theory about massive electronic vote tampering, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is tasked with protecting elections, announced there’s no evidence any votes were changed or compromised and that this election was “the most secure in American history”.

The public overwhelmingly accepts the result. Polls show 80 per cent of Americans understand that Mr Biden won, compared to a mere 3 per cent who think Mr Trump did, with the rest being unsure.

By refusing to acknowledge this clear outcome, Mr Trump and his allies have launched a massive rhetorical attack on the American democratic system, and the very notion of truth itself.

It’s often almost comical. “There will be a smooth transition… to a second Trump term,” a chuckling Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared.

Mr Trump is blocking any start to transitioning the administrative leadership of the US government, which is the world’s largest organisation, thereby endangering US national security including the coronavirus pandemic response as every day sees new record numbers of infections.

So, it’s virtually certain that Mr Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be inaugurated on January 20.

In theory, there are four ways of stopping this, but none are remotely plausible.

The first is to get state officials to change the outcome by retroactively invalidating huge numbers of Biden ballots, or at least delaying certification of the results past the required deadlines. If the voters don’t choose you, perhaps you should choose the voters?

The second path is to get courts to intervene on spurious technicalities. Numerous lawsuits are pending, but all are meritless, and none would change the overall outcome. Not even the now-thoroughly Republican-appointed Supreme Court is going to reverse a free and fair election based on no evidence. And lower courts, tossing such frivolous cases out immediately, aren’t even going to give them the chance.

A third path is, as Mr Trump has reportedly discussed, getting Republican-dominated state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors despite the vote. None seem interested, and in many states it would be unlawful.

The following timetable is delineated by law and not optional. December 8 marks the practical end of any chance to change the outcome of state elections. On December 14, electors vote in each state and the results are certified. On January 6, Congress holds a joint session, overseen by the vice president, at which votes are formally tabulated and, if anyone receives 270 or more, a winner is declared.

It’s simple, but not always painless. In 2001, then vice president Al Gore had to declare George W Bush the winner against himself although their election was effectively tied and the Supreme Court decided the outcome on a partisan basis. Mike Pence must now do the same for Mr Biden and Ms Harris.

Deviating from this strict timeline would effectively jettison the entire US political system. Mr Trump may believe his continued grip on power is worth that, but very few others will.

If all else fails, a fourth option could see Mr Trump invoking his authority as commander-in-chief to stage a military “autogolpe” (a “self-coup,” as sometimes performed by military or fascist dictatorships in Latin America). Despite the sudden installation in the past few days of several unqualified Trump loyalists to lead the Pentagon, military leaders will never agree, especially since he reportedly called slain American soldiers “suckers” and “losers” and the generals “cowards” and “babies”.

The President needs someone to save him from an election he lost. But if state officials won’t cook the books, courts won’t rewrite the rules, Congress won’t ignore the laws, and the military won’t keep him in office by force of arms, then the election wins.

Mr Trump slowly seems to be getting the message. He almost blurted out “the coming Biden administration” during his Friday coronavirus press briefing, but caught himself. And his new blood-feud with Fox News suggests he’s planning a competing right-wing channel, where he can pose as the “shadow, legitimate president” who “really won”, and continue dominating the Republican Party.

Mr Trump is behaving true to form and exactly as he warned he might, but the complicity of many Republican leaders in this extremely dangerous charade is genuinely shocking.

Together they are communicating to Americans and the world that the US political system is fraudulent, rigged and corrupt, even though it plainly isn’t. And their boasting about how many Republicans won congressional seats in the same election, often on the same ballots, renders their narrative ridiculous as well as patently false.

The clear message to international strongmen is, never accept the outcome of a lost election. Instead stonewall and try to throw out the results. The likes of Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus must feel massively vindicated.

Obviously if Mr Trump could find a way to overturn the election and invalidate democracy, he would. And his party would support him, as always. If he suddenly unearths one now, what else could they say or do?

American presidential election losers have invariably conceded because both parties accepted the basic democratic trade-off: potential wins and losses, with the prospect of future victories.

Yet what are the long-term prospects of a two-party representative democracy in which only one party remains fully committed to respecting elections and is willing to accept defeat without unprincipled chicanery?

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/there-are-reasons-for-both-democrats-and-republicans-to-be-happy-1.1107969

Trump was repudiated but Democrats and Republicans both have reasons to be happy.

Saturday in Washington was like nothing I have experienced in 22 years living in this city. Horns honked, cheers resounded, fireworks crackled and people danced in the streets. It felt like a long, painful war was ending with an almost visceral wave of relief.

Four days after the US election, major news organisations finally and unanimously announced that Democrat Joe Biden had won. President Donald Trump and his allies angrily insist that he somehow is the real winner but they have no coherent narrative to explain why.

Against a backdrop of unprecedented anxiety, the 2020 election mainly produced good news. For many, there’s profound satisfaction that Mr Trump was defeated. Many distinguished figures had warned that a second Trump term could pose an existential threat to democratic institutions, accountability and the rule of law. A major counter-argument was that he lacked the ability, but not the instinct, to push for autocracy.

Any such danger has been avoided.

The presidential win is cathartic for Democrats. It is rare and increasingly difficult to unseat a sitting president.

And the numbers are impressive. In 2016, Mr Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the electoral college by securing 306 votes, though she won the popular tally by almost 3 million. Mr Biden is also heading for 306, but is beating Mr Trump by over 4m popular votes, a double mandate.

Democrats reconstructed the mid-western “blue wall” that Mr Trump grabbed in 2016, including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They scored major breakthroughs in traditionally Republican Arizona and Georgia. Democrats would have salivated over this map 12 months ago, though their hopes became exaggerated more recently.

But there’s much to please Republicans, too. They made surprising gains in the House of Representatives and crucial state legislatures. Control of the Senate will be decided by two January run-off elections in Georgia. If Republicans win both, they can effectively wield a veto over most of Mr Biden’s domestic agenda.

Mr Trump helped inspire the biggest voter turnout in over a century, which was also due to expanded postal and early voting because of the pandemic.

In what was effectively a Trump referendum, no votes prevailed by 4-5m. But there were over 70m yeses, including most of his 2016 voters and significantly expanded blocs of Latinos and African-Americans, particularly younger men who appear to admire his swagger.

So, while many Republicans may be despondent, their party actually did fairly well.

Republican leaders might quietly welcome the potential end of Mr Trump’s party leadership. But their refusal to publicly acknowledge Mr Biden’s victory suggests they are still terrified of Mr Trump’s base, and unwilling to defy him.

American democratic norms and processes prevailed. None of the well-publicised nightmare scenarios played out.

Though an anti-democratic hazard was soundly rejected, the best news of all was non-partisan, structural and institutional. Political systems functioned admirably despite profound social and partisan polarisation and the raging coronavirus pandemic.

Foreign meddling was contained. There was no violence or intimidation at polling places and no effort to disrupt the election process. Irregularities appear minor at worst.

State and local administrators who oversee American elections generally behaved impeccably. Democratic and Republican officials, and countless volunteers and election officers, worked together across the country without incident or rancour.

Americans in their conduct overwhelmingly upheld cherished democratic norms and traditions. The country may be polarised, but citizens on both the left and right appear sincerely committed to these values and mores. This is profoundly reassuring.

Mr Trump may be hoping that the Supreme Court, now bolstered with his latest conservative appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, will intervene and save him, as he repeatedly predicted it would during the campaign. He is going to be deeply disappointed.

This result is not within what is cynically but accurately called “cheating distance”, and no pending case would overturn the outcome. If the court tried to overturn a free and fair election on a technicality, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis and do irreversible damage to the institution.

Mr Biden’s challenges will be enormous. He inherits a country still beset by a raging pandemic and struggling economy, and deeply divided along partisan, cultural and ethnic lines.

In his first speech as President-elect, he pledged to end the “grim era of demonisation” under Mr Trump and rebuild a spirit of compromise, co-operation and bipartisanship, but that won’t be easy.

Much depends on what happens in the Senate, through both its composition as determined by the two Georgia run-off races, and the strategy adopted by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He ground governance to a virtual halt during much of the Barack Obama presidency, and could choose to repeat that strategy.

Mr Trump ought to help matters by at least acknowledging his defeat, but he seems incapable of that. He appears determined to promulgate a classic right-wing “stabbed in the back” theory that insists he is still the legitimate President, and so exacerbate tensions and further divide Americans.

Reports suggest he might nonetheless be willing to negotiate a normal transfer of power. His terms are unclear, but he faces significant potential criminal charges at both the federal and state levels, and has reportedly expressed concern he may face prosecution when he loses the protection of the presidency. He could be hoping for salvation through the art of the deal.

Mr Trump will probably be the first modern US President to refuse to concede defeat and participate in his successor’s inauguration. More likely is a new media-centred career of insisting that he’s still the real President and American democracy is a corrupt fraud.

He could inflict significant national damage while he is still formally in office until January 20, but he could also be restrained or even ignored, including by subordinates. His options might be more limited in practice than in theory.

Once he’s gone, however unwillingly, much of the country will try to move on. But the willingness and ability of the Republican Party to get past the Trump era remains an open question. The immediate US political future may hang on the answer.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2020-us-election-is-not-just-trump-v-biden-1.1103244

National identity, character, role in the world, and democratic values are all on the ballot this Tuesday.

This week’s US presidential election isn’t just between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, but between two visions of what the country is and ought to be – and everything those competing perspectives imply.

So, what’s really on the ballot?

First is national self-definition.

Mr Biden embodies the view that the US is, essentially, the expression of a set of ideals, founded to realize enlightenment values of democracy, equality, rule of law and freedom. The corollary is that, whenever possible, Washington should use its global influence to promote these values, particularly over time and in the biggest picture.

Mr Trump, by contrast, is the strongest modern proponent of a very different kind of nationalism, a blood-and-soil nativism reflecting the self-interests of a clearly defined, distinctive people linked by history, ethnicity and culture. Hence his abiding antipathy towards all forms of immigration. Since his worldview flows from a radical distinction between “us” and “them”, social diversity is usually regarded as threatening.

Second is international relations.

Mr Trump calls his approach “America First”, but he also clearly views the US as just another country that, like any other, seeks to maximize its competitive advantages. Hence his denigration of traditional partners and alliances, and of any guiding principles in foreign policy beyond narrow, immediate self-interest.

Mr Biden seeks to return the US to an idealistic sense of its own expansive vision, both internally, in pursuit of greater justice and equality, and as a source of order, stability and democratic influence in the world, buttressed by robust immigration. He cultivates a much more fluid sense of where “our” interests and identities intersect or even meld with those of others.

Elements of these conflicting concepts about what the US is and how it should behave in the world have been present since the founding of the republic. But recent developments have forced them into a dramatic confrontation.

In foreign policy, the lack of an existentially threatening and universally accepted adversary such as the former Soviet Union has meant the entire Cold War approach is now up for debate and isolationism is back. The foreign policy establishment has failed to convince ordinary American voters of the benefits of traditional levels and forms of international leadership and engagement, which all too often feels to them like an intolerable burden. That’s certainly how Mr Trump portrays it.

Third is national identity.

Humans are at the beginning of a remarkably thorough and a dizzyingly rapid revolution of life defined by radical new technologies such as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. This is clearly going to be more drastic, disruptive and sudden than any analogous past transformation.

The economic components are often mischaracterized as “globalization”, but the reality is far broader. In fact, the way people live and, especially, work, is being dramatically upended, far more quickly than most people can understand or anyone can effectively manage.

That’s all very frightening, and encourages tribalism, nativism and the false reassurance of narrow identities.

In the US, it’s compounded by a fundamental social shift that began in the late 1960s whereby the traditionally all-powerful white Christian majority becomes far smaller and less privileged, and must share authority with other social groups.

Mr Biden represents Americans who embrace this change as the realization of founding ideals and a source of social and economic revitalization. Mr Trump speaks for those who dread these developments and want to fight them tooth and nail.

Mr Biden’s America is defined by freedom and democracy. Mr Trump’s America is built on the primacy of the white ethnic community, its culture and conservative Christianity.

Fourth is the meaning and significance of democracy.

Mr Trump and most Republicans now openly pursue and defend minority rule. For years, Republicans sought to restrict voting and avoid anything that smacked of an equitable one-person, one-vote system. But they always vociferously denied it.

Such evasions are no longer possible, so they just don’t bother anymore. In the current election, having failed to block widespread postal and other forms of mass voting, they are now focusing on intensive and multi-faceted efforts to invalidate millions of already-cast ballots.

Before Tuesday, the astonishing figure of 100 million early ballots will have been cast, in some key states already exceeding the total number of votes in 2016. This is deeply alarming to Republicans.

Mr Trump keeps reiterating that he expects the Supreme Court to secure his victory by disenfranchising huge numbers of American voters through various technicalities. But that would yield an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy.

Hillary Clinton beat Mr Trump by almost 3 million votes in 2016, yet he became President through the federal electoral college system. If Mr Biden secures a significantly larger victory, as seems very likely, but Mr Trump nonetheless remains President, the crisis of legitimacy and structural collapse of democracy will only be matched by the total absence of any practicable legal or constitutional remedies or means of redress – an impossible stalemate.

Fifth is American decline and the prospect of autocracy.

Mr Trump’s autocratic maneuvers consistently intensified during his presidency. His latest, and potentially most damaging, move on government institutions is a new effort to abolish measures protecting the political independence of the administrative civil service.

That would effectively gut 19th-century reforms that began eliminating once-pervasive political corruption and patronage, and resurrect controversies from the 1880s.

But making these jobs political gifts is indispensable to fully realized autocracy. The Republican Party appears to have become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mr Trump’s family business. Given another four years, the entire government could follow.

A particularly insightful commentary on what’s at stake in next week’s election is Richard Byrne’s 17-minute online video play, “A Pair of Shoes“, which subtly reads current battles over American decay and resurgence through Edward Gibbon’s classic 18th-century history, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

As the play suggests, and millions of Americans obviously understand, the underlying choices on Tuesday’s ballot are extraordinarily clear and consequential.

With most Americans, for once, fully engaged and participating, the US is set to redefine both itself and its relations with the outside world. This election really is that momentous.