Last Chance for a Fresh Dawn

There may be something satisfying on a personal level on being proved right, or the appeal of an opportunity to say ‘I told you so’. But some occasions aren’t worth this temporary feeling of self-justification. Just as no-one really wants to proven right if that asteroid comes smashing into the Earth, on a more immediate level, the worst of fears for next month’s US Presidential election is that the country descends into a sort of civil war, and Trumpites refuse to accept the result. There’s still a larger chance of this happening than is being written about, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to pass.

There’s a real prospect of the USA descending into chaos in Purple or Red states where so-called militias, groupings that would be called domestic terrorists in any other country in the world, will be involved in seditious activities. They have the weapons, they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, and as seen in Oklahoma in 1995, have a hatred for democratic values that hasn’t gone away. Countries that descend into civil war exhibit many of the characteristics showing in the US. There doesn’t have to be an inevitability of the drift into conflict either. Trump’s warning of his non-acceptance of a losing outcome in November is chilling. He may or may not want the descent into chaos such words encourage, but he is throwing petrol on a fire that is already showing signs of getting out of control. People are right to be scared of what is to come.

Political beliefs are as polarized as any time since the mid to late 1960s. The rightward drift of the Republican Party has been inexorable, such that they allowed the badge of Lincoln to be worn by a conman like Trump. The party itself may lose the Senate, and they’ve nobody to blame but themselves if so, for hitching their wagon to the current incumbent. They have played a very dangerous game. Many GOP senators despise 45, yet most have been either happy to go along with him when he was popular, or happy to keep the head down and plough on when he was not. Their tenures have been profiles in cowardice, at the very moment when the opposite virtue has been required. As enablers for the illegality, unconstitutionality, and distortion and diminution of political norms, they have been found lacking, when America needed them most. There have been so many occasions where they could have shouted ‘Enough!’, yet they ducked and dived each opportunity. Only a thorough defeat next month will show them that they and their ideas have been rejected by the American people. The loss must be sufficient to act as a wake-up call to those left supporting them to know they’re not wanted any more.

To be positive, a strong Biden win, a wipe-out of Reaganesque proportions would be a significant shot in the arm for democracy in the US. The former Vice-President’s qualities are well-rehearsed at this stage. Perhaps his most effective trait is his fundamental decency. His is the long service to the nation, the ability to empathise, the sanity after the last four years of madness. Running for the office is in itself a mark of the man’s view of public service. He surely knows he’ll be a one-term President and in selecting Kamala Harris as his running-mate, he has signaled that he knows succession will be a live issue. His is, without too much use of hyperbole, the final act of the Roman Senator, stepping up to save the Republic. His team will seek to restore American standing in the World, and to reintegrate into multilateralism. Biden will not be subject to Moscow; it will be a Presidency that looks to clean out the Augean Stables, and if this requires a ‘packing’ of the Supreme Court such as FDR once threatened to do, so be it. Trump and the GOP must not be allowed to continue engaging in lawfare to subvert the constitution.

President Joe Biden is sufficiently ‘moderate’ in US terms, that he would be a healing influence should he be elected. Yes, he’ll take on the wrong that Trump has done, but he won’t seek to punish Don the Con supporting states. Biden knows that there’s a huge job of work ahead; his first main task will be in tackling Covid-19, and the possible roll-out of a vaccine in the coming few months. He may lack the comparative youth and rhetorical firepower of Barack Obama, but his commitment to governing wisely is the same.

This really is the make or break election. The choice is between sending Joe Biden to the White House, or to continue with a figure who has already exhibited his clear and present danger to the US Constitution. Let’s hope that Trumpism is consigned to the dustbin of history.