An American lucky to live in New Zealand sees his home country splintering into two distorted, mirror images
It is too early to say who will win the United States presidential election, but new divisions in the country have become starkly apparent.
As the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic nears a quarter million – more than the combined US losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea and World War I – Americans remain seriously divided over the best path forward.
Hopes that the election would result in a thorough repudiation of Donald Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and abysmal handling of the Covid-19 crisis have been quashed as the race narrows. The fate of the country rests in the hands of voters in a smattering of Midwest states.
Exit polling shows voters split on a wide range of issues, but one of the key divisions fell along a perceived dichotomy between health and the economy.
More than four fifths of voters who said their top issue was the pandemic broke for Democratic challenger Joe Biden. The same percentage of those who said their key concern was the economy went for Trump.
When asked whether it was more important to contain the virus or rebuild the economy, 80 percent of the containment advocates voted for Biden and 76 percent of reopeners chose Trump.
These are not the sorts of divisions that can be healed with four years of cautious, centrist governing. They are deep, rooted in centuries of racism and the development in recent years of alternative media echo chambers.
Already, more than 60 million votes have been counted for each candidate. Trump, despite his blowhard late-night tweeting, despite his emboldening of a violent white supremacist fringe, despite his incompetence leading to the avoidable deaths of 233,000 Americans (and counting), despite his repeated pledges to refuse to accept a democratic result if he loses, has garnered the support of tens of millions of Americans.
These are not the sorts of divisions that can be healed with four years of cautious, centrist governing. They are deep, rooted in centuries of racism and the development in recent years of alternative media echo chambers.
Trump and Biden voters live in two different realities. The Biden reality is one where more than a hundred thousand lives can be saved simply by widespread wearing of masks. It is one where the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is slowly warming the globe. It is one where every vote being counted is a fundamental tenet of democracy.
The Trump reality is deranged. It is one where most of America’s Covid-19 deaths are negligible because the people had preexisting conditions like asthma or obesity – neither of which are fatal conditions. It is one where China has spent decades secretly convincing global academia that climate change is real. It is one where every vote being counted is election theft.
I’m writing from a third reality, as an American in New Zealand. Here, I have the benefit of knowing that mass death due to Covid-19 was not inevitable. I know climate change is real and no serious politician in New Zealand contends otherwise. I expect tomorrow to see the full results of our own election released, after weeks of calmly waiting. Had it been close – as in 2017 – no one would have rushed to declare premature victory.
On Wednesday evening, New Zealand time, Trump claimed he had won the election. That was prior to any news network in the country – not even his loyal lapdogs at Fox News – calling enough states for Trump to reach the 270 electoral college votes needed to be president. He pledged to seize control of the country via an unelected Supreme Court populated by three of his handpicked politically-aligned judges.
None of this is a surprise. Trump himself, in the days leading up to the election, said his lawyers were preparing to wage legal opposition to the democratic will of the people. Despite this, some 64 million (and counting) lodged their ballots for him.
If Joe Biden wins, the task before him will be enormous. Not only will he have to pull a nation back from the brink of authoritarianism, he will have to grapple with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic – which could kill 500,000 by February 28 – and work to repair these deep divisions.
I don’t want to predict what will happen if Donald Trump wins. When he won in 2016, it felt like the end of the world, but I rationally understood that the United States has built up democratic rules and conventions over more than two centuries to limit the authoritarian impulses of any would-be officeholders.
My cautious optimism that much of the country would remain unchanged in four years’ time is clearly incorrect.
CNN’s Jake Tapper said that no one was trying to steal the election. Unfortunately, that isn’t true. One person is attempting to steal the election: Donald Trump.
Over the 45 months since Trump became president, we have witnessed a conservative hijacking of the judiciary, white supremacists rallying in the streets with their leader’s blessing, the erosion of environmental protections, blatant nepotism and corruption, attempts to delegitimise American elections, encouragement to the president’s supporters to vote twice, musing that the president might remain in office for life, the mass killing via neglect of 233,000 Americans and the dismantling of longstanding democratic norms.
I have no clue what Donald Trump would use his power to do in the next four years – or longer.
Whether he has that opportunity depends not just on the wishes of the American public, but also on whether he can get his desire to stop votes from being counted or convince the Supreme Court to overturn the result.
As Trump began tweeting that “they are trying to STEAL the Election”, American news media raced to dispel this false notion.
CNN’s Jake Tapper said that no one was trying to steal the election. Unfortunately, that isn’t true. One person is attempting to steal the election: Donald Trump.
