Dispatches from Dallas: Trump Exposed Weak Links in US Presidential Elections

The US has just witnessed one of its most important presidential elections in recent memory. Donald Trump, running for a second term, lost to Joe Biden of the Democratic Party. Still reeling under the COVID-19 pandemic, US society has been torn apart by anti-race protests sparked by killings of black men by trigger-happy policemen but sustained by systemic racism, and the President had deliberately unleashed all the dark forces of American exceptionalism, patriarchy and white supremacy in the name of ‘Making America Great Again’. His climate change denial, support to other right-wing leaders like Brazil’s Bolsonaro, the UK’s Boris Johnson and of course, Prime Minister Modi in India, his fuelling of armament build-up, his support to Israeli expansionism and many other foreign policy stances have earned him global notoriety. Hence this election is of interest, and concern, to people around the world. NewsClick will be publishing these observations periodically.

Results of 2020 Election in US have been widely reported in the press world-wide. Along with the election results, this dispatch will also touch upon one additional topic: underlying political significance of what happened during the 2020 election cycle.

First, let’s review the 2020 election results briefly. Former Vice President Biden won in the battleground states defeating President Trump with approximately the following margins: Michigan (154,000 votes), Pennsylvania (81,000 votes), Wisconsin (20,000 votes), Arizona (10,000 votes), Georgia ( 11,000 votes).

In 2016, President Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton with less margins in two out of the three battleground states: Michigan (11,000 votes), Pennsylvania (68,000 votes), Wisconsin (27,000 votes). Arizona and Georgia were safe Republican states in 2016 and Trump won them handily.

In the electoral college, both men won with exactly the same lopsided margin of 306 vs 232 in 2020 and 2016, respectively. In popular votes, Biden received 7 million more votes than Mr. Trump (51.4% vs 46.9% ). Both 81M+ and 73M+ votes polled by Biden and Trump in 2020 shattered all past records. In the 2016 election, Trump  won in the electoral college but received  2.8 million less popular votes than Clinton (45.9% vs 48%).

US Senate and House of Representative Races

The election results for the US Senate and the House of Representatives were quite surprising and a big letdown for the Democrats. In the Senate, Democrats made a net gain of only one seat. The current breakdown stands at 50-48 in favour of the Republicans. There will be a runoff election in Georgia for the two Senate races on January 5, 2021. Georgia is still considered a Republican leaning state. Even though fierce campaigning is going on both sides, the current  Republican incumbents David Purdue and  Kelly Loeffler are expected to beat, possibly narrowly,  the challengers Jon Osoff and  Reverend Raphael Warnock, the black pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church where late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.

In the only debate that took place, Kelly Loeffler referred to Reverend Warnock as "radical socialist Warnock" 13 times in one hour. Unfortunately, fear mongering tactics, even though devoid of facts, works most of the time with partisan and low information voters. We will know the results by January 7 or 8, 2021. If the Republicans win at least one seat out of the two Georgia races, they will retain their majority  in the US Senate. The Republican majority leader Mitch McConell, a very wily politician, will be in a position to block any substantive legislation in the US Senate by the incoming Biden Administration till the next midterm election in 2022. In November 2022, the entire House of Representatives and one third of the Senate will go to the polls again.

Also read: Dispatches From Dallas: Trump’s Days Look Numbered

In the House of Representatives, the Democrats lost nine seats this time and will retain a slim majority of 222 vs 211. This is the smallest margin in the House of Representatives in a generation. The Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi is a shrewd and very experienced politician who stood up to President Trump effectively in the last two years. She will collaborate with the Biden Administration to put pressure on the Republican run Senate by passing popular legislations in the House. If the Senate balks as expected, that will set the stage for a classic clash in the November 2022 election.

From preliminary analysis of 2020 voting data, the following initial conclusions emerged :

a) Highly polarising nature of President Trump's candidacy brought out a lot of low propensity voters to the polls on both sides.

b) A good portion of the suburban voters, particularly women, voted for Biden at the top of the ticket but stuck to the Republican candidates in Congressional and state level races.

c)  Overwhelming majority of Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters voted for the Democrats in this election (2 to 1 for Hispanic and Asian Voters, 85 to 15 in case of Black voters). However, Trump improved his vote share among these voter groups by 3-4% from 2016 to 2020 election which was a surprise.

In spite of Trump’s bugle horn of racism and monumental incompetence in handing COVID-19 pandemic, many working class minority voters found more in common with the working class white voters regarding their serious anxiety about bread and butter and social issues. In order to succeed in the future, the Democrats will have to make an emotional connection with working class voters of all races in urban and rural areas based on a practical pro-worker policy agenda for implementation in next two-four years.

Additionally, the Democratic activists will have to focus on grass root level organising in selling this policy agenda year round, not just during the election cycle. That will be a very effective way of countering slander and misinformation campaigns by right wing media and political opponents year round. During the 2020 election cycle, the Republicans hammered the Democrats non-stop as agents for socialism and defunding police. Even though these baseless charges did not apply to the Democratic candidates seeking office, this persistent misinformation campaign unsettled a lot of suburban and low information rural voters of all races in many state level, US House of Representatives and US Senate contests.

Trump Attempts to Replace Electors in the Electoral College

Lets now examine the significance of what happened during and after the November 2020 election. Overwhelming rejection and repudiation of Trump and his enablers in Congress did not happen at the polls as predicted. As a matter of fact, the Republicans, except Trump, did quite well in the 2020 election at all levels – Senate, House of Representatives and state level legislatures.

Going forward, a racist campaign strategy harnessing the insecurity of the majority white voters may not be viable for winning a national office like the President. But, it may be viable for winning many city, state legislature , US House of Representative and state-wide races (Governor,  US Senator) in certain parts of the country. Will that strategy, adopted by certain Republican candidates, work in future elections in the absence of a highly effective polarising figure like Donald Trump leading the charge at the top of the ticket? These are unanswered questions with serious implications for the future direction of the Republican party and the country as a whole.

For now, the American democracy had a narrow escape in 2020. Major assault on the election integrity came not from any external sources but from the highest elected official in the land - the President. A visiting academician from India told me in a private conversation, “Authoritarian leaders in a democracy show their true colours in their second term. You have managed to dodge a bullet in America.”

As I reflected on this thoughtful comment, I connected that President Erdogan in Turkey and Prime Minister Modi in India started operating quite differently in their second terms. Many independent observers have noted that Trump acted in a highly authoritarian manner in his first term. We are lucky that Trump has been rejected by the voters and will not get a chance to lurch further towards authoritarianism in a second term.

Also read: Dispatches from Dallas: Trump is Running Out of Time

Even before the 2020 election, many states in US had a long history of successful voting by voters using mail- in (postal) ballots without any proof of coordinated election fraud. Trump appointed FBI Director, Christopher Ray, confirmed this in a testimony to Congress few months before the election. However, Donald Trump kept on raising serious concerns about mail-in voting in the 2020 campaign trail and laid the groundwork for future legal challenges if he lost in key swing states. It was quite apparent that as per Donald Trump, only two outcomes of the 2020 election were possible: either he won or the election was stolen from him. 

After the election on November 3, when initial electronic and mail-in vote counts in few days indicated that Trump had lost in many swing states, his campaign and legal team filed more than 50 lawsuits in five state and federal courts in a span of three-four weeks.

In all these cases, the state or federal judges dismissed the lawsuits without a single dissent from the bench often with very harsh comments about the frivolous and ludicrous nature of these filings. Many of these judges were appointed by Republican Governors or Presidents, some by Donald Trump himself. Judge Stephanos Bibas, appointed by Trump in 2017, wrote for a three judge panel for the Federal Appeals Court in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here." 

In a New York Times dispatch on December 1, 2020, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman  reported:

"Instead of slowing down after the election, Mr. Trump’s campaign has ratcheted up its volume of email solicitations for cash, telling supporters that money was needed for an “Election Defense Fund.” In reality, the fine print shows that the first 75% of every contribution currently goes to a new political action committee that Mr. Trump set up in mid-November, Save America, which can be used to fund his political activities going forward, including staff and travel. The other 25% of each donation is directed to the Republican National Committee. A donor has to give at least $5,000 to Mr. Trump’s new PAC before any funds go to his recount account."

It has been reported in the press that these appeals by Trump's campaign organisation for so-called election defense fund have raised more than $200 million by middle of December 2020, mostly from small donors. And this fund raising email solicitations have not stopped.

Dear reader, does this smell like a legal fraud scheme to you ?

Apart from the legal challenges, Trump openly and brazenly put political  pressure on county and state level government officials in the swing states not to certify the duly counted election results. Additionally, he invited Republican legislative leaders from the swing states in the White House and encouraged them to ignore the election results duly certified by the Secretaries of State and appoint alternative pro-Trump set of electors in the electoral college – an outright illegal act by the legislators if they had decided to go that route. They did not.

Civil Servants, Legislators, Judges Stand Up to Trump’s Pressure Tactics

We will be forever indebted to a critical mass of really courageous civil servants, elected state level officials, legislators and judges for their collective integrity and willingness to stand up for what they considered to be their constitutional duties. They bravely faced threats of being politically ostracised or even physical violence in some cases. 

We are talking about the officials like the FBI Director Christopher Ray, who contradicted Trump on the integrity of mail-in voting; Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative Republican who confirmed that Biden had won after the initial count and recount; and Chris Krebs, Director of Cybersecurity, whose agency issued a statement stating that the "2020 election was the most secure in American history". Trump promptly fired him for crossing the line.

Also read: Dispatches from Dallas: Defeated, Trump Attempts to Delay Certification

There were numerous other county and state election board officials, and state Republican legislators who did not yield to raw political pressure from the President of the United States. Donald Trump stress tested our constitutional system of checks and balances and it held up this time.

However, he has exposed the weak links in our three step cumbersome process for electing a President. In the next few years, US Congress needs to strengthen the guard rails of existing laws and codify some of the democratic norms of 200 years openly flouted by Donald Trump and his administration in the last four years.

The Republican leaders in US Congress, however, did not exhibit any such courage or backbone except the lone exception of Senator Mitt Romney who called out Trump's attempt to subvert the US constitutional process quite early after November 3. Other senior Republican leaders including the Senate majority leader Mitch McConell openly supported Trump or was complicit by keeping quiet for many weeks. This was astounding since US Congress is a co-equal branch of the President as per the US constitution. This failure to hold the President accountable was extremely serious since the sanctity of our election process and the basic foundations of our democracy was at stake. None of these Republican leaders had the courage to side with democracy and displease Trump.

When the Texas Attorney General, supported by 16 other Republican Attorneys General filed an outrageous lawsuit directly to the US Supreme Court to overturn 20 million legally cast and duly certified votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia, 125 House of Representative Republican members including the House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy signed a brief supporting that lawsuit.

Nine justices of the Supreme Court, including the three nominated by Trump, unanimously  refused to hear this case. In a curt unsigned statement, the court ruled that the Texas Attorney General did not have any standing to contest the election processes and the results of other states. Any serious student studying law in an American university could have advised the learned Attorneys General of 17 Republican states and 125 Republican House members, mostly lawyers, about the futility of filing such a frivolous lawsuit directly to the Supreme Court. Were currying favour with Trump and the resulting political drama the sole motivations of these politicians ?

What are the likely reasons of this craven cowardice and sycophancy displayed by the top brass of the Republican party in Washington? Trump, even after leaving office, is expected to retain considerable clout with a diehard Republican base of approximately 30-35 million voters.

Additionally, Trump will control a campaign purse of more than $150 million, thanks to his misleading fund raising for "Election Defense Fund" after the election. These two things, in combination, will give Trump unusual leverage over other Republican politicians who will have to run for office in the next two-four years. “In politics, leverage is everything” – noted an astute observer of national politics.

How did we get to this current sad state in the US Democracy? Stay tuned for the next Dallas dispatch.

Based in Dallas, Texas, the writer was in the thick of US 2020 Election campaign