“The
president has had a difficult period and is trailing his rival by double
digits. But he has time to fight back – and fight dirty It
was the death of a salesman. With tie undone and crumpled ‘Make America great
again’ cap in hand, Donald Trump cut a forlorn figure shambling across the
White House south lawn on his return from his failed comeback rally in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. Some observers likened him to Willy Loman, the
tragic protagonist of Arthur Miller’s benchmark drama.
“The
US president, critics say, has spent years selling a bill of goods to the American
people. Now they are no longer buying. The thinly
attended rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last
weekend was the physical manifestation of what poll after poll is showing:
Trump is trailing his Democratic rival Joe Biden by double digits and seemingly
on course for a historic defeat in November’s presidential election.
“But
seasoned commentators warn against complacency. Trump still has time to fight
back – and fight dirty. ‘You look at the polls and think ‘he can’t win’,’ tweeted Bill Kristol, who
served in two Republican administrations. ‘But Trump’s path to victory
doesn’t depend on persuading Americans. It depends on voter suppression, mass
disinformation, foreign interference, and unabashed use of executive branch
power to shape events and perceptions this fall.’
“It
was a reminder that the polls only tell part of any election story. In 2016,
Trump nearly always appeared to be heading to defeat by Hillary Clinton. This
time polls appear to point to a Biden landslide. The former vice-president
leads Trump by 14 percentage points in a national survey of registered voters
by the New York Times and Siena College.
“As
expected, the poll showed Biden well ahead among women, young people and
African American and Hispanic voters. Alarmingly for the president, Biden had
also drawn level among white voters, men, and middle-aged and older voters –
typically the pillars of Trump’s support. This and numerous other polls also
show Trump trailing badly in six swing states likely to decide the
all-important electoral college.
“At
the start of the year Trump was confident of victory, but the research suggests
voters are punishing him for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, exacerbation
of the economic crisis and violent response to
Black Lives Matter protests. This week he continued to downplay the virus,and
staged campaign events with few face masks and little physical distancing, even
as the daily infection rate soared to an all-time high of more than 40,000.
“But
Trump’s foes have learned to write him off at their peril. He once famously
boasted that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any
voters. He still has the significant advantages of incumbency and, opponents
say, of being entirely untroubled by a moral conscience: Trump will stop at
nothing to cling to power.
“Kristol,
editor at large of the Bulwark
website and director of the advocacy organisation
Defending Democracy Together, said in an interview: ‘The special
circumstances with Trump are his total abandonment of any constraints and even
more important, perhaps, his having people around him who’ve abandoned any
constraints on the way in which they’ll use the federal government, the
executive branch, to say things, do things, pretend to do things.
“‘Richard
Nixon did a little of that in 1972, and of course presidents always tout good
news in the months before the election. But this time, it’s the degree to which
you could have a real sustained effort to suppress minority voting and not make
it easy for young people to vote.
“‘It’s
the degree to which you could have foreign intervention and also Trump
colluding, not in the sense of coordinating but just welcoming it and making it
easier. It’s the degree to which you could have Putin deciding if he wants
Trump re-elected, to give Trump a ‘foreign policy victory’ weeks before the
election, which will turn out to be not a real victory months later.’
“Kristol
added: ‘It’s the use of loyalists at the office of the Director of National
Intelligence and to some degree the state department and justice department.
It’s the degree to which we’ll get ‘new’ news about Biden and [his son] Hunter
Biden, sort of based on something but wildly exaggerated and trumpeted and on
Fox News.
“‘If
you put all that together and you have a circumstance where someone is really
shameless and a lot of the normal constraints have weakened, it’s conceivable
that the reluctant Trump voter from 2016 who’s become a reluctant Biden voter
in 2020 goes back to being a reluctant Trump voter. That’s what worries me the
most.’
“Voter
suppression has haunted US elections for decades but the pandemic presents
Trump with new opportunities. States are seeking a massive expansion of mail-in
ballots so people do not have risk their health by queuing and voting in
person. The president has intensified claims that this will lead to widespread
cheating, even though several studies have shown that voter fraud is extremely
rare.
“‘RIGGED
2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN
COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS,’ was a false claim he tweeted this week in
capital letters. ‘IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!’
“His
wild words are often backed by organizational muscle and action. The Republican
National Committee has devoted $20m to
opposing Democratic lawsuits across the country seeking to expand voting. Republicans
are also reportedly aiming to recruit up to 50,000 people in 15 key states to
serve as poll watchers and challenge the registration of voters they believe
are ineligible.
“Monika McDermott, a political
science professor at Fordham University in New York, said: ‘What we’re seeing
in some primary states is the closures of polling places in African American
dominated areas and mistaken purging of Democrats from the voter rolls. Some of
this is anecdotal, but it is worrying all the same. And it will, no doubt,
continue through the general election.’
“Only
three incumbent presidents have been defeated for reelection since the second
world war: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush. Trump has the
advantages of the bully pulpit, support from Fox News and other conservative
media, a huge data harvesting operation and more cash than Biden. He is
traveling the country, throwing virus caution to the winds, as the Democrat
remains mostly confined to his basement.
“But
critics fear that the president could also bend state apparatus to his
advantage, noting the loyalty of officials such as attorney general Bill Barr,
who ordered security forces to use tear gas against peaceful protesters outside
the White House so his boss could stage a photo op.
“Trump
has repeatedly asserted a baseless conspiracy theory called ‘Obamagate,’
claiming that former president Barack Obama and Biden concocted fake
allegations about Trump’s links to Russia in a ‘coup’ to deny him the White
House. He could pressure Barr and Republicans in Congress to focus on this, as
well as on Biden’s son Hunter’s business activities in Ukraine, as election day
nears.
“Lawrence Tribe, a
constitutional law professor at Harvard University, said: ‘He could announce,
perhaps without any basis at all, in mid-October that a new vaccine has been
found, and he could pressure the FDA [Food and Drug Administration]to approve
it and that could mess with the vote. He could get help of the sort he has
already asked for from China and Russia to interfere with the vote.’
“‘He
could engage in conspiratorial vote suppression in which a number of people are
prevented from voting by a sudden announcement that there is a spike in the
coronavirus in certain jurisdictions. The power that he has as president to
both manipulate the votes actually cast, and in addition to that, to launch
challenges where his manipulation has not been sufficiently successful is
enormously broad.’
“Tribe
added: ‘If we know nothing else about this man, we know that his priorities are
entirely personal and narcissistic. We know that he is not worried about the
stability or the safety of the country and, given that set of psychological
realities, it would take a much more ironclad process than we have to warrant
any degree of confidence that we will have a smooth and peaceful transition to
a new president next January.’
Another
of Kristol’s warnings is about foreign interference. Special counsel Robert
Mueller identified 272 contacts between
Trump’s 2016 campaign team and Russia-linked operatives, including at least 38
meetings. Last year, asked by ABC News if he would take dirt on an opponent
from a foreign source, the president said candidly: ‘I think I’d take it.’
“Trump
was impeached for asking the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden on
baseless charges in return for $400m in military aid. And in his new memoir,
former national security adviser John Bolton alleges that Trump pleaded with
China’s president Xi Jinping to help him get re-elected by
buying more US agricultural products.
“Neil Sroka, a
spokesperson for the progressive group Democracy for America, said: ‘We already
know he’s actively solicited the help of a foreign government in this election
from the Bolton book.’ And concerns persist that social media sites such as
Facebook and Twitter are still doing too little to weed out foreign-based
accounts that spread disinformation aimed
at dividing Americans and potentially helping Trump. With four months to go,
anything could happen…” (“Trump bruised as polls favour Biden – but experts warn of riskof dirty tricks” by David Smith, The Guardian).
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