Paula Lugones
07/30/2020 - 10:22
- Clarín.com
- World
Desperate to buy time to go up in the polls, President Donald Trump suggested this Thursday for the first time that the November general election in the United States may be the "most fraudulent" in history and that it should be postponed.
While the president has already flirted with the idea of postponing them, it's the first time he's said it directly and it has set off all the alarms in Washington - it's a sign that Trump is paving the way for not accepting a possible adverse outcome and removing legitimacy to a possible triumph of his rival Joe Biden.
The president's clamor came just as the Commerce Department revealed that the economy shrunk by 9.5% between April and June, the worst decline in history. Annualized, this percentage amounts to 32.9%. It should be noted that Trump's tweet about the elections is timely to divert attention from the red numbers.
"With the universal vote by mail (not the absentee vote that is good) 2020 will be the most IMPRESSIVE AND FRAUDULENT election in history," the president tweeted. "It will be a great shame for the US to delay the election until people can vote properly and safely ???" he suggested.
There is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud in voting by mail, even in states that vote exclusively that way. Nor does Trump have the authority to change the election date, which is set by law, and any changes should be made by Congress.
The Constitution also establishes that the presidential mandate cannot extend beyond January 20, that is, if the elections were postponed after that date, who should assume the presidency would be the head of the House of Representatives, in this case the Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Donald Trump's tweet where he talks about delaying the elections.
The White House has officially denied several times that Trump has any interest in changing the date of the elections, which are scheduled for November 3, following the electoral tradition of the United States, which always sets them for the first Tuesday of that month . But several allies of the president had previously slipped the possibility of postponing them.
It is that the president is further and further away, at least for now, from returning to conquer the White House, as is his wish. Today he is very complicated in the polls, which place him 8.4 points below Biden nationwide (according to the average of RealClearPolitics polls) and even in key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, districts in which he managed to impose himself in 2016 .
The president desperately needs time to make a comeback in the polls, and he basically hopes on two issues: he wants to present the coronavirus vaccine before the election but, above all, he wants the post-pandemic economy to start showing signs of recovery.
He has always presented himself as a businessman and as someone skilled in restoring the country and was his big bet for November.
Pre-pandemic surveys accompanied him. But Covid19 upset its great flag and America's GDP fell dramatically, as did employment. His attitude to the marches against racism and police brutality made it very difficult as well. But the outbreak of the coronavirus seen in recent weeks further damaged the president's electoral strategy, which had to admit reality: the virus will hit for a long time and the economy will take longer to recover than expected.
Quarterly changes in US GDP since 2016, on an annual basis - AFP / AFP
In this scenario, Trump could use a postponement of the elections and the issue of voting by mail has given him an excuse to suggest it. He had already been warning that he was against the early voting system by mail, something that Democrats encourage so that people do not crowd the day of the elections. Trump knows that the votes that people cast in his envelopes today will not benefit him too much because of the current situation. He prefers the voter to decide later.
In addition, several months have already registered several examples in the primaries that worried the president because in states that mostly changed to the voting by mail system they showed that there were more votes than in the past. Democrats are calling precisely for the electorate to go out to mobilize en masse against Trump.
As early as April, candidate Biden had warned that the president would try to postpone the elections to try to win them. "I think he is going to try to postpone the elections in some way, with any excuse so that they cannot be held," he said.
Although he cannot change the date, the President has already installed the idea of fraud . In an interview last week, he even refused to confirm whether he will accept the result of the elections in case he is defeated.
Trump doesn't like losing anything: fraud can be a good excuse to take away legitimacy from a possible Biden win and not admit the blow to the ego that he will suffer if Americans decide at the polls to leave the White House.
Washington, correspondent