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Experts explain: What is really behind Trump's election defiance

2020-12-02T19:40:10.126Z


Donald Trump has spoken a lot about “election fraud”. But the US President means something other than fake ballot papers, comment Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes.


Donald Trump has spoken a lot about “election fraud”.

But the US President means something other than fake ballot papers, comment Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes.

  • It was only weeks after the US election that Donald Trump announced that he would vacate the White House for Joe Biden if he lost.

  • But the incumbent US president has not yet admitted this defeat - a quite unprecedented event in US history.

  • In an astute analysis, experts Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes set out possible deeper reasons for Trump's behavior.

  • This article is available in

    German

    for the first time 

     - it was first published on November 18 by

    Foreign Policy

    magazine 

    .

"If they steal the 2020 election, there will be no 2024 election!"

Loudspeaker announcement during the "Stop the Steal" demonstration by US President Donald Trump's supporters against alleged election fraud on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on November 14th.

It will probably be a while before the members of the ever smaller circle of

confidants around US President Donald Trump

unpack in their memoirs and report in lurid details of the first reactions in the White House when

Joe Biden

was elected President -elect ") of the

United States

.

While we've already got a rough idea of ​​the extent of the anger and flurry of conspiracy theories, we're likely to have a surprise ahead of us when the whole

mess of hopeless tricks

that Trump and his entourage have desperately hatched reveals itself around them to somehow cling to power.

But regardless of what happens next, his long-headline-making

refusal to acknowledge Biden's victory

, meanwhile, raises a deeper question and focuses on a mystery at the core of democratic politics: why should losers, especially if they are incumbents, willingly one Accept defeat?

Commentators are divided when it comes to explaining the desperate last-minute moves he has made

to prevent

official confirmation of election results

.

Many express his psychological or strategic aversion to being a loser.

Didn't he always claim, when his reckless business ventures went downhill, that he had achieved another great achievement;

as if mere presentation as such could reverse defeat?

Other, more cynical viewers assumed he was simply tricking his followers into making payments online to a

fictional legal defense

fund to fill their own pockets.

Still others argued that he is overturning the established transition process at the White House in order to recapture the limelight he has lost since he was voted out: what better way to regain control of the news cycle than by ending the? threatening American democracy?

Trump's departure: Putin, Gulf states, money laundering - why is the US president delaying the admission of defeat?

Alternatively, some die-hard

Trump critics

have speculated

that the US president is desperately hesitating to give Biden's preparation teams access to government offices to destroy evidence of money laundering and related crimes.

And some people suggest that Trump is taking advantage of the shamelessly long transition period between governments that is customary in the USA to lift the secrecy of information that

could be helpful

for

Russian President Vladimir Putin

and to send sophisticated weapon systems to Gulf states - in each case, of course, in return for bribes or favors beyond January 20th.

Or maybe he's just enjoying the idea of ​​making life as difficult as possible for the new administration while letting the rest of the world know that the United States will no longer teach dictators about the virtues of free and fair elections in the future.

Trump does not want to admit defeat to Biden - the main reason is a future projection

All of these factors may play a role.

But the main reason Trump stubbornly refuses to admit defeat is democracy's reliance on belief in an as yet unwritten future in which the

losers get a second chance

.

Trump believes - and his supporters seem to agree - that there may never be another election for both him and them.

More than any other politician, Trump has expressed the fear of the average white voter that demographic change and the generation change will lead to political sideline.

For these voters, the US elections are actually rigged.

But the fraud ultimately has

little

to do

with ballot manipulation

, despite the brazen claims now being made by Trump's lawyers.

For the most ardent Trump supporters, it goes like this: The United States elections are being rigged by open borders and low barriers to naturalizing illegal immigrants, and by making it easier for African-Americans to register and vote.

These regulations were introduced by the Democrats with the aim of safeguarding their future supremacy by transforming the electorate to their advantage.

"Election Fraud"?

What Trump and his supporters really mean by that word

This illusion explains what

Trump and his supporters

really mean when they talk about election fraud without the slightest evidence.

You don't just mean active fraud in the sense of forged ballot papers or incorrectly counted votes.

Rather, it applies to them that the wrong people were registered as voters in the first place.

The only

reason for Trump's defeat

, in their opinion, is that the Democrats undermined the cohesion of the majority white electorate by supporting minority rights and liberal immigration policies.

The destructive and undemocratic suggestion that not all votes should count equally lay in

Trump's unfounded distinction

between the brave souls who braved the pandemic to

vote in person

and the cowards who

wanted to send

their

ballots in the mail

.

This distinction was arbitrary and did not coincide with the distribution of Trump and Biden voters.

However, it reflected the anti-democratic premise that the votes of some citizens - contrary to the equal treatment clause in the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution - are worth more than others.

Trump against Obama: The wild allegations went far beyond a birth certificate

Trump's claim that the presidential election was rigged is the 2020 version of something called birtherism.

This theory is that former

President Barack Obama

was not born in the United States - and basically means that a black person has no right to be president.

To say that we could not trust the result of this election also means that the African-American

citizens of Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta would

not have the right to vote.

Drawing a parallel between these two pseudo-accusations makes even more sense under the - certainly justified - assumption that Obama's election triggered deep-seated fears among many white Americans that demographic change would drown them out.

Be that as it may, the

multiethnic queues

of citizens to vote in polling stations were an

undistorted reflection of the multiethnic United States

.

The contrast to Trump's predominantly mono-ethnic rallies couldn't be stronger.

From the perspective of an almost exclusively white election campaign event, the increasingly multiracial voter lists are the sign of an electorate in which the assembly participants no longer form the majority.

They are also an omen of an imaginary future in which the police, whose resources have been cut (according to the “Defund the police” demand), will no longer be able to protect the white majority from the siege of anti-fascist rioters allegedly in league with racial minorities.

In the long run, the proportion of white voters will decrease.

This means that the democratic legitimation formula, which gives the loser hope of a comeback, loses its ability to reconcile the losers with their defeat.

The fact that

60 percent of voters under 30 voted against Trump

encourages his supporters to feel that the future is not on their side.

That is exactly what makes his baseless allegations of electoral fraud so dangerous.

They suggest to his followers that the moment is approaching when

democracy itself

must be given up.

Trump's defeat inflated to prophecy of doom

Add to this explanation of Trump's refusal to leave the field the

subconscious impact of the pandemic on the country and Trump's supporters

.

His shameless lie that we were "over the mountain" did nothing to change the fact that the American people live in the constant presence of senseless, arbitrary death.

The rise of an apocalyptic way of thinking is therefore not entirely surprising.

COVID-19 only reinforces the doom mentality that shapes the worldview of most populist voters.

The dizzying ups and downs of the pandemic have created additional uncertainty about a future that is unpredictable even in normal times and that feels especially threatening to those panicked by demographic and generational change.

Trump is signaling to his supporters that they must

never admit that this election was fair

.

Because that would mean accepting the changes in the composition of the electorate that will make future presidential races out of reach for them.

That fear of the future combines all too well with the grueling uncertainty of an unpredictably spreading pandemic.

There are believed to be many psychological, social, and economic reasons why a large segment of American voters under Trump's hypnotic spell seems willing to give up democracy.

But

distrust of the future

- based on their

fear that "real Americans" will never win an election again

- is the determining factor.

Protests after Trump's election defeat: Corona could have played an unexpected role

Also not to be neglected:

lockdowns, masks on the face and social distancing

have created a

pent-up thirst

among

the population for collective action

, be it sensible, spectacular or defiant.

This urgency, which was revealed in the "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations following the assassination of George Floyd, also explains why Trump supporters feel encouraged to ignore the election result.

While voting is a public act, there is nothing heroic, daring, sensational, or particularly memorable about it.

But a protester who may pose as a freedom fighter and loudly complain about stolen elections is a hero - or at least can pretend to defy the election result and try to prevent the official confirmation of valid votes, probably gives Trump's voters

that Feeling of being involved in something big, of

breaking free from the clutches of history.

Compared to the

repetitive everyday life under COVID-19

- monotonous, restricted to

your

own four walls, low-risk and without consequences - this is an attractive opportunity.

The

Republican establishment

needs Trump's support to hold a majority in the Senate in the two upcoming Georgia runoff elections, and so continues to walk the fine line between right and wrong.

Ordinary politicians like the Senate majority leader,

Mitch McConnell

(who would feel completely out of place at a Trump rally), have no illusions about the vote in the Electoral College and see that

Biden is the elected President is

.

But they do not let it be known in public because it would break their tense connection with the Trump voters, in whose seeming world “Make America Great Again” can never lose.

Trump may even blackmail McConnell into keeping silent about Biden's victory by threatening to sway the

Georgia election in favor of the Democrats

.

Be that as it may, Trump defeated the Republican establishment in 2016 because, unlike them, he was willing to question Obama's right to presidency.

And today he intimidates them because, unlike them, he is ready, without the use of euphemisms, to suggest that African-American voters, especially in Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta, have no right to vote.

Donald Trump on the brink of collapse: between the dream of “white supremacy” and multi-ethnic reality - can the Republicans find the right balance?

Can

Republicans

keep

their balance and focus

with one leg in the

multiethnic reality of the United States

and the other in an impossible, if not to say morally repulsive,

dream of restoring white supremacy

?

Temporarily they accept Trump's claim that the election has been "rigged" and pretend he meant the falsification of votes, even though they understand that his

election fraud allegations are

in fact about the

extension of the right to vote wrong people

.

Presumably the Republican establishment is planning a life after Trump.

But can they publicly acknowledge that Biden won the election while satisfying white grudges and believing the conspiracy theories fueled by the president and embraced by his gullible supporters?

To want to stand with both feet in one of these two incompatible worlds - one real and the other a hallucination - that cannot be comfortable.

Indeed, it is a

position that is impossible to hold for long

.

Republicans-elected will

not accept

Trump's

invitation

to erase

the legitimacy of the American electoral system

;

especially not those whose power depends on equal federal Senate suffrage.

For, unlike him, under this system, most of them stand a

good chance of winning free and fair elections in the future

, despite the inexorable changes in the United States' demographics.

The

“Grand Old Party”

is demographically not doomed, whatever nightmares of ethnic disappearance may haunt Trump's electorate.

While America's demographics are changing,

US voters are too opportunistic

and

parties too adaptable for

ethnicity to remain a reliable indicator of party affiliation, even in the medium term.

In the short term, however

, Republicans could well lose a majority in the Senate

if they dare to destroy the illusion that Trump won an imaginary election that never took place.

For the next two months, it seems, a

myopic Republican leadership will

continue to see the January 5 runoff as the only future election that counts.

Donald Trump: His strategy becomes a threat to democracy - how expensive is the price?

It is still unclear whether - and if so, how - the Republicans will pay for

temporarily

giving in to

Trump's flirtation with the end of democracy

, on which their own legitimacy depends.

One thing is pretty clear, however: the current leaders of the party will

not be able to live with or without the apocalyptic voters

- voters who the incumbent president marginalized to give up democracy.

Trump built his

political brand

not only by promising to humiliate Obama, but also by encouraging many Republican voters

to see

themselves as

part of a shrinking white majority

who maintain

control of the levels of command only through undemocratic means

can.

The strong polarization of the US electorate, which Trump deliberately intensified, poses an existential threat to democracy, because

half of the electorate has lost faith in the future

.

When the supporters of a losing candidate believe that they are demographically doomed, they have no incentive to abide by the rules.

And we can just see with our own eyes the shocking consequences that have.

By Ivan Kastev and Stephen Holmes

Ivan Krastev

is director of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.

Stephen Holmes

is Professor of Law at New York University.

This article was first published in English on November 18, 2020 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” - as part of a cooperation, a translation is now also

 available to

Merkur.de

readers 

.

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Source: merkur

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