LOSS REVEALS MUCH
Without coronavirus Donald Trump would likely have secured a second term as the United States president, writes Nicholas Khoo.
ONCE the seemingly neverending 2020 US Presidential elections end, there will be a necessary postmortem in the Republican Party.
Whatever mistakes are highlighted for remedial action, the fact remains that the Trump campaign barely lost.
The proximate cause of Trump’s failure is his catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
That should send a shiver down our spines.
Why? Because it suggests that absent the coronavirus pandemic, Trump arguably would have secured a second term, with all the likely consequences this would have entailed for the US and the world.
The stark fact is that for all his normbusting and policy missteps, Trump performed remarkably well in the election.
At the time of writing, Trump had secured slightly more than 47 % of the electorate who voted.
The more than 70 million votes cast for Trump is the secondhighest tally in US history.
That is an increase from the nearly 63 million votes Trump secured in 2016, when he secured 46% of the vote.
To observers who lament the Trump presidency, a necessary truth needs to be heard.
The US political system was in trouble long before Trump arrived on the scene.
His election in 2016 is a symptom of an ailing political system that has deteriorated further during his tenure.
Trump’s legacy is one of intentionally accentuating the divisions he inherited in 2016.
He has excelled in deepening the DemocraticRepublican divide; inflaming differences in US society; increasing friction with both allies and rivals, notably, China and Iran.
Given Trump’s penchant for crisis, we should count on him not leaving the scene quietly.
Speaking off the record, one Trump official noted: ‘‘For decades, long before the presidency, his whole life was a crisis and he thrived in that environment. It’d be boring if he just got blown out or won big. That would be very unTrumpian for there not to be some calamity involved.’’
Joseph Biden’s campaign has remained resolute in the face of
Trump’s bizarre press conference last Thursday, at which he voiced unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and claimed victory in the presidential election.
Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, expressed no concern about the prospect of Trump refusing to leave office after losing the election.
According to Bates, ‘‘the American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House’’.
That may be so. But whether a Biden administration can repair the damage left behind by Trump is quite another question.
Biden will need the cooperation of the likely Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell is a formidable opponent who largely succeeded in thwarting the Obama administration’s domestic agenda.
And even if a defeated Trump spends his postpresidency period mired in legal battles to avoid bankruptcy or even prison time, the riven US electorate that elected him will still be around.
For all our sakes, let us hope that Biden succeeds in stabilising the US political system.