What If Joe Biden Does Win and Donald Trump Declares the Election - Fake
By Rajan Menon
October 25, 2020
Donald Trump isn’t just inside the heads of
his Trumpster base; he’s long been a consuming obsession among those yearning
for his defeat in November. With barely more than a week to go before the
election of our lifetime, those given to nail biting as a response to anxiety
have by now gnawed ourselves down to the quick. And many have found other ways
to manage (or mismanage) their apprehensions through compulsive rituals, which
only ratchet up the angst of the moment, among them nonstop poll tracking,
endless “what if” doomsday-scenario conversations with friends, and repeated refrigerator
raids.
Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware, on 16
September. ‘With economic depression and mass unemployment now looming, the old
‘third way’ playbook offers no guidance.’ Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuter
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As one of those doomsday types, let me
briefly suggest a few of the commonplace dystopian possibilities for November.
Trump gets the majority of the votes cast in person on November 3rd. A Pew
Research Center survey found that 60% of those supporting the president intend
to vote that way on Election Day compared to 23% of Biden supporters; and a
Washington Post-University of Maryland poll likewise revealed a sizable
difference between Republicans and Democrats, though not as large. He does,
however, lose handily after all mail-in and absentee ballots are counted. Once
every ballot is finally tabulated, Biden prevails in the popular vote and ekes
out a win in the Electoral College. The president, however, having convinced
his faithful that voting by mail will result in industrial-scale fraud (unless
he wins, of course), proclaims that he -- and “the American people” -- have
been robbed by the establishment. On cue, outraged Trumpsters, some of them
armed, take to the streets. Chaos, even violence, ensues. The president’s army
of lawyers frenetically file court briefs contesting the election results and
feverishly await a future Supreme Court decision, Mitch McConnell having
helpfully rammed through Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to produce a 6-3
conservative majority (including three Trump-appointed Supremes) that will
likely favor him in any disputed election case.
Or the vote tally shows that Trump didn’t
prevail in pivotal states, but in state legislatures with Republican
majorities, local GOP leaders appoint electors from their party anyway, defying
the popular will without violating Article II, Section I, of the Constitution,
which doesn’t flat-out prohibit such a stratagem. That was one possibility
Barton Gellman explored in his bombshell Atlantic piece on the gambits Trump
could use to snatch victory (of a sort) from the jaws of a Biden victory. Then
there are the sundry wag-the-dog plots, including a desperate Trump trying to
generate a pre-election rally-around-the-flag effect by starting a war with
Iran -- precisely what, in 2011, he predicted Barack Obama would do to boost
his chances for reelection.
And that, of course, is just part of a long
list of nightmarish possibilities. Whatever your most dreaded outcome, dwelling
on it doesn’t make for happiness or even ephemeral relief. Ultimately, it’s not
under your control. Besides, no one knows what will happen, and some prominent
pundits have dismissed such apocalyptic soothsaying with assurances that the
system will work the way it’s supposed to and foil Trumpian malfeasance. Here’s
hoping.
In the meantime, let’s summon what passes
for optimism these days. Imagine that none of the alarmist denouements
materializes. Biden wins the popular vote tally and the Electoral College. The
GOP’s leaders discover that they do, in fact, have backbones (or at least the
instinct for political survival), refusing to echo Trump’s rants about rigging.
The president rages but then does go, unquietly, into the night.
Most of my friends on the left assume that
a new dawn would then emerge. In some respects, it indeed will. Biden won’t be
a serial liar. That’s no small matter. By the middle of this year, Trump had
made false or misleading pronouncements of one sort or another more than 20,000
times since becoming president. Nor will we have a president who winks and nods
at far-right groups or racist “militias,” nor one who blasts a governor --
instead of expressing shock and solidarity -- soon after the FBI foils a plot
by right-wing extremists to kidnap her for taking steps to suppress the
coronavirus. We won’t have a president who repeatedly intimates that he will
remain in office even if he loses the election. We won’t have a president who
can’t bring himself to appeal to Americans to display their patriotism through
the simple act of donning masks to protect others (and themselves) from
Covid-19. And we won’t have a president who lacks the compassion to express
sorrow over the 225,000 Americans (and rising) who have been killed by that
disease, or enough respect for science and professional expertise, to say nothing
of humility, to refrain from declaring, as his own experts squirm, that warm
weather will cause the virus to vanish miraculously or that injections of
disinfectant will destroy it.
And these, of course, won’t be minor
victories. Still, Joe Biden’s arrival in the Oval Office won’t alter one
mega-fact: Donald Trump will hand him a monstrous economic mess. Worse, in the
almost three months between November 3rd and January 20th, rest assured that he
will dedicate himself to making it even bigger.
The motivation? Sheer spite for having been
put in the position -- we know that he will never accept any responsibility for
his defeat -- of facing what, for him, may be more unbearable than death
itself: losing. The gargantuan challenge of putting the economy back on the
rails while also battling the pandemic would be hard enough for any new
president without the lame-duck commander-in-chief and Senate Republicans
sabotaging his efforts before he even begins. The long stretch between Election
Day and Inauguration Day will provide Donald Trump ample time to take his
revenge on a people who will have forsaken, in his opinion, the best president
ever.
More on Trump’s vengeance, but first, let’s
take stock of what awaits Biden should he win in November.
Our
Covid-Ravaged Economy
To say that we are, in some respects,
experiencing the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression of the
1930s is anything but hyperbole. The statistics make that clear. The economy
had contracted at a staggering annual rate of 31.4% during the second quarter
of this pandemic year. During the 2007-2009 Great Recession, unemployment, at
its height, was 10%. This year’s high point, in April, was 14.7%. Over the
spring, 40 million jobs disappeared, eviscerating all gains made during the two
pre-pandemic years.
There were, however, some relatively recent
signs of a rebound. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s survey of economic
forecasters, released in mid-August, yielded an estimate of a 19.1% expansion
for the third quarter of 2020. But that optimism came in the wake of Congress
passing the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, on
March 27th, which pumped about $2.2 trillion into the economy. The slowdown in
job growth between July and September suggests that its salutary effects may be
petering out. Even with that uptick, the economy remains in far worse shape
than before the virus started romping through the landscape.
However, while useful, aggregate figures
obscure stark variations in how the pain produced by a Covid-19 economy has
been felt across different parts of American society. No, we aren’t all in this
together, if by “together” you mean anything remotely resembling equalized
distress. A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release, for instance, reveals that
September’s 7.9% nationwide unemployment rate hit some groups far harder than
others.
The jobless rate for whites dropped to 7%,
but for Hispanics it was 10.3%, for African Americans 12.1%. Furthermore,
high-skill, high-wage workers have gotten off far more lightly than those whose
jobs can’t be done from home, including restaurant servers and cooks,
construction workers, meatpackers, housecleaners, agricultural laborers,
subway, bus, and taxi drivers, first responders, and retail and hotel staff,
among others. For workers like them, essential public health precautions,
whether “social distancing” or stay-at-home decrees, haven’t just been an
inconvenience. They have proven economically devastating. These are the
Americans who are struggling hardest to buy food and pay the rent.
More than 25 million of them fall in the
lowest 20% of the earnings scale and -- no surprise here -- have, at best, the
most meager savings. According to the Fed’s calculations, of the bottom 25% of
Americans, only 11% have what they require for at least six months of basic
expenses and less than 17% for at least three. Yes, unemployment insurance
helps, but depending on the state, it covers just 30% to 50% of lost wages.
Moreover, there’s no telling when, or whether, such workers will be rehired or
find new jobs that pay at least as much. The data on long-term unemployment
isn’t encouraging. The BLS reports that, in September, 2.4 million workers had
been unemployed for 27 weeks or more, another 4.9 million for 15 to 27 weeks.
These disparities and the steps the Fed has
taken, including keeping interest rates low and buying treasury bills,
mortgage-backed securities, and corporate bonds, help explain why high stock
prices and massive economic suffering have coexisted, however incongruously,
during the pandemic. The problem with bull markets, however, is that they don’t
bring direct gains to the chunk of American society that’s been hurt the most.
Nearly half of American households own no
stock at all, according to the Federal Reserve Bank, even if you count pension
and 401k plans or Individual Retirement Accounts -- and for black and Hispanic
families the numbers are 69% and 72%, respectively. Furthermore, the wealthiest
10% of households own 84% of all stock.
Trump preens when the stock market soars,
as he did on April 10th, when 16 million Americans had just filed for
unemployment. Tweets trumpeting “the biggest Stock Market increase since 1974”
were cold comfort for Americans who could no longer count on paychecks.
The
Signs of Suffering
Even such numbers don’t fully reveal the
ways in which prolonged joblessness has upended lives. To get a glimpse of
that, consider how low-income workers, contending with extended unemployment,
have struggled to pay for two basic necessities: housing and food.
Reuters reported in late July that
Americans already owed $21.5 billion in back rent. Worse yet, 17.3 million of
the country’s 44 million renter households couldn’t afford to pay the landlord
and faced possible eviction. A fifth of all renters had made only partial
payments that month or hadn’t paid anything. Again, not surprisingly, some were
in more trouble than others. In September, 12% of whites owed back rent
compared to 25% of African Americans, 24% of Asians, and 22% of Latinos. A May Census
Bureau survey revealed that nearly 45% of African Americans and Hispanics but
“only” 20% of whites had little or no confidence in their ability to make their
June rent payments. (Households with kids were in an even bigger bind.)
The rent crunch also varied depending on a
worker’s education, a reliable predictor of earnings. Workers with high school
diplomas earned only 60% as much as workers who had graduated from college and
only 50% of those with a master’s degree. And the more education workers had,
the less likely they were to be laid off. Between February and August, 2.5% of
employees with college degrees lost their jobs compared to nearly 11% of those
who hadn’t attended college.
Those, then, are the Americans most likely
to be at risk of eviction. Yes, the federal government, states, and cities have
issued rent moratoriums, but the protections in them varied considerably and,
by August, they had ended in 24 of the 43 states that enacted them; nor did
they release renters from future obligations to pay what they owe, sometimes
with penalties. In addition, eviction stays haven’t stopped landlords
nationwide from taking thousands of delinquent renters to court and even,
depending on state laws, seeking to evict them. The courts are clogged with such
cases. Eventually, millions of renters could face what a BBC report called a
potential “avalanche” of evictions.
Nor have homeowners been safe. The CARES
Act did include provisions to protect some of them, offering those with
federal-backed mortgages the possibility of six-month payment deferrals,
potential six-month extensions of that, and the possibility of negotiating
affordable payment plans thereafter. In many cases, however, that “forbearance”
initiative hasn’t worked as intended. Often, homeowners didn’t know about it or
weren’t aware that they had to file a formal request with their lenders to
qualify or got the run around when they tried to do so. Still, mortgage
forbearance helped millions, but it expires in March 2021 when many homeowners
could still be jobless or have new jobs that don’t pay as well. Just how
desperate such people will be depends, of course, on how strongly Covid-19
resurges, what future shutdowns it produces, and when it will truly subside.
Meanwhile, according to the Mortgage Bankers
Association, the residential mortgage delinquency rate hit 8.22% as the second
quarter of 2020 ended, the highest since 2014. Meanwhile, between June and
July, mortgage payments overdue 90 or more days increased by 20% to a total
unseen since 2010. True, we’re not yet headed for defaults and foreclosures on
the scale of the Great Recession of 2007-2008, but that’s a very high bar.
As for hunger, a September Census Bureau
survey reports that 10.5% of adults, or 23 million people, stated that household
members weren’t getting enough to eat. That’s a sharp increase from the 3.7% in
a Department of Agriculture survey for 2019. In July, the Wall Street Journal
reported, 12% of adults said their families didn’t have enough food (compared
to 10% in May). A fifth of them lacked the money to feed their kids adequately,
a three-percent increase from May. Recent food-insecurity estimates for
households with children range from 27.5% to 29.5%.
Meanwhile, enrollments in the Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program (known until 2008 as the Food Stamp Program)
grew by 17% between February and May, forcing the government to increase its
funding. Food banks, overwhelmed by demand, are pleading for money and
volunteers. In August, a mile-long line of cars formed outside a food bank in
Dallas, one of many such poignant scenes in cities across the country since the
pandemic struck.
What
Happens After the Election?
For those who have lost their jobs, the
CARES Act provided $600 a week to supplement unemployment benefits, as well as
a one-time payment of $1,250 per adult and $2,400 for married couples. That
stipend, though, ended on July 31st when the Republican Senate balked at
renewing it. In August, by executive order, the president directed the Federal
Emergency Management Agency to step in with three weeks of $300 payments, which
were extended for another three. That, however, was half what they would have
received had the CARES supplement been extended and, by October, most states
had used up the Trump allotments.
In the ongoing congressional negotiations
over prolonging supplemental benefits and other assistance, President Trump
engaged, only to disengage. With a September ABC News/IPSOS voter survey
showing that just 35% of the public approved of his handling of the pandemic,
and Joe Biden having opened a double-digit lead in many polls, the president
suddenly offered a $1.8 trillion version of the CARES Act, only to encounter
massive blowback from his own party.
And that’s where we are as the election
looms. If Trump loses (and accepts the loss), he will hand Joe Biden an
economic disaster of the first order that he’s made infinitely worse by
belittling mask-wearing and social distancing, disregarding and undercutting
his administration’s own medical experts, peddling absurd nostrums, and
offering rosy but baseless prognostications. And between November 3rd, Election
Day, and January 20th, Inauguration Day, expect -- hard as it might be to
imagine -- an angrier, more vengeful Trump.
For now, as his prospects for victory seem
to dim, he has good reason to push for, or at least be seen as favoring,
additional aid, but here’s a guarantee: if he loses in November, he won’t just
moan about election rigging, he’ll also lose all interest in providing more
help to millions of Americans at the edge of penury and despair.
Vindictiveness, not sympathy, will be his response, even to his base, for whom
he clearly has a barely secret disdain. So accept this guarantee, as well:
between those two dates, whatever he does will be meant to undermine the
incoming Biden administration. That includes working to make the climb as steep
as possible for the rival he’s depicted as a semi-senile incompetent. He will
want only one thing: to see his successor fail.
Once Trump formally hands over the presidency
-- assuming his every maneuver to retain power flops -- he’ll work to portray
any measure the new administration adopts to corral the virus he helped let
loose and to aid those in need as profligacy, and as “socialism” and
governmental overreach imperiling freedom. Last guarantee: he won’t waste a
minute getting his wrecking operation underway, while “his” party will posture
as the paragon of financial rectitude. It won’t matter that Republican
administrations have racked up the biggest budget deficits in our history.
They, too, will ferociously resist Biden’s efforts to help millions of
struggling Americans.
And think of all of this, assuming Biden
wins, as the “good news.”
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Rajan
Menon, a TomDispatch regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of
International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, senior
research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace
Studies, and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.
Copyright
2020 Rajan Menon
Original
Headline: So Trump Loses What Happens Then?
Source:
The TomDispatch
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