Trump’s reelection seems implausible to many people, as implausible as his election did before November 2016. With less than two months until the 2020 elections, Americans are deeply unhappy with the state of the country. As the United States simultaneously struggles with a pandemic, an economic recession and protests about police violence and racial justice, the share of the public saying they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country has plummeted from 31% in April, during the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, to just 12% today.
To be re-elected, Donald Trump knows he has to distract the nation from the pandemic that he has flagrantly failed to control, leaving more than 180,000 Americans already dead, tens of millions jobless and at least 30 million reportedly hungry.
Trump said in his speech closing the Republican convention last Thursday night, “Your vote, will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.”
“We will have law and order on the streets of this country,” Vice President Pence declared the previous evening, warning “you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”
Neither Trump nor Pence mentioned the real threats to law and order in America today, such as gun-toting agitators like Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old who travelled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, last week during protests over the police shooting of a Black man, and then shot and killed two people and wounded a third.
Rittenhouse, perhaps not coincidentally, occupied a front-row seat at a Trump rally in Des Moines, Iowa, last January.
Recently, a pro-Trump caravan that included members of the neo-fascist Proud Boys drove into Portland, Oregon, shooting protesters with pepper spray and driving into crowds. Someone wearing the hat of a far-right group called Patriot Prayer was shot dead.
Trump’s reaction? Rather than condemn the violence, he tweeted “GREAT PATRIOTS!” in support of the pro-Trump agitators, and, “The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected, The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer.”
Trump also retweeted a claim that “this coup attempt is led by a well-funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.”
For the first time in history, a United States President is openly justifying violence by some Americans against other Americans.
Donald Trump is also on the verge of accomplishing what no American president has ever achieved, a multi-racial, multi-class, bipartisan political coalition so encompassing it could realign the United State’s politics for years to come.
One of the many reasons why many Americans don’t want Trump getting a second term is the glaring matter of Race and Racism. Rather than fuel his base, Trump’s hostility toward people protesting the police killing of George Floyd and systemic racism has pulled millions of white Americans closer to Black Americans. More than half of white people now say they agree with the ideas expressed by the Black Lives Matter movement, and more white people support than oppose protests against police brutality. To a remarkable degree, the protests themselves have been biracial.
Late John Lewis, the great civil rights hero had said to Trump and Attorney General William Barr in regards to putting out Federal Police in riot gear who wielded tear gas on peaceful protesters:
“Mr President, the American people have a right to protest. You cannot stop the people with all of the forces that you may have at your command.”
Numerous Trump former voters are appalled by his racism, as well as his overall moral squalor. According to a recent New York Times/Sienna College poll, more than 80 per cent of people who voted for Trump in 2016 but won’t back him again in 2020 think he “doesn’t behave the way a president ought to act”.
Another reason for the mass dislike for his second term is his frequent attacks on the American system of Government.
Americans don’t particularly like or trust the Government but almost all feel some loyalty toward the Constitution and the principle that no person is above the law. Trump’s politicisation of the Justice Department, attacks on the rule of law, requests to other nations to help dig up dirt on his political opponents and evident love of dictators, especially Vladimir Putin has played badly even among die-hard conservatives.
Another reason would be his catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic. Many who might have forgiven his personality defects and authoritarian impulses can’t abide by his bungling of a public health crisis that threatens their lives and loved ones.
The coronavirus pandemic has dominated headlines in the US since the start of the year and the response to President Trump’s actions has been split predictably along party lines. (It took 28 days to go from 2 million to 3 million.) Deaths are topped 1,100 for two days in a row, the first time that has happened since May. And more people are hospitalised for COVID-19 than at any time since the pandemic began.
In a recent poll, 62 per cent said Trump was “hurting rather than helping” efforts to combat COVID-19. Fully 78 per cent of those who supported him in 2016 but won’t vote for him again disapprove of his handling of the pandemic.
Another reason Trump’s second term would be very much dissuaded would be the inequalities of income and wealth that now fuel the United State’s economy. No other developed nation has nearly the inequities found in the US, even though all have been exposed to the same forces of globalisation and technological change.
Jeff Bezos’s net worth recently reached $200bn and Elon Musk’s $100bn, even as 30 million Americans reported their households didn’t have enough food. America’s richest 1% now own half the value of the US stock market, and the richest 10% own 92%. American capitalism is off the rails!
The main reason is that large corporations, Wall Street banks and a relative handful of exceedingly rich individuals have gained enough political power to game the system. Chief executives have done everything possible to prevent the wages of most workers rising in tandem with productivity gains, so most gains go instead into the pockets of top executives and major investors. They have outsourced abroad, installed labour-replacing technologies and switched to part-time and contract work.
They’ve busted unions, whose membership shrank from 35% of the private-sector workforce 40 years ago to 6.4% today. Under Trump’s Government, they have manipulated the Government to slash their own taxes, unravel safety nets for the poor and middle class and reduce investment in education and infrastructure. They have also completely eliminated a raft of labour protections. They have defanged antitrust enforcement, allowing their monopolies free rein. The free market has been taken over by crony capitalism, corporate bailouts and corporate welfare. This has caused a huge upward spiral of unemployment rates in the country and the favouritism has more or less ruined other smaller businesses.
Since the start of the pandemic, American billionaires have been cleaning up. As more than 50 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance, billionaires became $637bn richer. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth has ballooned 59%. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s, 39%. Walmart’s Walton family has added $25bn.
Big drug company CEOs and their major investors are doing nicely, too. Since the start of the pandemic, Big Pharma has raised prices on over 250 prescription drugs, 61 of which are being used to treat Covid-19.
Apologists say this is the “free market” responding to supply and demand, the barons of Big Tech and Big Pharma merely providing what consumers desperately need during the pandemic.
But the market also operates under laws that ban profiteering, price gouging, and monopolizing, and that tax excess profits in wartime. Where did they go? The Trump administration hasn’t enforced them.
Trump is also ignoring laws that ban trades on insider information. The White House is distributing billions in subsidies and loans to select corporations enabling CEOs and boards to load up on stocks and stock options just before deals are announced, then rake in fat profits after stock prices surge.
Insiders from at least 11 companies have sold shares worth over $1bn after such announcements, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
In late June, a San Francisco company called Vaxart announced that the Trump administration had selected it to develop a Coronavirus vaccine. Presto. The value of stock options distributed to company insiders just weeks before increased six-fold. Stock options held by Vaxart’s CEO went from $4.3m to more than $28m. Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has never brought a vaccine to market, but company insiders have sold some $248m of shares, most of them after the company was selected in April to receive Trump funding. (Moderna plans to sell its vaccine for profit although American taxpayers have footed its research and development).
The most blatant involves the venerable old camera and film-maker, Kodak. On 28 July, Trump announced a $765m deal with the firm to bring drug production back to the United States. He called it “one of the most important deals in the history of the US pharmaceutical industries,” even though Kodak isn’t even a pharmaceutical company.
Before the announcement, Kodak had handed its board of directors 240,000 stock options, and just the day before had given its CEO 1.75m stock options. After Trump’s announcement, Kodak shares shot up more than 2,757%. Suddenly, the board’s stock options were worth about $4m, and the CEO’s, about $50m.
This and many more have gone against Trump’s promises when he was elected in 2016.
He had promised to cut taxes, and that the super-rich like him would pay more. But any economic observer would notice that he did the opposite. By 2027, the richest 1 per cent will have received 83 per cent of the Trump tax cut and the richest 0.1 per cent, 60 per cent of it. But more than half of all Americans will pay more in taxes. He also said corporations would use their tax cuts to invest in American workers. They didn’t. The new downturn in the American economy saw Corporations spending more of their tax savings buying back shares of their own stock than increasing workers wages.
He had boasted that he would boost economic growth by 4 per cent a year. The American economy is very close to stalling, and unemployment has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression. Just over half of working-age Americans are employed, the worst ratio in 70 years.
Voters in America will decide on 3 November whether Donald Trump remains in the White House for another four years and from the look of things, President Donald Trump would have to pull in an Ace trick to turn the tides to his favour.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
