Will Donald Trump stay four more years in the White House, or will Democrat Joe Biden push him out after a US presidential election marked by historic turnout (given the number huge – more than 100 million – voters having voted at the advance poll)? “Too early to call”, “Too close to call”. Too early, or too tight, to proclaim a result. This is therefore the nightmarish scenario of the 2000 presidential election, when it took more than a month to designate – on the green carpet of the American Supreme Court – a winner between George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, that recurs.
Except this time the perils are much greater. The extreme tension reigning in a country divided as ever, added to the worrying climate linked to a Covid-19 pandemic seeming out of control and having already made more than 230,000 dead, dramatize this in-between where Donald Trump as his rival Joe Biden have yet to win or lose.
The suspense may last
Unless there is a reversal, this suspense could last until Friday, especially as long as the results in the decisive state of Pennsylvania are not declared. The count will also be difficult in other “swing states”, these pivotal states such as Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada … And it will also be necessary to reckon with the countless legal remedies on both sides.
On the Republican side, the former mayor of New York and the feared lawyer Rudy Giuliani is already at work. “We have a system where the slightest anomaly or suspicion of fraud goes through our software,” a member of the Trump campaign based in Washington told us. For example, we were told that a polling station opened more than an hour late in rural Virginia, where voters are used to going to the polls early. We will not let go, ”he promises. Litigation is therefore likely to multiply by the thousands across the 50 American states, especially over the millions of mail-order bulletins on which the Republicans, and Trump first, have from the outset cast suspicion.
VIDEO. Postal voting in the United States: the discord ballots
They designated this vote – encouraged due to coronavirus – as a factor in postal fraud and chaos. The legal brawl and the war of attrition, step by step, between the battalions of lawyers and experts of the two camps will focus on the crucial states in suspense, starting with Pennsylvania. This Democratic stronghold, snatched for 44,000 votes by Trump four years ago, recently enacted its own rather flexible laws on postal voting. The latter being traditionally, across the country, pro-Democrats, the Trump team is particularly focusing its arrows on this hot case.
“I have the impression that it will be a coin toss”
Each of the candidates, aware of the pataques that was emerging, tried to take a date on this night from Tuesday to Wednesday, that of all dangers. Joe Biden was the first, following the advice of Hillary Clinton, herself educated by her failure four years ago, immediately refused to leave the initiative to the wheeler Trump. “We are well on our way to winning this election,” he says in his calm style – that of “sleeping Joe” as Trump regularly taunts – from the front steps of his HQ in Wilmington (Delaware). At that time, Arizona, one of the key states, has just fallen into the hands of the blues (Democrats). A way to keep the pressure on, because the Biden team knows that in this all-out war of nerves, mobilizing supporters is essential. “I still hope for the victory of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket, but I’m very, very afraid,” said Robert Rosenburg, 52, a voter from Washington. I feel like it’s going to be a coin toss. “
He announces that he is going to the Supreme Court … which is favorable to him
At the White House, totally bunkerized in a federal capital with almost deserted avenues and barricaded windows, Donald Trump’s response was not long in coming. Flanked by his wife Melania, Vice President Mike Pence and his smiling clan, the outgoing president, camped at his desk, unleashes lightning. Designating a “group of sad sires” who seek to “steal” the election, Trump declares himself the winner, announces the suspension of the counting of the votes by correspondence and says he wants to seize the Supreme Court (of which the majority of the nine judges are favorable to him) . In other words, “we stop counting, I won”.
The intervention amazes the Democrats, who scream scandal, and the mainstream media. If we take the case of Pennsylvania, for example, we can clearly see the Trumpian maneuver, as if he was seeking in advance to discredit the ballot if it turned in favor of his opponent. In this strategic State, the big cities and the suburbs, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, rather democratic, voted enormously in advance. While the rural and working-class counties, feeling forgotten by Washington and threatened by polluting activities like the shale gas industry, vote red (Republican) en masse and, above all, “in person”, in offices Tuesday. Stopping operations would obviously benefit the latter over the former.
In the wake of Trump’s declaration, Mike Pence, in his role of “moderate”, however qualifies the exit of his boss: “We will remain vigilant, the right to vote is sacred, but we are off to victory” . Recognizing thus, him, that nothing is played, even if the Trump camp is delighted to have pocketed in a jiffy Florida, Texas and Ohio, so many “red” fiefdoms that the polls saw however tilt towards blue.
The calculations of the sulphurous Steve Bannon
Donald Trump’s offensive is hardly a surprise. Before the presidential intervention, in fact, on the roof terrace of a building in Washington where he gave one of the extremely rare election evenings while hosting his program on his own channel, “The War Room”, the sulphurous Steve Bannon , icon of far-right movements and ex-adviser to the president, predicted “a historic victory” for his champion. With Rudy Giuliani, he had advised Trump to take a position as quickly as possible, based on the tendencies of the “physical” vote, to pull the rug out from under the Democrats’ feet.
According to the calculations of strategist Bannon, distant from the White House since he was indicted in fraud cases but still very influential, Trump should win 289 voters (it takes 270 out of 538 to win). The same, however, predicts that Democrats, as in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was 3 million votes ahead of Trump nationally, will once again win the popular vote, “maybe even with a larger gap, 4 million. voice or more ”. This does not prevent Bannon, millionaire ideologue with the neglected beard and the invariable “combat dress” jeans and parka, to glorify “the power of the populist and nationalist movement in America”.
Among the democrats, from the slap to the hope
Democrat side, even if many still believe in a positive outcome at the end, we are stunned by the transformation of the “blue wave” expected in such a narrow result. “It’s hard to measure what’s going on in people’s heads,” said Jack, a Virginia businessman used to working with Europe. I know perfectly educated people, politically savvy, very well off … who selfishly vote Trump because they dread paying $ 20,000 or even $ 100,000 in extra taxes with Biden. And they don’t care about the consequences for society or for the planet … “
Another unknown remains: during this liar poker, will the violence so dreaded by ultra supporters of both camps occur? On the “Black Lives Matter Plazza”, far in front of the White House, the demonstrators occupy the field. Antifa pretend to want to fight, but the situation vis-à-vis the considerable deployed police forces remains under control. It is elsewhere in the country, where the militias prowl, or in the deprived suburbs where the revolt is brewing, that the things are more uncertain. America holds its breath. And the world with it.
Original article by : www.leparisien.fr
