Election Day 2018: A Disc Brake on Trumpism?

“You cannot use the word ‘liberty’ when it is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics.” Chris Hedges

I don’t know what will happen with the voting today. Will every person who is eligible to vote be able to cast a ballot, and will that ballot be accurately tallied? In the good old days of American mythology, this was taken for granted. Of course every vote was counted properly. How could it be otherwise? We were the nation that lectured other countries about democracy, who took it upon ourselves to oversee their elections. Democracy was in the American wheelhouse, the measure of our sophistication and greatness. Nobody did it better.

Our history is, of course, replete with examples of complete disdain for democracy, from excluding African-Americans and indigenous people to the anti-democratic Electoral College to the fact that we didn’t directly elect US senators until 1913. The 2000 presidential election of George W. Bush was stolen in broad daylight, and in 2016, Donald J. Trump lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College. In between, the Republican Party, aided by Republican Governors and Secretaries of State, has put in place mechanisms to purge voters from the rolls, require ID, disenfranchise former felons, and gerrymander voting districts.

The only way a minority party like the GOP can win elections is by cheating. With Trump at its head, the GOP is now an unabashedly white party. If the electoral playing field was level, the GOP would never win, it would not dictate political, economic, and judicial life in America to the majority of citizens. This isn’t to say that life would be grand if only the Democratic Party held the reins of power. While there are differences between the two parties, on matters of economics and war, in particular, the parties are remarkably similar, and in fact, are fueled by the same corporate donors. This is the reason Chris Hedges writes that an American voter cannot vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. Even if the Blue Wave materializes and sweeps Democrats into control of the House and Senate, our endless war in Afghanistan will go on, as will the failed War on Terror; the defense budget will remain untouchable. Democrats might make some noise about reversing Trump’s tax giveaways to the wealthy, but how vigorously will Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi battle Goldman Sachs and the other mega-banks?

Obviously, I’m hoping for the Dems to take at least one house of Congress and preferably both, not because I expect they will do much of anything about climate change, income inequality, white nationalism, immigration, voting rights, or the other issues pushing the country toward the brink. My hope is more limited: a disc brake on the Trump junta. That’s pretty much it. I have no faith that the Democrats, should they gain control, will have the spine to use their subpoena power to go after Trump’s myriad financial conflicts of interest. I can easily imagine Pelosi sputtering about the need for unity, to look ahead rather than back, to heal, etc. I’d wager that Pelosi will give Trump a pass the same way Obama gave the big banks a pass. The Democrats are nothing if not feckless. The only force that can alter this tendency for self-immolation is if progressives pull the party toward the left, out of the arms of the Clintonites and the Obamas and the Schumers and the Pelosis. That will be a hard task that requires organizing and mobilizing well beyond election day. The issues are there for the taking -- Medicare For All, free tuition at public universities and colleges, an unwinding of the carceral state, cuts to the Pentagon, and real action on climate change -- but establishment Democrats are unlikely to do much but tinker around the margins, as Obama did for 8 years.

Tomorrow morning the political furniture on the deck of the Titanic that is America may be poised for a new arrangement, but the structural icebergs that thwart true democracy and action on climate change, racism, militarism and poverty will still be in place.