American democracy is threatened, but not for the reasons depicted in recent election law porn.
Election law porn is the journalistic de jour theme of the corporate media
now. Recent articles in The Atlantic and The Guardian describe the 2020 elections as
make or break for American democracy. The New York Times and the Washington Post writers decry Trump’s
threat to the United States and how he plans to steal an election. Other
articles tell of plots by Republican state legislatures to take away the popular vote and directly award the
electoral votes to Trump. All of these stories appeal to the
fear, paranoia, and conspiratorial insecurities of Democrats, looking for
reasons why Trump will win and Biden lose. These articles represent bad
journalism but are good clickbait business—they get readers to look at them,
titillating their anger and arousing angst. They are election law porn
meant to hook readers.
These articles first feed into the Trump
narrative. For nearly five years the corporate media has profited over coverage
of Trump. It gave him undue $5 billion free media coverage in
2015-2016 because it was profitable to do so. It continues to cover ever
one of his Tweets and statements he makes even though the mainstream media such
as the Washington Post
acknowledges that the president is a serial liar. His lies are
brilliant diversions that set the political agenda. Criticize the
president about his handling of the pandemic and he talks of fraudulent vote by
mail. Ask him about health care and he will talk about not
accepting the results of an election or agreeing to a peaceful transition
of power if he loses. Simultaneously the press and the public—mostly
Democrats—take every word he utters as a lie and as literal truth. Take a
lot of what he says, as Hermann and Chomsky declared in Manufacturing Consent, as part of a
propaganda machinery in a symbiotic relationship between him and the corporate
media where the latter takes what the former says and delivers it in a way to
sell news and divert the public from the real problems. Here the real
problem is what is wrong with American democracy.
As noted above, among the more recent
manifestations of election law porn is that Republican legislatures will force
delays in vote counts or otherwise take actions to directly award electoral
votes to Donald Trump as a way to ensure his victory. Great conspiracy,
thin reality.
The Constitution does ultimately allow state legislatures
to pick the electors who pick the president. Our popular votes for
president to select the electors are a product of state law which theoretically
can be changed. Yet in reality it would be difficult and probably not
make a difference. According to Ballotpedia, there are 36 states where one
party has a trifecta where it controls both houses of the legislature and the
governor’s office. Of those 36, Democrats have 15 trifectas, Republicans
21. Of those 21 states, only two—Florida and Arizona, are swing states
where Joe Biden has a chance to win. Perhaps maybe three if Ohio is still
a swing state. The remainder of the states where Republicans hold a trifecta
are ones Trump is going to win anyhow. Of the real swing states in
play—Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, there is
no trifecta and therefore Republicans could not change the law to pick the
electors. If Biden loses the election by losing in these swing
states it is plausible he will do so simply because he ran a
lackluster campaign or the voting demographics in these states were
against him.
Yes, there are additional and legitimate fears
that this election will be close and in some states there will be
allegations of vote tampering and miscounts. One should not minimize
these as issues, but again they are diversions away from the more systematic
and deeper problems facing American democracy.
The United States is a troubled democracy.
Even before Donald Trump it faced problems. Its gap between the rich and
poor is among the highest compared to other western-style democracies with
wealth and income concentrating into fewer and fewer hands.. It has a
troubled legacy and history of race that goes back to the settlement and
founding of the country. The criminal justice, education, and health care
systems reveal huge racial disparities. The death of George Floyd
and the causalities of the pandemic are reminders of this.
America has the lowest voter turnout among its
peers, with the electorate stratified by race and income. Its neo-liberal
style election system has reduced democracy down to the right of the few wealthy donors to spend unlimited money to
influence elections. Corporate interests spend billions to lobby, and the 50-state
patchwork of election rules and eligibility requirements have already
disenfranchised millions. All of this occurred before Donald Trump and
perhaps made his election possible.
Donald Trump is a product of an American
democracy that was failing before he was elected. The 2020 elections have
brought home those failures, but even if Biden were to win the problems
will not go away because they are more than about Donald Trump. His
policies have exacerbated a challenged democracy and perhaps made them worse,
but the root of them is deeper than him and it will take more than a Biden
victory or hand wringing sensationalism by election law porn to fix them.
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