Yesterday’s upbeat edition explored the question: what if this is America's last election?
Reader Kate—( hi Kate! Very sorry to hear about the COVID )—was in touch this morning to say she’d found it very worrying and hoped I might consider a less dire perspective. She told me she’d shared it with her sister in Toronto, who worked for years at the UN and lived in New York, who had offered this:
Remember that we agree about Trump being a threat to democracy, etc. I personally hope that he will die in prison, which he richly deserves.
That being said, being a bit closer to the action, following things more closely, and listening to a range of different sources I see what David Slack has written as being deliciously scary, but more about appealing to his NZ readership than really providing something useful for understanding developments in America. He has cherry picked things and arranged them to produce a particular effect.
There's actually a lot of evidence that disagrees with Slack's picture of what is happening in America. For example, over and over again the judiciary has in fact knocked back Trump - and there's more happening now. The electoral college doesn't decide the election. Far from it. The election is basically decided by swing voters and they have been turning against Trump in large numbers. Trump seems very likely to win the Republican nomination - not because he has a "vast majority" of Republicans supporting him but because he has 30-30% supporting him, which is enough to get him through to become the GOP presidential candidate. That's likely to deliver a win to the Democrats in the Presidential race, i.e. the election itself, since Trump has very little support with the middle. In 2024 the Senate and House of Reps might also move to the Dems, which already control the Senate, given how badly Republicans are doing in the House - total disaster. But, 11 months is a long time in politics and a lot can happen, so no one should be complacent about Trump.
I should say that deliciously scary is not ever my thing. I almost never write about the bleak if I cannot, alongside it, also offer hope. I did try.
