By Carlos Esteban
The establishment—that is, the Democratic Party in power—has managed to convince Americans that questioning the fairness of an election, any election, is equivalent to being a dangerous denier who deserves everything bad that happens to him. Which is funny, because the Democrats have questioned the cleanliness of all the elections they have lost, especially the ones that gave Trump victory.
And the “irregularities” have been repeated, the machines failing like fair shotguns here and there, being “here” and “there” always close voting places. You don’t even have to be a G20 country to have the full count on election night itself, and here we have the world’s leading power giving a deadline of weeks to finish registering all the votes. And, in the country itself, the state of Florida showed that it can be done without problems in a single night.
But the fraud, if there has been one, does not explain the puncture of the expected “republican wave”, not entirely. Something else, on the other hand, absolutely insane electoral rules – some of them recent, induced by the pandemic, which has showered so many benefits on the rulers – give the Democrats an extraordinary advantage by allowing things like the “harvesting” of votes.
The system of “harvesting” votes consists of collecting votes from indifferent people who are not willing to go to the polls on their own, and presenting the ballots, en bloc, at the polling stations. If you are thinking that it is a system that seems designed to favor electoral fraud, you are not far wrong. But, above all, it gives an advantage to the Democrats who have a very efficient and dedicated network to dedicate themselves to these tasks.
Previous voting by mail has also been encouraged, which takes place long before the end of the campaign, so that the candidates’ speeches or debates do not affect it. With the pandemic hysteria, pre-voting by mail has reached volumes that are hard to believe.
Another key factor that Republicans have neglected is the quality of the candidate. In these elections it is not just about the acronyms: the candidate matters, much more than in countries like Spain, where even the name of the people who are being sent to the Cortes is often unknown.
And the Republicans have not made an effort in this regard, to put it mildly. If, for example, in Pennsylvania the Democrats have elected a guy who neither understands nor speaks coherently, John Fetterman, that probably has something to do with his Republican rival, Dr. Oz, a rogue out of touch with his constituency who doesn’t even live in the state you want to represent. But, alas, Trump endorsed it.
If we add to this what was said before, that there are a lot of votes already decided before seeing the candidates in action, it will already be assumed that the Republicans had to make a decisive good impression from the first moment, especially where they face a headline that the people already know. In fact, the “republican wave” only occurred in Florida, where the governor could put real merits on the table and was well known, managing to turn Florida into a decidedly conservative state.
Then there is the thorny question of funds. Money matters, and Democratic candidates could draw on an inexhaustible treasure trove of donors. The disproportion was striking. Big tech, multinationals, universities, unions, big media: they all prefer the Democrats. No one with deep pockets wants to be cut off from the cheap, union-ignored labor that pours in across the southern border.
Another important factor is that in disastrous states, people vote with their feet rather than their hands. I mean, they go. This is what happens in ultra-democratic states like New York or California. Conservatives are leaving those states in droves, thus reducing the share of Republican voters in those states in a diabolical spiral that guarantees the Democratic vote for all eternity.
That could be fixed if the Republican Party were able to send a clear and strong message to voters in those dystopian areas. But the sad reality is that Republicans don’t have that message. In fact, they do not have any message, not unitary, at least. The Democrats have a clear story, endlessly repeated: the Republicans are fascism and the end of democracy. It doesn’t matter how absurd it is: it’s clear and everyone sticks to it and repeats it to exhaustion. What is the Republicans? No, not that of this or that Republican politician, but that of the party.
With information from Gaceta