American Political and Socioeconomic Milieu ~~ dmorista

 American Political and Socioeconomic Milieu, by dmorista

We are approaching a very dangerous and perhaps pivotal time for the U.S. Political and Socioeconomic milieu. The other day I posted a reply to a comment by larrymotuz in which I wrote, to address the Presidential Election and other elections in part. That reply, somewhat modified, and some other material is here below:

The situation this year in Presidential electoral politics, as far as I understand it at this point, is that there are 7 “swing states” namely Nevada (6 electoral votes), Arizona (11 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), Michigan (15 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), North Carolina (16 electoral votes), and Georgia (16 electoral votes). The Democratic Party candidate, Joe Biden, has 226 electoral votes in either safe (191), likely (30), or leans Democrat (5) states. The Republican Party Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has 219 electoral votes in either safe (121), likely (57), or leans Republican (41) states. There are 93 electoral votes in what are considered to be Toss-Up or Swing States. If we move North Carolina to the leans Republican category (which is where it belongs according to some analysts), the numbers for Trump change to 235 electoral votes in either safe (121), likely (57), or leans (57) states; and the number of Electoral College votes among the Swing States changes to 77.

So let's assume that Georgia, with its 16 electoral votes goes for Trump this election. Even though Georgia went for Biden in 2020 and over the past few election cycles also elected two Democrats to the U.S. Senate (BTW, we can thank Fair Fight the Organization founded by Stacy Abrams and her allies for those accomplishments, along with some mistakes made by the Republicans as led by Donald Trump, and of course demographic changes as, in particular, the Atlanta area has grown into a massive urban area with over 6 million inhabitants). Despite these factors Georgia's state-level government is still controlled by Republicans (Brian Kemp, the Governor, is the descendant of slave-owning cotton planters and he lives in the ante-bellum mansion on the very same plantation). It is a state whose legislature has passed laws making it a felony to give people, standing in long lines waiting to vote, a bottle of water or a sandwich. That same legislature also passed other laws; allowing the state legislature to remove elected District Attorneys that they say are corrupt or incompetent (read ideologically incompatible with far-right authoritarian rule); and also that allows the state legislature to take over county boards of elections where the legislators allege that there is corruption or other irregularities (again read ideologically incompatible with far-right authoritarian rule); and also that allows private citizens to challenge unlimited numbers of voter registrations; and that action forces the county board of elections to remove those people from the voter rolls until those purged people can prove that they actually live in the district (and there are active Republican operatives who are doing that in large numbers). In fact, as Greg Palast pointed out on Jan 24, 2024: “A federal court in Georgia ruled on Tuesday that the challenge to 360,000 Georgians’ right to vote, suspiciously targeting Black voters, does not violate the federal Voting Rights Act. Judge Steve C. Jones slapped aside the suit brought by Stacy Abrams’ Fair Fight against Texas group True the Vote, which had created the hit list of voters.” (Emphasis added)

(See, “Court Approves Vigilante Mass Voter Challenges Devastating Threat To 2024 Election”, for theThom Hartmann Report, Jan 4, 2024, Greg Palast, Greg Palast.com, at < https://www.gregpalast.com/court-approves-vigilante-mass-voter-challengesdevastating-threat-to-2024-election/ >)

It is incomprehensible, to me anyways, that the people at Fair Fight and other Democratic Party oriented political operations in the state aren't busy doing the exact same thing to Republican leaning voters, two can play this game. But implausibly, they are too high-minded for such tactics. And the figures that Palast quoted were as of January 4, 2004. I doubt that the Republicans have quit pursuing this method of rigging the election to favor themselves in the 4 months since Palast published his article. Still, the good people of Georgia continue to organize to combat the blatant anti-democratic program of the Georgia Republican party and the state legislature they control.

Then we have North Carolina. For many years North Carolina was the southern state with the most glimmers of progressive ideas, along with Louisiana and its dominant city New Orleans. The Governor is a Democrat and the state-wide vote is close, Democratic Party candidates win state-wide offices and so do Republicans. However the state legislature, due to the defection of one rotten Democratic Party member has a veto-proof 2/3 majority and has taken measures to try to ensure that no Democratic Party candidates win state-wide office, including the Presidency, in the future. The Republicans have taken control of the state Supreme Court and the heavily gerrymandered congressional districts, that had been thrown out for a couple of election cycles, have been reinstated and OKed by the State Supreme Court. If North Carolina goes for Trump the total of electoral votes Trump will garner would be 267.

To win, with Georgia and North Carolina going to Trump, the Democratic Party's candidate would have to win in all the other “Swing States”, for a total electoral vote of 271. Then there is the question of the two states that allocate their electoral votes with 2 going to the overall vote winner and the others according to who wins in their congressional districts. Nebraska always has one electoral vote go to the Democratic Candidate and Maine always has one electoral vote go to the Republican Candidate. That would result in an Electoral College win by just a whisker at 270 to 268 for the Democratic Candidate. (We can only wonder how the heavily armed Trumpistas would react to that result). That would also just barely avert the possibility of an Electoral College tie of 269 – 269, an eventuality that would throw the election into the House of Representatives, where each state gets 1 vote based on their house delegation majority; and that vote would be 26 – 24 in favor of Donald Trump. Of course, the Democratic strategists know about this and plan to change Maine over to a winner-take-all system if Nebraska makes that change.

Still one likely situation will be that, if the Democratic Candidate for President can take Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, he/she might well will win a squeaker Electoral College victory of 271 to 267.

So what can we expect. If Trump wins he will establish a dictatorship run by the most extreme right-wing minions of Capital. Social Security will be privatized and looted, Medicare will be privatized and looted (that is already partly accomplished), women will be reduced to the status of Miedeval Handmaids in their rights to reproductive healthcare and access to abortion, all environmental laws will be repealed, during the period from Nov 5^th to January 20^th several hundred thousand and perhaps several million well-off and prosperous Americans will leave the country (these sorts of people are already making their arrangements), and so on and so on. Like Hitler and the Nazis the first targets of the Trumpian Final Regime will be the honest police, judiciary, and other public officials. Eventually, if the Trumpistas can take control of the military, a major protest demonstration will be machine gunned with the bodies removed with front-end loaders and unceremoniously dumped in some unmarked mass grave pit. All serious organized dissent will end immediately; as the people who cannot flee try to hide out and suffer through the period of fascist dictatorship.

If the Democratic Party's Candidate wins we can expect that Trump will not accept the outcome and will encourage his, heavily armed, followers to attack and kill anybody to the left of their ideological stance. We would have to survive a period of what is called “Stochastic Terrorism” (Stochastic means random). But that is certainly within our capabilities and it would once again expose these people for what the really are. Whatever happens fascism will be averted if the people take an active role in their own destiny, not just by voting against the fascists but by resisting them on every level.

So this is no trivial period in American History. The U.S. has a large number of fascists and fellow-travelers, particularly concentrated in the South, the Midwest, and some of the mountain states. The maps that are generally used to portray the political situation in the U.S. make the situation look far worse than it actually is as far as support for the most virulent faction in the U.S. Political landscape the Trump dominated Regions. An example of that sort of map with data presented down to the county level is found here in Map 1 below:

 

A somewhat more accurate representation of the actual political sentiments of the population is shown in maps that somehow include the size of the vote in each county. Map 2 below still retains the physically accurate outline of the U.S. but superimposes the size of the voting results for each county.

 

The next step, moving from a physically accurate but sociologically deceptive map to a less accurate physical but non deceptive map sociologically is shown in Maps 3 and 4. Here the scale of the voting results for each county are increased and the graphics of the results of counties do not overlap. Map 3 has the simple win or lose blue and red circles; while Map 4 has the same circles but the hue indicates the percentage of the vote totals with bright blue for counties where Biden won by a large margin and bright red for counties where Trump won by a large margin. And we should note that in the eastern half of the U.S. and along the Pacific Coast the size of the population causes the county circles to swell out beyond the borders of the country; while in the U.S. from the western plains through to the Cascades and Sierras there is still empty country. The advantage of these sorts of maps / cartograms is that they do not distort the map of the U.S. as much as some cartograms.

A different approach is used in this interesting map that changes the size of the red or blue image of each state while placing it in an outline map of the U.S. Here California is at 100% of its actual size. Most states are smaller in this cartogram than there actual physical size while Washington D.C. is 13,065% of its actual physical size, New Jersey is 478%, Florida is 131% and Ohio is 120% of their respective actual physical sizes.

Many political analysts and commentators have speculated on what effect the ongoing struggle over Abortion and Reproductive Healthcare will have on the Presidential and other elections that will take place on November 4^th of this year. So far we have seen from an 8% to an 18% shift of votes away from right-wing Republicans towards liberal Democratic candidates. Some analysts even think there could be a large enough swing to make Florida or even Ohio places where Trump could lose. Florida, along with Texas, has passed laws making even tiny mistakes in voter registration drives felonies with fines of $100,000 and prison terms of 15 or 20 years. Even the League of Women Voters has suspended voter registration drives, long a staple of American politics, in those two states. The application of these penalties is only against Democratic Leaning voter registration organizations, so it has ended the use of voter registration drives to support Democratic Party efforts in those states. The recent imposition of the Republi-fascist 6-week abortion ban in Florida will certainly mobilize plenty of women in Florida to vote for Initiative-4 and some, though fewer, to vote for the Democratic Candidate for President, and for the Democratic candidate for Senate in Florida. The hated Ted Cruz is also up for re-election to the Senate in Texas, and he barely won the heavily rigged election system against Beto O'Rourke 6 years ago.  The Texas State Legislature will likely need to seize the Harris County Election Board and change the vote totals to get Cruz over the line in the election against Collin Allred.  Will that action be too blatant or, more likely, will the fascist Texas State Legislature eagerly take it.  A map of the status of Abortion Access, in the various states, is posted below to complement this commentary. 

But always remember that the isolated hopeless situation that maps like Map 1 here engender are not accurate. The far-right controls a huge swathe of thinly inhabited territory. Anywhere there is significant population the sentiments are, to a much greater degree, against the far-right and their oppressive agenda.