Trump's election threats a distraction from GOP voter suppression

By Max Parry

Regardless of the outcome or whoever is declared the winner, which is inevitable just given the back-and-forth rhetoric during the last several months in the lead up to the election that no matter what the outcome, the result is going to be heavily disputed by both sides. 

And so I think we can only expect that we most likely will not know the result on Election Day, or the following week or this process could even take several months and there could be an ensuing legal battle, which could drag out for months.

Some people have even raised the scenario that constitutionally the Speaker of the House would become president if it goes on for months. But the election is going to be taking place in the midst of a period of many, many months of already widespread social unrest, mass demonstrations, incidents of violence and domestic terrorism, riots in major US cities, and the deployment of law enforcement and, of course, also with the ongoing pandemic and the economic devastation from the massive layoffs and also the mass protests over the police brutality and racism during the summer.

So all of this is a recipe leading up to the Election Day for really an explosion of more unrest which I just think given the circumstances and how close the election seems like it's going to be it just seems like the ingredients are all there for more unrest, no matter what the outcome is.

And Trump during this period of unrest has emboldened a lot of the more extreme right-wing elements in his base, and we see how this has played out in cities like Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin.

And it seems to me like he's really hindering his reelection chances upon being the so-called law-and-order-candidate. The blueprint for that strategy was laid by Richard Nixon in 1968 when he adopted the southern strategy to win the presidency.

And the so-called law-and-order strategy has long been understood as a Republican dog-whistle to appeal to racism against African Americans beginning in 1968 when Nixon successfully flipped the formerly Democratic southern states to the GOP by running on a "tough on crime" and "law-and-order" strategy. But the difference here is that Nixon won that not as an incumbent, and with Trump's widely perceived  mishandling of the pandemic there's a much bigger chance of his losing reelection than there was for Nixon who won re-election in a landslide.

But in addition to emboldening these elements, Trump has also threatened to dispatch tens of thousands of what he's calling "poll watchers" to big cities like Milwaukee and Detroit. And it's eerily reminiscent of like Jim Crow-era tactics of voter intimidation and harassment and that's what a lot of the analysis has been in regards to his threats.

It's a continuation of his threats during the riots when he threatened to deploy the National Guard and law enforcement to the Democratic held cities. But with this sort of cozy relationship that's been observed between these right-wing militia vigilante types and law enforcement like we saw in Wisconsin I think it's possible we could see more of that under the guise of policing the electoral process because Trump has raised this issue of mail-in voter fraud since so many people plan to vote by mail because of the pandemic.

On the one hand, I think it would be a mistake not to take this sort of authoritarian posturing seriously on his part, but I think ultimately it's kind of a distraction and a smokescreen from the more real threat of his challenging the validity of these mail-in votes which is the real purpose of these "poll watchers."

I think especially in these key swing states like Michigan he's following a formula that has worked for Republicans in the past which is systemic voter purging and disenfranchising racial minorities and the poor by simply not counting their votes.

It's very well documented the GOP massive purging of ballots and voter suppression over the years, especially of minorities and the poor.

So I think like ultimately these fears of his consolidating power or there being some kind of the equivalent of the Reichstag fire because of his threatening to deploy the police or the threat of these vigilante groups like the proud boys and the Boogaloo boys like these people in Kenosha, Wisconsin that has been assisting law enforcement and in cracking down on these riots, I think these more obvious police state  measures are a perfect distraction from the real way that he and the GOP would like to steal the election which is through the way that they've done it in the past which is through systematic voter suppression.

Many of the never Trumpers like the Koch brothers have long been invested in voter suppression. I think they're just using Trump and this threat of authoritarianism to sort of refine their strategy. The issue of voter fraud... it's very ironic that Trump himself has raised the issue of mail-in voter problems because it is true that something like one in five, like around 20% of all mail-in ballots in the past have been discounted or lost for various reasons, and most of the time they've been voters of color.

The reality is that that would actually help Trump's chances and hurt Biden, not the other way around. He's trying to increase that with these attempts at interfering with the mail delivery, threatening to cut additional funding to the Postal Service. There's a huge conflict of interest with the current Postmaster General who's a big donor to Trump, and you know who's personally invested in private companies that do mail delivery service.

So, there's an active effort to ultimately destroy the Postal Service which is in the Constitution. So again, I think this kind of like specter of Trump's authoritarianism is a perfect smokescreen from the way that the GOP has always tried to steal elections and that's what this systematic voter purging and suppression. And I think Trump is the perfect distraction.

So while I think it would be a huge mistake not to take these threats of authoritarianism seriously and I don't mean to diminish the threat of these right-wing vigilante groups and their militancy. I think it is a very serious threat, but I think it's also a perfect way to distract people from the way that we already know in the past it's worked to steal elections and that's through this purging the ballots and this kind of class war by other means in voter suppression.

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*Max Parry is an independent American journalist and geopolitical analyst based in New York. He is an advisor at the Center for Political Innovation and also serves as an editor at the Greanville Post. He recorded this article for Press TV.

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