According to the usual practice, the election results will be announced on the second day of the U.S. election day, but three days have passed, and the results of this year’s election are still uncertain.
Before the results of the election were announced, both sides were confident of winning the election.
All “win”, then who loses?
Just look at the loss of the American media and you will know the answer.
CNN: No matter who wins the election, the United States can no longer return.
“New York Times”: No matter who wins, the deep-seated problems in the United States have not been resolved.
In previous US elections, even though the process was full of uncertainty, the result was unique. In the current US election, the only certainty is uncertainty.
On the night of the election, demonstrations broke out in many places in Seattle. Not far from the White House, violent and wounding incidents also occurred.
Before the election, because of concerns about riots, even the merchants erected tall boards in Times Square in the United States.
The third wave of the epidemic has not yet dissipated, and the general election is accompanied by a new chaos.
Just like the campaign slogan of the Biden team, “Build Back Better” (build a better future).
Why did “make America great again” four years ago become “reconstruction”?
Can America go back in time?
The day before the general election, the White House also set up numerous fences.
It seems like a notice that what the United States wants to conduct is not an election, but an election battle.
On the night of the general election, the counting process was like a roller coaster.
There are a total of 538 electoral votes in the U.S. presidential election, and candidates must win at least 270 of them to be elected. According to US media reports, on the evening of the 4th local time, Biden won 264 votes and Trump won 214 votes.
The focus is on Nevada, which owns the casino city of Las Vegas. This state has exactly 6 electoral votes. If Biden gathers these 6 votes, the election will have a result.
Just like a metaphor, Americans are all experiencing a big bet.
According to the “Time” magazine review:
|”We stand at a rare moment. For several generations, it will mark the dividing line between’previous’ and’future’.”
The voter turnout in this general election also reached the highest since 1908. Before the general election, more than 90 million people voted in advance.
With the addition of queuing and mailing ballots on “Election Day”, the total number of voters will reach 150 million.
It’s just that the Americans’ choice eventually turned into a chicken feather.
Seeing that they might lose the vote, the Trump campaign claimed to have initiated legal proceedings in multiple states, requiring Biden to recount the votes in Wisconsin, where Biden won the election, review the counting of votes in Michigan, and stop counting in Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Moreover, they filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court.
The voting battle may evolve into a melee, and this bet may still be fruitless. Richard Hasson, a professor at the University of California, recently published a book called “The Election Collapse.”
In the book he has already predicted:
| “We are likely to see a protracted post-election struggle in court and on the streets.”
From the election day on November 3, 2020, to the inauguration ceremony of the new president of the United States on January 20, 2021, there is a total of 79 days of transition period, full of new uncertainties.
Historically, it has not been the case that re-election was won by rioting in the Federal Court, and even today’s plot can be reproduced in American history.
In the 1876 US general election, the Democratic candidate Tilden led the vote count that night, but because the remaining states did not issue the remaining 20 electoral votes in time, both parties claimed that they had won.
Finally, it ran into the Federal Court, and the 15-member Election Committee composed of Supreme Court justices, senators, and representatives directly awarded 20 electoral votes to the Republican candidates.
As a result, the Republican candidate Hayes won by one vote, almost triggering civil unrest.
The most recent election farce occurred in 2000.
The Americans even wrote a special book to commemorate this incident, called “The Peak Showdown in Court: The Presidential Election Between Bush and Gore.”
Diao Daming, a scholar at Renmin University of China who has been following the U.S. election, told Master Tan:
丨Nearly half of the past 44 presidents have been re-elected. Especially in recent years, re-election of presidents is very common.
Will the Trump administration’s efforts to “Make America Great Again” come to an end? Four years later, have they fulfilled their campaign promises?
“Keep America Great” is Trump’s 2020 campaign slogan.
When asked about the difference between this slogan and the 2016 “Make America Great Again” (Make America Great Again), Trump said: “We have made America great again.”
Such “confidence”, as always.
The New York Times and CNN analyzed 11,887 updated tweets in the 33 months since Trump took office in November 2019.
Among them, there are 2026 boastful tweets.
If you refer to what was said in the State of the Union address, this “confidence” looks quite confident:
Since I was elected, we have created 7 million new jobs, 5 million more than the previous government experts predicted
The net assets of the lowest half of the people increased by 47%, three times faster than the wealth of the richest 1%
The United States has now added 12,000 new factories, and there are thousands of factories under planning or construction
The U.S. stock market soared 70%, adding more than 12 trillion US dollars of wealth to our country, beyond everyone’s imagination
New jobs, manufacturing return, unemployment rate, plus the stock market, what are the four indicators that sound glamorous?
Some achievements are made out of nothing.
Trump once said in an interview that he created the best economy in American history.
But in fact, before the outbreak, the average annual growth rate of the US economy was only 2.48%, which was only better than the 2.41% of Obama’s second term.
Trump also said that the income of African Americans has increased 9 times compared with the previous administration.
But in fact, from 2016 to 2018, the median income of black Americans only increased by $39.
Some achievements are hidden from the sky.
Lord Tan added 7 million to the monthly “new non-agricultural jobs” announced by the US Department of Labor after Trump took office, which is correct.
But this number is “new addition”, not “net increase”. Lost jobs are not included in the statistics.
Most of these new job opportunities are “summer beach side dishes”-this is the analogy of Jia Jinjing, assistant dean of the Chongyang Institute of Finance of Renmin University of China, to Tan Zhu.
Most of the new positions are temporary.
Jia Jinjing told Master Tan that the indicator that truly reflects the economic situation should be the labor participation rate. The U.S. labor force participation rate in 2019 was 62.9%-fluctuating around the lowest range since 1980.
The “return of manufacturing industries” closely related to employment is also a “political achievement” advocated by the US government.
You know, the average weekly salary in the US manufacturing industry is $922, close to three times the weekly salary in the catering industry. The return of manufacturing can indeed “make America great again.”
But the United States, has it done so?
There is a factory that the United States is particularly concerned about, and it is Foxconn.
In June 2018, Trump came to Wisconsin, USA, to participate in the groundbreaking ceremony of Foxconn’s LCD panel base. At the ceremony, he even personally shoveled soil to start the factory.
Before the start of construction, Foxconn promised to invest 10 billion U.S. dollars in the factory and employ 13,000 employees by 2022.
At the same time, the state of Wisconsin has pledged to give Foxconn a subsidy ranging from 3 billion to 4.8 billion-this is the largest subsidy to foreign companies in the history of the United States.
It carries the hope of the United States for the return of manufacturing industry-Trump called it “the eighth wonder of the world” and promised to turn Wisconsin into a high-tech manufacturing state overnight.
But by the end of last year, Foxconn had hired only 281 employees who met the terms of the contract, not even the expected fraction.
The situation at the Foxconn factory is a microcosm of the return of American manufacturing.
Lack of labor with relevant skills, high labor costs, and shortcomings in supporting infrastructure have all become important reasons restricting the return of manufacturing.
The most important thing is “shareholder firstism”-in order to pursue a higher rate of return on capital, American multinational companies have begun to pursue light assets and divest themselves of “heavy” manufacturing. This is a choice made by American capital.
The revival of American manufacturing is not as simple as inviting a few companies to build factories in the United States. Corresponding to the desertedness of manufacturing is the carnival of capital.
During the four years of the Trump administration, the US stock market has risen by 70%. But the beneficiaries are not ordinary people.
Liu Zhiqin, a researcher at the Chongyang Institute of Finance at Renmin University of China, told Master Tan:
|”The White House has been sending a signal to large American companies: Support me, you will definitely benefit, and the stock market will definitely rise.”
According to data from the Federal Reserve, the richest 1% of Americans hold more than 50% of stocks and shares, and the richest 10% hold more than 88% of stocks.
Three of the four indicators of the Trump administration to “make America great again” are related to ordinary Americans, but they are false. The last one is real, but it is just a carnival of a handful of rich people.
It is hard to say whether the United States is “great again”.
But the United States must be “more torn.”
Who is the direct victim of this tear is particularly explicit and dazzling during the epidemic.
This is a set of figures published on social media by US Senator Bernie Sanders.
During the epidemic, 20% of American small businesses closed down; 12 million Americans lost their health insurance; 54 million Americans had no food security.
At the same time, the wealth of 644 American billionaires increased by $931 billion.
Behind the dual world of ice and fire is social tearing. The gap between rich and poor in the United States has been widening in the past 50 years.
In 1980, the top 1% of the income group in the United States had only about 10% of their total income in the national income. By 2015, this proportion had almost doubled, exceeding 20%.
At the same time, for the 50% of the lowest income groups, the proportion of their total income in the national income has changed in the opposite direction, dropping from 20% to around 12%.
When the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, the underlying problems also surface, and extreme polarization is placed in front of the ruling party:
On one side is the majority of ordinary people, but they have very little wealth in their hands.
The other is a very wealthy minority, but they have limited votes.
The fundamental interests of the two parties are irreconcilable, and the ruling party in the United States can only choose one of the two to represent the interests of one of them.
Obviously, in the past four years, the ruling party in the United States has chosen chaebols. After all, election funds, the ability to solicit candidates, the backbone of activities, and the operation of organizations all require continuous investment of funds. In exchange, they have introduced more and more policies. Lean towards the chaebol.
The “cake” is only that big, if one side cuts more, the other side will definitely get less.
While taking refuge in “golden masters”, they also face a dilemma: how to make the rich get richer and richer, and at the same time win the support of ordinary people who are getting poorer and poorer?
The democratic dilemma rooted in the huge gap between the rich and the poor has gradually attracted great attention. In the book “Tweet Governing the Country” published this year, the author Jacob Hacker conducted a deep analysis and aroused great repercussions.
Lord Tan contacted Huck for a discussion. He summarized the solution of the ruling party as “chaebol populism.” Since ordinary people cannot be satisfied in economic interests, populism should be used to mobilize their support.
Many organizations have become “grass-level agents” of political parties, such as the “National Rifle Association (NRA)”.
With the support of the ruling party, the National Rifle Association has continued to expand the ownership of guns in the United States. With the increase in gun ownership, the National Rifle Association has established a huge membership network and grassroots organizations using its training responsibilities on gun use and safety education. , The number of members exceeds 5 million, which is equivalent to a medium-sized state in the United States, and its influence continues to expand.
During the training process, the association continued to promote the significance of gun ownership for personal safety and freedom. In the selected cases, African Americans and Latino Americans often appeared as abusers, deliberately creating a sense of threat, and under threat , It is easier for people to shape their identity. The issue of gun control and possession has gradually evolved into an issue of racial confrontation.
These have been used by conservative parties to become a balance weight. They have shifted the attention of ordinary people from the huge gap between rich and poor to issues of race and immigration, inspiring populism, and by aligning with the people on racial issues. To get support.
In the past four years, chaebol populism has prevailed. As the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, the ruling party has not faced the problem head-on and rebalanced the distribution of benefits. Instead, it has constantly shifted contradictions and further stimulated populism.
Not only that, they even directly challenged the democratic system. The Trump campaign claimed to initiate legal proceedings in multiple states and the Supreme Court. The method of reviewing votes is the best proof that American democracy is already very fragile.
According to media forecasts, gun sales in the United States this year may set a new record. why?
The day before the election, The Economist released the results of a survey:
58% of voters who may vote believe that Trump’s re-election will trigger mass protests; 22% believe that Biden’s victory is likely to trigger protests.
Millions of Americans worry that the election will be accompanied by riots and turmoil, which is also the evil result of chaebol populism.
The problems before the new president and the ruling party are looming.
For the future of American democracy, Jacob Harker expressed his concerns:
Can this dilemma be resolved? The Americans are still waiting for an answer.
