This rigged election counts

Donald Trump is right. This election is rigged, but in his favor. Here is some evidence:

1. Grossly excessive media coverage in Trump’s favor, including failure to press him for his tax returns and documentation related to his wife’s immigration.
2. Concerted efforts in swing states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania to suppress minority voting.
3. Russian hacking and Wikileaks publication of Clinton-connected emails.
4. FBI statements about Clinton-connected investigations with not a whisper of investigations of Trump, whose malfeasance is publicly documented.

I suppose it is possible the FBI and IRS have no ongoing investigations of Trump, but that would prove rather than disprove the point.

Clinton has other disadvantages: she is a woman in a political world that men still dominate, she has a long public record that necessarily displays mistakes, and she is brainier than she is warm and fuzzy, which is a combination that makes people more envious than admiring. The campaign has done nothing to make her more popular with some of the American people, especially those who are less educated and more rural.

She is still likely to win. Best guess is that she will have only a few percentage points advantage in the popular vote, but the electoral college will give her a far wider margin. She has run a mostly successful campaign in swing states, while holding on to all those she could count on from the start.

Will Trump concede? Who knows. It doesn’t really matter. Concession is more a traditional ceremony than a politically or legally important act. If the election is close enough for him to pursue one or two states in court, that will be a problem. But his appearance on TV to accept a clear defeat is irrelevant.

Clinton will nevertheless start her mandate with two strikes against her: she’ll face continued FBI investigation and she’ll likely not enjoy Democratic control of Congress. Even if the Republicans lose their majority in the Senate, the Democrats are not likely to have the 60 votes there required to get things done. The House will likely have a reduced, but still effective, Republican majority.

What a Republican majority means will be an open question. Trump has moved the Republican party far from traditional conservatism: he wants colossal infrastructure spending, limits on immigration, and less free trade, in addition to the more conventional increase in defense expenditures, tax reductions, and the repeal of Obamacare. Will part of the Republican party stick with his platform, or will it revert in defeat to a more conventional conservative posture? Will at least part of the Republican caucus be prepared to cooperate on immigration reform and Obamacare improvements, thus reaching out to minority voters, or will they continue across-the-board obstruction?

Much of the world is looking to Tuesday’s election as if it were their own. What America does matters worldwide. But it will be weeks or even months before we know whether we are about to break out of our current cycle of difficulty in governing, or spiral deeper into the abyss. Liberal democracy needs to demonstrate its effectiveness if it wants to survive and shine a light the rest of the world will want to follow. As appalling as it is to me that more than 40% of my fellow Americans will vote for an unqualified, dyspeptic, racist, misogynist xenophobe, his defeat will be a re-assertion of commitment to liberal democracy and a freer world.

If Trump wins, all bets are off. More than anything else, the uncertainty will create havoc on world markets and in international relations. His success in rigging the elections will tarnish liberal democracy for a generation and encourage the worst instincts of ethnic nationalists all over the world. This rigged election counts.