‘Bumpy ride ahead’ in aftermath of US elections: Analyst

US journalist and political analyst Don DeBar has said there is a "bumpy ride ahead" after the coming presidential election is over.

"People should be aware that November 3 will likely be the beginning, not the end, of a power struggle in the US between President Trump and those forces that have become known as 'the deep state,'" who, he said, have been trying to unseat the president since the last election and now see the opportunity to do so.

According to a report, a record $14 billion is being spent during the 2020 US election cycle, with Democrats doubling the spending by Republican candidates.

The sum will be more than double of what was spent in the 2016 election, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), CNBC reported on Wednesday.

The presidential campaign between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic Joe Biden is expected to end up seeing $6.6 billion in total spending by Election Day, while congressional races between Democrats and Republicans are estimated to finish with just over $7 billion.

Democratic contenders have doubled the spending by Republican candidates. They have spent so far about $6.9 billion while Republicans have put in $3.8 billion into the 2020 contest.

CRP initially estimated that a total of $10.8 billion will be spent on the 2020 US election cycle but then it changed the estimation and said it would be almost $14 billion due in part to the huge amount of fundraising in the final months of the election.

People from Wall Street have donated 5 times more money to Biden than to Trump.

Biden has an 8-point lead over Trump nationally in a new Fox News poll released on Friday. The former vice president has the support of 52 percent of likely voters in the poll, while Trump trails at 44 percent.

$14 billion being spent during 2020 US election cycle: Report

A record 14 billion dollar is being spent during the 2020 US election cycle, with Democrats doubling the spending by Republican candidates, according to a report.

"I know money is supposed to trump all - including Trump - in politics," DeBar told Press TV in an online interview on Saturday. "But I don't think there is enough money in existence to pull it off.  Maybe if they had either let Sanders be the candidate - and I think it would have had to be in 2016, he was damaged goods already this time around  - or had groomed another like him. But I think the evidence is there in the polls - no matter how they've tried, from a four year wall-to-wall negative media campaign to impeachment, his support seems unshakable. Rather than toppling Trump, these efforts have exposed some of the limits of institutional power to open view for the first time."

DeBar said that Trump should be understood as the head of a movement which, despite the attempt to mischaracterize it as such, is not a white supremacist movement but a part of a larger movement of the working class that is in response to its precarious position and the failure of the political institutions to provide a solution to that problem.

"It is a phenomenon larger than Trump," he said, explaining that "Sanders voters were motivated by the same conditions."

"Each was expressed through the existing political apparatus, during the 2016 primary season. Trump won and voters had the chance to vote for him in the 2016 general election. Sanders lost - really, it was stolen - and voters were faced with three choices - Trump, who was saying many of the same things as Sanders regarding jobs, etc.; Clinton, who was a poster child for exactly what the Sanders and Trump working class voters were rejecting; or not voting at all."

He added, "We know how that turned out."

DeBar said that this year's Democratic primaries, under the cover of COVID, were manipulated to thwart another attempt by Sanders to replicate the Trump phenomenon in that party. "They first flooded the field with 'new' faces - but mostly with the same neoliberal economic and neocon foreign policies that were rejected by workers - along with Sanders, and then there was that one, tired old face - Biden. Then, after the cancellations, manipulations and backroom dealmaking rounds were all done, Biden was in and Sanders was out - again."

He added, "But despite their best efforts, Trump is still in, and he did deliver just about everything he said he would, and with the headwinds of complete institutional hostility. He's drawing crowds of 20-30 thousand people three times/day, compared to Biden/Obama events drawing less than 100."

Meanwhile, DeBar pointed to the rise of Black Lives Matter, which he also characterized as a part of the working class movement. "There have been working class people in the streets led by Black workers who are also done with the system, and whose situation is as precarious as before, only with a body count that hasn't abated under either Obama/Biden or Trump," he said.

"Given the foregoing, no one knows what the people will do on November 3. And then there is the problem of legitimacy of the institutions - no one trusts the authorities to count the votes, and no one trusts the media to report accurately on what the authorities say or do," he said, adding, "It's gonna be a bumpy ride from here."

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