The House always wins: US elections leave status quo unaffected, except for Trump

By Daniel Patrick Welch

So, what now? Well, we're still screwed. It’s not news, I know, but it's depressing. It’s awful. The establishment got exactly what they want. Like microsurgery or some bullshit. They may not be all powerful, but they do get what they want eventually.

Will it drag on? No I tend to think it's all over but the shouting. The shouting, yes, will drag on for a while. But if Nevada and Michigan hold, then Pennsylvania is irrelevant--couldn't even get a hearing at the Supreme Court because it's not decisive.

I don't think there are enough Republican votes left to flip those states back; and even Pennsylvania is looking grim for Trump. The last votes counted are always Philly and surroundings, which traditionally go  like 80% for the Democrat. So Trump has shrunk from a million votes ahead to just 150,000 this morning. With two days left of counting. Recounts have to meet a very strict threshold--like .5%, and they rarely change the outcome anyway.

Besides, in the hyperbole of the moment people tend to forget history. The Nixon-Kennedy fight in 1960 was so close that it dragged on into December, with the RNC filing suit in something like a dozen states. The system thrives on this cliffhanger crap, the illusion of ‘a real fight’ in a ‘robust democracy.’

But the bigger picture that people have to keep in mind is that the big cheating has already happened long ago. It has very little to do with ballots. Ballot issues in a US election are like a baseball player trying to steal second base in a game his manager has already agreed to throw. The DNC tried six ways to Sunday (twenty, actually) to get someone, anyone, but Sanders. They trotted out everyone from a billionaire former Republican to a completely unknown low level Congressman (in my district) to see if anything would stick. Nothing did. So they settled, for lack of any alternative, on the worst candidate in the race, and backed him with all the power they could muster. And ugly, embarrassing stain on the already sullied mythical cloth of US’ sacrosanct ‘democracy.’

The point was always to get rid of Trump without changing anything substantial. The Old Guard was offended by his narcissistic buffoonery, his strutting, and his general capacity to make them look bad—though not, to be clear, his racist shtick (except in tone).

Yes, it was quite a surgical precision strike on the part of the establishment. Leaving them well placed to do the nothing they were going to do anyway. Assuming Biden pulls it off (fairly certain but not official at this point), he will be left with an opposition majority Senate (no gains there) and an actual loss of a few seats in the House. Despite this bleak performance, Nancy Pelosi will continue as Speaker, though you or I would surely be canned after such a lousy job.

What a cynical, disgusting system. I feel like I need a shower. But wait, as the commercials say, there’s more! The narrow not-quite-convincing victory was an almost clinical operation for the oligarchy that controls US politics. Now they can continue their fake ass ‘bipartisan’ reach across the aisle, a tired and outdated narrative if ever there was one. How did that gambit of reaching out to Republicans go? Inviting John Kasich to speak at your convention was never going to swing Ohio.

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But that was never really the point, was it?  It’s all for show, a real Shootout at the OG cabal. The OGs are determined to draw (and impose on us) exactly the wrong reasons for their shockingly bad performance. The real reason it proved so difficult to take down President Huff-and-Puff in the middle of a pandemic and an economic meltdown, we will be told, is that the Democrats have not drifted far enough to the right. Incredible. They will have us ignore what a catastrophic failure were the Kasich gambit, the Lincoln Project, and the tens of millions spent to increase Trump’s Republican loyalty vote. 

Likewise, we should pay no attention to details like how the $15 minimum wage won handily in Florida despite Biden’s abject failure to make gains there over 2016. Could it be that folks respond to policies that might affect their material lives? What a shocking, novel idea! Nope. The Democrat failure mill will continue to churn out excuses and lies to cover their cowardly role as ruling class fig leaf. It reminds me of Ned Flanders’ hippie parents from the Simpsons bemoaning their pathetic parenting: “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re out of ideas!”

But of course, this is the game, right? They don’t call it an election cycle for nothing. Here we go again. The revolving door of lizards and slugs who constantly populate the echelons of the State Department, the “intelligence” agencies and the corporate boardrooms will start turning once again.

Hacks and apparatchiks will bubble to the top in different suits. John Bolton might have been a loon, but Elliot Abrams is still making sure the US punishes Venezuela for, well, existing. These people float around the halls of power like plankton, all equally venal. It makes little difference whether they are elevated or demoted by a Democrat or a Republican. Kind of like Churchill is supposed to have said, “Our Germans are better than your Germans.”

And this is the scary part. Because of the hype about how terrible Trump was--Hitler, Mussolini, Ferdinand Marcos—Biden & Co will assault us nonstop about how NotTrump he is. They will essentially have carte blanche to do whatever they want with no real opposition from within their own party.

This is even more dangerous given the fact that there is literally nothing to recommend these frauds except for that one fact: They are NotTrump. No policy, no vision, not so much as a tip of the hat to popular concerns. Maybe Kamala will prove as good at scolding Black people as Obama. She certainly has a decent head start with jailing parents of truant children. Bring on the change!

Just look at the ‘ideals’ and ‘values’ they will be resuming. Death and destruction around the globe, in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Honduras and Libya, perhaps the most unnecessary and flagrantly opportunistic war on the empire’s blood drench dance card. Who’s next? I shudder at the thought. Biden will keep putting kids in the cages he and his boss built for Trump, and will quietly deport millions. We could do without that awful fanfare.  Still, it seems like a high price for the world to pay just to have a dude whose former boss looked better in a suit.

I made a joke the other day that voting for the wrong dude could leave warmongers in charge of US policy and lead to many deaths. Consequently, folks should choose wisely.

A lot of people didn't get the joke, but a Russian friend (not a hacker) suggested that If you vote for the wrong guy, one weapons company will make a whopping half a billion dollars less than another weapons company, because the other guy will give their lobbyists preferential treatment in the White House! Gotta really choose wisely here!

Exactly. They really should change Vegas to red and blue instead of red and black. It would make the whole circus a little more cohesive, and true to the ideals our venerated founding fathers/slavers held so dear. So put the cork back in that champagne. Remember George Carlin’s line: “It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it!”

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Daniel Patrick Welch is a writer of political commentary and analysis. Also a singer and songwriter, he lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts with his wife. Together they run The Greenhouse School. He has traveled widely, speaks five languages and studied Russian History and Literature at Harvard University. Welch has also appeared as a guest on several TV and radio channels to speak on topics of foreign affairs and political analysis--around his day job. He can be available for interview requests as time and scheduling permit. Despite the price of being outspoken against US foreign policy and military adventurism -- which can be steep in today's circumstances -- he believes firmly as did Rosa Luxemburg that "It will always be the most revolutionary act to tell the truth out loud."

Welch wrote this article for Press TV website.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk