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Trump will have a powerful voice, even if he loses – think tank
By Kemol King
President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass
Kaieteur News – President of the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR), Richard Haass has posited that even if the result of the US 2020 Presidential Election goes in the seeming direction with Democratic nominee, Joe Biden becoming President, Republican nominee and current President Donald Trump will still hold considerable political power and influence long after he cedes his office. The New York-based think tank made this assessment in its Election 2020 series.
Haas said that Trump is probably going to have considerable influence in choosing the Republican party’s nominee for the US 2024 Presidential election, and that “Trumpism” will remain a powerful force in America.
Over the weekend, several US media houses called the election in favour of Biden after they determined that he had gotten commanding vote leads ahead of Trump in enough states to guarantee him the majority needed at the Electoral College.
CFR’s President posited that despite what appears to be political efforts to disenfranchise persons who voted by mail in areas likely to grant majority support to the Democrats, America’s democracy is “robust”.
Up until the 2020 election, Obama could have boasted securing the most votes ever in the country’s Presidential Election with a record 69,498,516 votes – Biden’s vote count as of the writing of this article was upwards of 74 million.
However, Haas says there has been no “blue wave”, no commanding political realignment Democrats may have hoped for. Biden may have broken Obama’s record, but Trump surpassed it too with over 70 million votes. This happened, Haass said, even against the backdrop of what he calls Trump’s “mishandling” of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The country has already recorded 10.1 million COVID-19 cases, with more than 238,000 ending up dead – nearly a fifth of all deaths worldwide. Haass sought to proffer that America is a deeply divided nation, judging from the high voter turnout nearly split between the two men.
“Americans increasingly dwell in separate worlds.” Haass wrote. “They have sorted themselves into communities and regions with those of similar views. Each world tends to watch its own cable television channels, listen to its own radio stations and podcasts, and visit its own websites. And the absence of a national civics curriculum facilitates sorting across generations.”
Even if Biden goes on to be President, CFR is of the view that the government will be divided. Haas determined that the Democrats would take the White House and retain the House of Representatives, with Republicans keeping control of the Senate.
“They will have to coexist; whether they can work together remains to be seen,” he said.
CFR is of the opinion that many of Trump’s supporters will refuse to accept a Biden presidency as legitimate, and that it is quite possible Trump will never concede the race. Trump has claimed victory on Twitter, though no publication has called the election in his favour. His campaign has also cast aspersions on the integrity of the electoral process, yet but has provided no proof.
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