Steve McGookinOn Saturday evening, President Donald Trump is set to announce his nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of liberal icon and long-serving Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The urgency and motivation behind Trump’s choice has generated a heightened level of partisan controversy and is just the latest surreal twist as this unprecedented campaign enters its final weeks, with the President and his supporters in congress seeking to make the appointment quickly to prepare for what they expect will be contentious litigation following the November 3rd election.
Over recent weeks, Trump has increasingly sought to discredit the integrity of the election process, focusing – at the height of a pandemic that has already killed more than 200,000 Americans – on what he calls the “scam” of voting by mail. Previously, he has set the scene for post-election chaos by saying that the “only way we are going to lose is if the election is rigged.”
This week he went one step further, apparently refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he were to lose. Senior Republicans quickly appeared to row back on such rhetoric, but in doing so reinforced the idea that the election result would “inevitably” end up in court. Just a day after the White House said the president would respect the outcome of the election, he told a campaign rally in Florida that he was “not sure the election could be honest.”
No matter how loudly his supporters chant for “twelve more years,” Trump’s path to a legitimate electoral victory appears increasingly under threat as his Democratic opponent, former Vice-President Joe Biden, has held consistent opinion poll leads nationally and in many key battleground states. The Democrats also look on course to make significant gains in the Senate, something which would fundamentally shift the balance of legislative power – at least until the midterm elections in another two years.
The upcoming battle over the Supreme Court seat, however, has certainly changed the political dynamic, potentially making the election less of a personal referendum on Trump and more of a signpost to the ideological direction of a deeply divided country.
With the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden set for Tuesday night, the political stage appears set for a hectic and ill-tempered next forty days, with arguably more at stake than in any presidential election in our recent history.
Join Northern Slant for an election discussion
A lot has changed in six months. (A lot has changed in six weeks, but sometimes it really doesn’t help to think about exactly how much).
Six months ago, in the “Before Times,” we at Northern Slant were preparing to present a discussion event, “The US and us – The Next Chapter in Northern Ireland’s Transatlantic Relationship” as part of the Imagine Festival of Ideas and Politics.
Unfortunately, Covid intervened and we weren’t able to host the event in the flesh. We delayed moving online, as many other festival events did, in the hope that we might be able to reconvene in person later in the year. Alas, those plans were also swept away with a continuation of the virus and its restrictions.
So we have organized what we hope will be the next best thing; a virtual discussion featuring Northern Slant writers and almost all of our original panelists. We’ll look at the topics that are likely to dominate the final weeks of the campaign – like the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for racial justice, along with the Coronavirus response and the future of healthcare, as well as growing economic disparity and how fundamental disagreements within a society firmly entrenched as Red and Blue might eventually be resolved.
But, crucially, the discussion will be about how this most significant of elections for America is also vital to the future of the world – and specifically for us here in Northern Ireland at a sensitive moment in our own politics.
We’ll be putting questions to our guests remotely and we’d like your input – what topics or themes would you like to see us address? Use the feedback form below to send us your thoughts anytime over the next week. We’ll then organize the discussion and post the resulting video online in the week beginning October 12.
By then, who knows what might have happened?
See Also:
‘Celtic’ Biden’s Call to Irish-America
