By Juana Carrasco Martín on November 2, 2024 from Havana
graphic: Ares
This Tuesday, November 5, it is to be decided who will take over the administration of the empire from the White House. The bidding reaches its climax, but not much will change in the general political lines. The main contenders are only two sides of the same coin.
The race of the candidates in the United States to obtain the chair of the Oval Office of the White House or a podium in the Capitol or the governorship of a state arrives to the final stretch, to the climax of the spectacle.
There are only a few hours left until Tuesday when all the cards are being played and when a not inconsiderable number of citizens have already cast their early vote, by mail or in person. On Thursday, the last day of October, there were already 60 million voters and the forecast stated that the total would exceed the one hundred million early ballots in 2020.
For months, and even more so in this close, tense and atypical bid -because of the change of the Democratic candidate in the middle of the race-, the game was escalating, in a constant swing of advances and reversals of the predilection for one color or the other. A look at the media, digital networks, data from pollsters and even bookmakers, as well as lists of donations and funding, clearly show that we are witnessing a market where politicians are bought and sold, figures-symbols of powerful interests, and it is not the institutional process of so-called democracy, which they boast as pure and transparent, that decides.
Figures, memes, insults, questionings, dirty laundry are being aired, true or false accusations… everything is thrown into the arena where the “gladiators” use any weapon to defeat the opponent. We have heard or read of alleged attacks against the Republican Donald Trump and of burned ballot boxes with mail-in or early votes in several states of that nation…
Musk’s Lottery or Soros’ Millions
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, owner of Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink and the X he renamed Twitter, who has powerful business dealings with the Pentagon and other state agencies, in addition to the constant openly campaigning and posting on his digital network in favor of Donald Trump, which is an influence to be reckoned with on the vote, does not skimp on his funding, since, according to recently published data from the U.S. Electoral Commission (FEC), between July and September he has given its America PAC group, created to support Trump’s campaign, 75 million dollars.
In October it upped the ante. The pro-Trump super PAC had already used more than $115 million as campaign and field operations spending, digital ads, print, mailers, text messages and phone calls. Moreover, Musk inaugurated something unprecedented in his personal peculiarities when he organized a “lottery” and began randomly awarding, as of Saturday the 19th, $1 million per day among registered voters in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina, if they sign a petition in favor of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution (freedom to speak and practice religious worship, and the right to bear arms, respectively).
The first million was won by a Trump supporter in Harrisburg and the second was awarded on Sunday the 20th at an event in Pittsburgh, where the stage was adorned with a large sign, “Vote Early.” The ploy is clearly and evidently vote buying that directly influences this election, and according to Public Citizen violates 52 U.S.C. § 10307(c), which states that anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registering to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.”
The Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section sent a letter to America PAC suggesting that the sweepstakes “might” violate a federal law that prohibits paying people to register to vote, and after million number four, Musk put a pause on his sweepstakes….
Of course, Musk is not the only gambler or donor, nor is Trump the only candidate receiving such monetary support. There are thousands of citizens who make small contributions, but the ones who count for their push are the billionaires and their companies, for whom those contributions are actually investments, just as they do on the stock exchanges or a gambler gambles on the legs of a horse or greyhound.
The tactic in Kamala Harris’ team follows another more traditional line, she looked for celebrity allies who have participated in rallies, community meetings, messages on digital networks or direct television texts such as Julia Roberts and other celebrities. Former President Barack Obama stands out, who participated in more than one event, even alongside rapper Eminem or singer Bruce Springsteen. And Kamala has even received the endorsement of controversial figures such as Dick Cheney, the Republican hawk who was vice president of George W. Bush, the son, the real power behind that ill-gotten throne and mastermind of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Who knows what strings are being pulled with this support from someone who has well represented the US military-industrial complex when the current Biden-Harris administration supports to the marrow two dangerous ongoing war conflicts, the Ukraine and the Israeli… and now the retired war monger Cheney says that Trump is a danger to the United States.
And there are the donations from the powerful. So another billionaire, George Soros and his son, Axel, support Kamala Harris, also billionaire investor Mark Cuban and LinkedIn platform co-founder and Microsoft supervisory board member Reid Hoffman donated $7 million to the Democrats.
The list of these investors is long and they do not only support the presidential candidates, heavy sums reach the campaigns of senators, representatives, governors… The market for elections is getting livelier in the US as it goes down to the wire.
But, be careful, hypocrisy, dissimulation, are imposed and according to the legislation there is a limit for donations; however, there are Super PACs, groups of influence, which can raise unlimited amounts to be used in electoral propaganda, such as the one we have already mentioned of Elon Musk.
It is claimed that in the 2020 race, candidates Joseph Biden and Donald Trump together were pledged close to $5.7 billion to try to reach the White House, a sum that was considered a record because it doubled that raised in the 2016 election, according to the very knowledgeable Open Secrets. There is still no final figure for this 2024, but it will set a new record, no one doubts it.
While the money flows, and the propaganda and campaign speeches overwhelm the citizenry and alienate them from other domestic and international problems of real importance, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump reach the decisive Tuesday almost tied in the polls, in a photo finish that will not decide the vote of each citizen.
Recall that in 2016 Trump beat Hillary Clinton with three million fewer votes, and Bush, the son, beat Albert Gore with 500 000 fewer in 2000.
It is the Electoral College, established in 1787, and its 538 delegates who constitutionally vote for the president with this anti-democratic feature that muddies the results: the most voted candidate in a state takes all the delegate votes of that territory. No proportional distribution. There are 538 delegate votes and it takes 270 of them win the Presidency.
Without this being absolute, the coastal regions of the U.S., east and west, are fiefdoms of the Democrats, while the Republicans prevail in the center and south of the geography.
However, there are states that the socio-political and economic realities in course decide their inclination towards one party or another and these are the so-called pendulum or hinge states, permeable to a swing that prevent to say in advance for which contender they will decide, hence Musk’s “lottery” and that they are the most visited and object of direct attention at the election rallies, especially in the two weeks prior to the goal day of November 5. On this occasion, the seven key ones – where the difference in the polls is so small as to make it impossible to predict a winner – are Pennsylvania (19 votes), Georgia (16), Nevada (6), Arizona (11), Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10) and North Carolina (16), which together hold 93 Electoral College votes, practically a third of the 270 needed to win the White House.
No surprise, there is one certainty, with his style and circumstances, with a predilection for wars or for sanctions, whoever wins will represent US interests and will do “his best job” to guarantee its hegemonic power… For now.
Source: Juventud Rebelde translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English