Both parties are presenting it so. Candidates and their supporters always say “This is the most important election of your lifetime,” but this year they’re talking like they really mean it. If Trump wins we get tyranny, if Biden wins, anarchy or socialism. Are the stakes really that high?!
I agree. We heard this in 2008, 2012, and 2016.
Technically, 2016 was even more important than this year. Because if Trump had been beaten then, he wouldn’t be here to face reelection.
Yeah. Not by design. But it’s kind of come to that. Sometimes showdowns are like that: not so much that each party wants that High Noon thingie in the middle of Main Street but that events get them caught up and suddenly there you are.
It’s been patriarchy versus all of its opposition building to a climax for some time now (and yeah, as Velocity says 2016 was pretty damn imporant itself). Rapidly accelerating the process has been the indivdidual Donald Trump — my partner compares him to The Mule in Asimov’s Foundation series — he isn’t one for nuances and he wants to rule as an autocrat which meshes with what the pro-patriarchal faction wanted but they weren’t so inclined to hang a banner out saying so just yet, but since someone else is, they’re rallying. So…showdown.
Interesting comparison: The Mule was an unpredictable x-factor who screwed up the timetable of what was an otherwise impeccable psychohistoric plan.
Unfortunately, we have no Hari Seldon in our history, unless you count Marx.
I even recall Matt Gaetz (R-Punchable) predicting, in public at the RNC with his bare face hanging out, that if Biden wins, MS13 will move in next door to your suburban home.
I am not qualified to answer this question but I can tell you why I think it is more important than previous elections. Trump makes no secret of his quest for eternal power and authority. That was laughable in 2016 because it was assumed he would be influenced by the awesome responsibility and institutional norms.
That has not turned out to be the case and he has been enabled to make a shambles of our country and will continue to destroy years of well established and thought out policy if reelected. He is already trying to eliminate and undermine the current election and if he is reelected he will certainly try to install himself as a strong arm dictator and I no longer have any confidence in the system to stop him. The power brokers will just install him for life then use him as a puppet as they have been doing.
(SIDE NOTE: It has been noted that Trump projects very often. When he has a problem walking down a ramp he accuses his opponent of being too old and feeble. He has recently been talking about the Democrats coming for your guns. If he is reelected and believes he has a chance to continue in that role, he will confiscate guns and outlaw any free press. Apocalyptic? You bet your ass. But it is not beyond the realm of possibility.)
Yeah, the issue is that he’s been pushing fascistic stuff, and if he wins, that’s saying that we’re okay with that. When a president says they want to run for a term when one isn’t allowed and attacks the voting system, you have to vote them out or you’re saying you’re okay with losing democracy.
We’re in the same situation like Russia or China were in when they extended term limits. If we can’t vote Trump out of office now, we may not be able to vote him out ever. That’s what’s at stake.
Well, that and he killed so many people this year with his ineptness and immorality. Even if we make it out of this pandemic with science and a vaccine, another potential disaster is just around the corner. We NEED someone in charge who can handle it. Not someone who can fail so badly. One in every thousand American adults are dead now.
What we’ve seen now is what he’s done with restraints on him.
In 2016 Democrats didn’t approach the presidential election as apocalyptic. The Clinton campaign was designed like a victory lap for the Obama years, completely oblivious to the seething discontent eating away at voters in key states. The Republicans, OTOH, saw it as a “Flight 93” election they had to win at all costs. And they did.
I know Biden’s chances look pretty good right now, but I’d love to see some of that desperation coming through. Because this one really is for all the marbles.
I beg your pardon.
But I agree with your point. Still, as many have pointed out, Trump just continues a trend that has been brewing in the Reps since at least Nixon’s southern strategy, followed by Gingrich’s take-no-prisoner strategy and then McConnell decided that his only purpose in life after 2008 was to deny Obama a second term. So it is not just the Mule, but his entire entourage. Is Biden as strong as Preem Palver?
I note that nobody here seems to think electing Biden would be in any way dangerous. The Trump campaign’s whole strategy is to make him look dangerous.
That’s a tough sell, IMO.
To the OP, why this election seems more important than 2016 is that there was plausible denial for Trump voters then, saying he might not be that bad, or he might grow into the job. We now know, without a doubt, he won’t bring dignity, competency, ethics, or morality to the job. If he’s re-elected, it means a great many of our neighbors just don’t give a flying fuck about our country or its institutions. That would depress me a whole lot more than I was depressed in November of 2016.
Based on what I hear from my father in law, the election of Biden will usher in a socialst revolution that will make us just like Venezula, where radical antifa militants will burn down the house of anyone who puts up a sign supporting a Republican candidate. While Trump may act a little uncouth, he’s the only one with balls enough to tell it like it is and resist the influence of the big government deep state.
This is pretty much where I break ranks with the catastrophists. Basically I just don’t believe in a shady cabal of power brokers running things. It’s not that powerful people with authoritarian tendencies don’t exist. It’s just that I don’t think there is anything approaching an organized group operating in lockstep to destroy democracy.
I also personally doubt Trump will permanently destroy democracy in this country if re-elected*. I am still convinced that the 2016 election was more important than 2020 because it opened the door to chaos. But he sure as fuck will damage it more and he’s already done more than enough in that regard already.
So apocalyptic? No, probably not IMHO. Really, really important? I think so.
*But never say never, I suppose. The fact that a sizeable cohort of sane people (more than just the usual scattering of nutters concerned Bush or Obama were going to install themselves as dictators-for-life) are concerned about it is worrying enough.
To be fair, they’d say that the DO care about the country, and that they are working at getting back to a country that cares about them and that works for them. I know, I know- it’s utter BS. But they aren’t all racist jerks. Some are scared and angry, and in some cases they have legitimate reasons for being scared and angry.
They want to make a life-long centrist look like a dangerous radical, so they are arguing that he is old and feeble, and that the radical left will push him around to install a socialist agenda, or that he secretly hates America and God. Sometimes both.
Yeah, I hear this from the guys at work (all white men without college degrees, FWIW).
As far as projecting, yeah, Trump does that. The taking guns, though, I think he’s just riling up his base. But the whole argument that if Biden wins, America will become a chaotic hellscape beset by disease, civil unrest, and widespread unemployment, run by an aging septuagenarian in obvious cognitive decline, who has no idea what to do about any of it…well, I leave it to you.
I’m 43 years old. This is the only time since I’ve been alive that one of the candidate’s choices have directly led to the deaths of over 200,000 Americans in less than a year. So…probably it is the most important election in the lifetime of my contemporaries and younger at the very least.
Agreed, but if they think Trump is the answer, or even part of the answer, then we’re in serious trouble. (and I do think we’re in serious trouble)
I believe the primary appeal of Trump in 2016 was that he was not a politician. Now that people know him I think his chances of re-election are low. If he were to delay nominating a supreme court judge that might motivate the right to vote but I don’t think he’ll do that.
Either way though, not much is going to change in four years. The country will either get slightly better or slightly worse.
I want to go on the record as answering the OP title with an emphatic yes.
We’re an inch away from irrecoverable harm along a dozen dimensions.
You cannot try to play down the consequences. That’s like Trump downplaying the virus. (Pretty much exactly like. So like that you have to wonder why anybody would say it without plotting against America.) Since then we’ve lost 200,000 Americans, a number that may hit 400,000 by the time Biden takes office. If Trump remains president that number, from dozens of causes, will be, yes, apocalyptic.
Please allow me to clarify; I do not believe there is an organized group of power brokers either, but two things concern me. First there is no doubt Trump wishes for more and more and more power, time in office, news cycles, etc. because too much is never enough. And second he keeps fucking up and getting rewarded for it. He puts kids in cages and is protecting us (not from helpless children, but) from rapists and murderers. He is on track to install one third of the Supreme Court and flat out indicates he will contest any election results in the courts. He shutters Stars & Stripes and The Voice of America and damn near gets away with both. He overrides the scientists and changes testing protocols and he mostly gets away with this shit. He wants to pull out of NATO and has from what I have heard made a shambles of our diplomatic efforts shattering decades of painstaking work. All this has happened and someone has allowed each of these things to happen; no matter how many people pull away from him firing broadsides, no matter how many times he is caught lying on tape (or recorded admitting to sexual assault) the institutions set to keep him in check enable him rather than actually keep him in check.
No not a shadowy cabal – just an opportunist who decides to ride his coattails rather than stop the madman.
I believe he has already destroyed more than can be easily grasped. All the people who died needlessly from a disease he knew to be deadly and played down are not coming back. How long before we can trust our healthcare system again? How long before our most trusted allies are going to trust us again? How long before our Diplomatic Corps repairs the damage already done?
Do you honestly believe he will not attack, outlaw, or worse the free press? He doesn’t even like FOX News half the time. Other (admittedly more liberal) journalists have had death threats over pushing him on his bullshit. Nothing is too far for him, no tactic is too extreme, in every aspect of life he will go too far and there always seems to be someone there to lend him the cover he needs to pull it off or get away with it.
Given the kind of military parade he wanted for his first inauguration, do you doubt that he would have one of those every year if he could? Do you think after he fires half of the FBI and the CIA he will not ask some low level federal agent to assassinate some US citizen who is causing him grief in a second term. For that matter, do you think he wouldn’t ask Putin for some of that poison he uses to get rid of his opposition?
Trump is Trump and he doesn’t surprise me by anything he does; I just picture what any unruly thirteen year old would eventually do with unlimited power. What bothers me is the 40% of Americans who either don’t know or don’t care how dangerous he is – and the people who are supposed to keep him between the lines (or at least where one can still see the lines) but instead allow him to go wherever the hell his whimsy takes him.
I used to believe he really, really wanted to be reelected to avoid prosecution for all his crimes. Now I believe he has his sights set upon being exactly the kind of guy we used to oppose (Hussein, Noriega, Khomeini, etc.). He will stop going to the G7 and G20 and instead meet with Putin and Kim and other dictatorial strong men and while sitting around smoking Cuban cigars and drinking thirty year old scotch tell them: “Believe me, the nation I rule with an iron fist is the greatest (well it was the greatest) one. Very, very great nation under my thumb, take my word for it - and we have the hottest women you can grab by the privates once you have installed yourself as ruler for life.” (/Trump impersonation)
I know that sounds absurd but I have no doubt Trump would do it if he can. What really bothers me is that I see no one standing up to the guy. No matter what, he is not going to accept an election loss. Will that end up before his hand picked Justices? Once he is in for another term do you think he will not try with all his might to either eliminate elections or make it possible for him to run for a third term? Who is going to stop him then? Why isn’t anyone keeping him from questioning the election system now?
It isn’t even that I think all of these things are likely to transpire. It is that they are not outside of the realm of possibility. That being the case we have lost so much already, if he is reelected we will lose much more.