Democracy put to the test in the United States

TEverything suggests that voter turnout will once again be high in the United States of America during the November 5 elections. In 2020, it had already reached levels not seen since the beginning of the 20th century.^e century. This rekindled interest in a citizen meeting should not, however, mislead. This is the only positive aspect of the extreme polarization which is weakening American democracy, the main culprit of which is the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

There is no question here of the ideas or rather the slogans of this soon-to-be octogenarian, even if many are execrable, such as the project of massive and indistinct hunting of undocumented immigrants which serves as a social project. A good number of them, due to the inability of the two major parties to agree on a reform of the laws governing immigration, have nevertheless been integrated into American society for a long time.

What is at issue is more fundamental: it is his attempted coup, on January 6, 2021, to remain in the White House at all costs despite an incontestable defeat at the polls. It should logically have hastened its political end. The former businessman, who announced the end of a “American carnage” by taking an oath to defend the Constitution, had then sowed chaos and trampled on the ideals of his country. The negation of this election has become his first commandment, in a cult of personality that he maintains, full of himself.

Complicity of the judges

Its presence on the ballot therefore constitutes an alarming signal of the collapse of entire sections of the political system of the United States, not to mention what a possible re-election would mean at the end of a campaign built once again on insult without limits and shameless lies. The Republican Party, which previously presented itself as that of law and order, has done everything to make it so. The inability of its elected officials to publicly recognize that Donald Trump had honestly lost the 2020 presidential election, an observation that no fact has been able to refute, says a lot about the fear that reigns within the Grand Old Party. Its spine of yesteryear has little more than one function: that of bowing to the excesses of its candidate.

The party that was that of Abraham Lincoln does not lack accomplices. The conservative judges of the Supreme Court have also done everything possible to ensure that the Republican does not have to answer in court, before the November 5 election, for his actions in contesting Joe Biden’s victory. As if this role was not enough for them, they carved out for him, on 1^is July, tailor-made presidential immunity. If he returned to the Oval Office on January 20, 2025, there is every reason to fear the use that this claimed admirer of autocrats, quick to describe his adversaries as“enemies from within” against which it would be appropriate to use the national guard or the army, when it does not ambiguously evoke the image of a firing squad.

Donald Trump plays on the amnesia which now surrounds his mandate with noise and disorder, and on the unpopularity of the outgoing administration for which his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, is responsible, long penalized by the thankless limits imposed by the function of vice-president. He also benefits from the baroque conditions of the latter’s entry into the campaign, at the end of July, after Joe Biden’s resignation. It was far too late for the Democrat to be able to articulate a project that would distinguish her from the president. The latter is certainly guilty of having thoughtlessly clung to the prospect of a second term – which his state of health, at almost 82 years old, made totally unreasonable.

Everything contributes to making the November 5 election in the United States an unprecedented ordeal in American history. This democracy, which has long been a model, unfortunately turns out to be uncertain and vacillating.