Sleepy Biden

As I write this column, there are just over two hours to go before the polls close in the United States in the expectation of a close race marked by the tension and polarisation of a society increasingly divided by the politics of hate. 

The international markets have even voted for Trump to leave, and the stock market rally has followed: the French stock market has risen 2.44%; the Spanish stock market has risen 2.52%; the British stock market finished higher with 2.33%; the German stock market also rose with 2.55% and the Italian stock market won 3.19%. 

Most of the European media stressed the concern that occupies many analysts and experts in surveys and electoral interpretation: the margin of victory between one candidate and another.

The bets from the other side of the Atlantic give Joe Biden the winner, but there are fears that the day after the elections a post-election Pandora's box will be opened with challenges and even accusations of fraud with Trump totally thrown out by putting pressure from the White House on the institutions and courts in charge and, on the other hand, by inciting his followers from his social networks. 

The longest night could turn into the longest day; the margin of victory will be key for Biden, although his opponent in his bullying tone has already said publicly that "he doesn't like to lose".  

All that is needed for these elections is a harsh post-election scenario, with people on the streets killing each other, under the hatred that Trump himself has dedicated to sowing so thoroughly throughout his mandate. 

In hard data, the 19 million weapons purchased by citizens in the past seven months are worrying; it is true that the pandemic provides arguments for thinking about personal security, but the average American citizen, armed and angry, is quite uncontrollable.

Days and weeks of uncertainty about who will finally be in charge of government for the next four years would not go amiss, especially as Europe is keen to see a Biden victory lead international politics back to the sanity of multilateralism. 

If the Democratic candidate wins, he will be the oldest president in the history of American democracy, and many analysts doubt that his term will end. 

He has been seen to be tired in the face of a vigorous Trump whom even the coronavirus itself did not manage to get out of the campaign completely; perhaps we would have liked to see him in a hospital gown, intubated and defeated by the Chinese virus. 

However, that exit with his fists up, with his mask off on the White House balcony as the winner of the disease, catapults him like a man with a strong image in front of an aging Biden.

Politics, which is also strength and resistance, opens that parenthesis of doubt: will Biden and certainly Democrats have the strength to resist a vote count? Will they resist the pressure from the street? 

Will Biden end up as the Democrat Al Gore did in his time, accepting the victory of his Republican opponent George W. Bush? Perhaps a very different story would have been for geopolitics if Al Gore had governed in 2001 and not Bush. 

Al Gore and Bush may be overshadowed by the election results between Biden and Trump; the former challenged and the result took over a month; the electoral college itself gave Bush the victory by a handful of votes in Florida.  

An undesirable scenario? To arrive at December without knowing whether Biden or Trump will govern, and to do so with violent people protesting in the streets, would be a serious mistake at a time when the pandemic has worn us down mentally and economically.