I've largely spent the last few months thanking to Christ I'm not American. We know their elections are corrupted by moneyed vested interests and shamefully reduced to nothing more than sham popularity contests at the best of times but the one that's (thankfully) almost at an end is the worst yet. In fact, it's made the other ones seem like relics of a calmer, more serene era. Remember when the biggest scandal from 2012 was Mitt Romney answering a question on gender pay inequality by referring to his "binders full of women"? As Bunk from The Wire might say, "it makes me sick how far we done fell".
The main reason I've been thanking my lucky stars I was not born on the other side of the Atlantic these past few weeks, however, is the simple reason I don't have to grapple with my conscience in making a decision over who to vote for. My hypothetical choice is not Trump or Clinton, however - as I would rather whip myself to death with a burning rope than vote for that racist, misogynist, toupeed, idiotic megalomaniac the Republicans have shamefully decided to nominate for president - but whether to vote for Clinton or vote for a candidate who better reflects my political and economic views but has not a snowball's chance of winning. I would imagine this is a conundrum contorting the minds of thousands of American leftists ready to cast their ballot tomorrow. Many more are possibly staying at home, having understandably long since given up on seeking change within the confines of the American electoral system. A deluded minority, whose numbers have been exaggerated in recent weeks by centrists and Hillary supporters still smarting from Bernie Sanders' forceful challenge during the primary campaign, are possibly voting for Trump in the patently false belief that his victory would "shake up the system" and perhaps expose the material iniquities inherent in modern American politics. As the outcome of the Brexit vote has shown, when a minority of British leftists advocated for a left wing Brexit (or Lexit as they called it) in order to challenge the British and European elites, giving in to right-wing populism only strengthens it.
You can probably tell by the title I have decided that, with a heavy heart, I would vote for Hillary Clinton in the hypothetical scenario that I was able to vote in the US Presidential Election. I understand the disillusionment and despondency which is leading to reluctance among many leftists to vote for Clinton. Disregarding the fact that she is the 'establishment' candidate, there is a whole raft of problems relating to some of her previous policy choices and personal indiscretions. Her enthusiasm for welfare reform during the presidency of her husband Bill (which gutted support for poor American families and resulted in the number of families with children in poverty receiving cash assistance from the US government declining from 68% in 1996 to 36% by 2013), her support for the Iraq War and other American foreign policy misadventures, her questionable links with Middle Eastern governments with a litany of human rights abuses, her links with Wall Street and the millions of dollars she has received in speeches given to banks such as Goldman Sachs, CitiBank and JP Morgan are all good reasons to doubt her progressive credentials. She talks progressive but acts (and one would imagine would govern) as a centrist. Her claim in one of the emails leaked by Wikileaks that politicians should have a "public and a private position" on policy issues was revealing in how nakedly cynical she can be. While many conservative corners of the internet have acted as one large, hysterical symposium on Clinton controversies, reporting on every single indiscretion, from the real to the imagined, as if they all pointed to an incorrigibly corrupt and uniquely rotten candidate while simultaneously ignoring or excusing the indiscretions of Trump, there are genuine reasons to find many facets of Clinton's political career extremely problematic. While many of her supporters have begun to disregard any criticism of her as simply borne out of misogyny or conservative delusion, there are legitimate causes for concern. Simply put, if Hillary was a candidate in Ireland or anywhere else in Europe, I would not be voting for her.
The alternative to Clinton, however, is much, much worse. While one of the supposed reasons many people are voting against Clinton is that she is the 'establishment' candidate and that 'nothing will change' if she's elected (and I believe there is credence to these claims), what Trump offers is a scary lurch into the unknown. The personal scandals which have blighted his campaign - from his characterising of Mexicans as "drug traffickers and rapists" to his insulting of a disabled journalist at one of his rallies to the leaked video of him boasting about sexually assaulting women - should already disqualify him from anyone's consideration. But his policy platforms, if you could even call them that, are so insidiously racist, dangerous and tilted in favour of the wealthy that if even a fraction of them were to come to fruition it would wreak havoc upon millions of people. He wants to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, he wants to ban Muslims from entering the United States for an indefinite period of time, he wants to defund Planned Parenthood and clamp down on abortion rights and he wants a build a stupid wall which he stupidly and erroneously claims Mexico will pay for. His attitude towards man-made climate change, the single biggest threat to our species today, is uniquely dangerous. He is a climate changer denier who wants to take American out of the Paris Agreement, a legally binding agreement that mandates every country who signs up to reducing carbon emissions and ensuring the Earth's temperature does not rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius, and once infamously said climate change was a myth invented by the Chinese to hurt US manufacturing. If you care about climate change, if you care about income inequality and if you care about a woman's right to choose, Donald Trump should terrify you.
Stopping Donald Trump should be the greatest motivation for American leftists heading into this election. While I would usually be a fervent advocate for voting third party given America's torrid and corrupted two party system, I feel this time is different. Ironically, I don't think any third party candidates since Ralph Nader in 2000 have gotten as much attention during an election cycle as Jill Stein and Gary Johnson have this year. Johnson, given his right wing credentials, is someone who leftists should not even entertain voting for, but Stein presents a conundrum as she's someone who has a much more appealing stance on things like student debt and climate change than Clinton and her attitude to Wall Street could not be any different to Hillary's too. There are many problems I have with her campaign though, from her cosying up to Putin to the lack of economic coherence in her plans on student debt, but the main reason I would not vote for her is that she doesn't have a chance of winning. In such a crucial election, where any number of votes could nudge Trump over the line, I feel it is crucial we ensure that he is not elected. This is a difficult thing to admit and it may invoke the ire of many leftists who see this sort of outlook as a capitulation to right wing political orthodoxy, but I think that stopping Trump is actually more important than voting for the candidate with whom you share the most in common with. If American leftists do, however, find it too unconscionable to vote for Clinton and decide to vote for Stein or another left wing candidate instead, I would totally understand. Parades of liberals have been lining up to excoriate anyone who is even considering voting third party in the last few weeks, with the same smug and self-satisfied tone as greeted many potential Leave voters during the Brexit vote in the UK. We all know how that went but I would urge American leftist to bite their tongue or, as Yanis Varoufakis put it recently on Question time, "hold your nose tightly" and vote for Hillary.
But we shouldn't stop there. This has been largely ignored by the press, but Clinton is campaigning on the most outwardly left-wing platform a presidential candidate for one of the two big parties has ever ran. Now in fairness, that's not saying much given the weakness of the left historically in America, but there are some glimmers of light there. She wants to increase the federal minimum wage, introduce legislation to help poor families send their kids to college, introduce paid parental leave, oppose free trade agreements unless they have suitable protections for workers and embark on a massive federal infrastructure programme. As I already mentioned, Hillary has always been more moderate than progressive but she was pushed to the left by Bernie Sanders' primary campaign which was one of the few redeeming qualities of this election. His platform, which challenged Wall Street, challenged income inequality and challenged the prevailing economic orthodoxy, emboldened millions of particularly young Americans and that energy should be retained to ensure that Clinton stays the course and does not bow to corporate pressure, as she has so many times in the past. As well as that American leftists should agitate for real, substantive change independent of mainstream politics and should continue to campaign fervently for worker's rights, for women's rights and against all forms of racism. Hillary Clinton's presidency is not the means to an end but it is certainly better than the alternative. Clinton might represent a continuation of Obama, whose foreign and domestic policies have justifiably disappointed many leftists, and not much might change but it is surely better than the hateful world a Trump presidency would bring.
I don't often agree with Michael McDowell. In fact, finding myself in agreement with the former leader of the PDs makes me sort of uncomfortable. But Michael and I are peas in the proverbial pod this week. In his weekly column with the Sunday Business Post on Sunday last, McDowell took so-called 'new politics' to task; "The Oireachtas, our national parliament, is on "standby" mode", he writes, "Ministers and their departments have lost their appetite to legislate or reform. They prefer to farm out the legislative function the the citizens' forum and to farm out the Dáil's function of political accountability to inquiries." While I disagreed with much of the rest of what McDowell said, especially his assertion that a new centrist party to keep Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil on their toes is what is needed to clear the "political logjam", that is a quite succinct description of the paralysis currently afflicting Irish politics. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the government's handling of the issue of abortion and the decision to refer the decision on whether to hold a referendum on repealing the eighth amendment to a Citizens' Assembly.
Abortion is a tricky one for Enda Kenny and Fine Gael. It's just over three years since they shipped four TDs when they pushed through the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act in the wake of the Savita Halappanaver tragedy. They could take the hit back then - and no doubt many in the party were more than happy to see the back of Lucinda Creighton - but it did rock them. They simply can't take the same risk now. Not only might they have to face the prospect of rebellion from certain sections of the backbenches, they have nine independents propping them up and, while Katherine Zappone, Finian McGrath and Shane Ross are all in favour of repealing the eighth amendment, it's a trifle more difficult to envisage Denis Naughten or Michael Lowry siding with the government on that one. Enda's hubris has him in full survival mode and Fine Gael need to retain the support of all the independents to keep the show on the road.
But pressure is rising. The Repeal campaign has gathered a head of steam in the last 12 months and the March for Choice held at the end of September attracted in excess of 20,000 people. In addition, we know that poll after poll after poll after poll shows that a clear majority of Irish people are in favour of liberalising our abortion laws. It gets a bit murkier when you try to tease through the details as it seems to be the case that, while Irish people favour repeal the eighth amendment, full legalisation of abortion (which, for the record, is what I support) does not receive the support of the majority of Irish people. Ok, so it's complicated. Of course it is. But what is undeniably clear from the opinion poll results, from the marches, from the rallies and from discussing the issue with people online and in person, is that there is a clear demand for a referendum. The only thing stopping one is Fine Gael's intransigence resulting from Kenny's survival instincts. This means that Ireland's abortion ban, which the UN have described as "cruel, inhuman and degrading" will continue indefinitely; 12 women a day will be exported to England to undergo their termination and countless more poorer and working class women will resort to more dangerous methods.
The human impact of the shelving of this issue has been well documented both on social media and in print in the last week but the impact this will have on the citizens' assembly, a genuinely original political concept we introduced five years ago, has been naturally less studied. While the great tragedy of the government putting repealing the eighth amendment on the long finger is what it will do to thousands of Irish women over the next few years, it also may put paid to the Citizens' Assembly becoming a viable institution for our democracy. In fact, the government's misuse of the Citizens' Assembly is representative of a much deeper malaise in Irish politcs which remains steadfastly opposed to meaningful reform.
But before we look into why that is the case, let's take a brief look at the history of our Citizens' Assembly. In 2011, in the aftermath of the historic general election which routed Fianna Fáil and ushered in a "democratic revolution", the new Fine Gael and Labour coalition government, emboldened by their massive majority and public appetite for political reform, announced in their Programme For Government plans to set up a Constitutional Convention in order to "consider comprehensive constitutional reform" and ensure our constitution "meets the challenges of the 21st century". The convention would be a citizens' assembly comprised of 100 people - 66 members of the public selected randomly, 33 politicians and one independent chairman - and they would meet over a series of weekends to discuss a number of constitutional issues nominated by the government. The issues they were to discuss ranged from legalising same-sex marriage to reviewing the Dáil electoral system to reducing the term of the president to five years. After presentations by academics about the topic at hand, attendees would debate and discuss the issue and would then vote on what recommendations they would make. So, for example, 79 convention attendees voted to recommend changing the constitution to allow same-sex marriage, with 18 against and three abstaining. The recommendations are then passed to the government who pledged to respond accordingly with four months.
While there were understandable mutterings regarding the limited scope of the convention and the fact that it could only make recommendations to the government who would then decide whether to act on them or ignore them, there was excitement and optimism among academics that this might herald a new form of 'deliberative democracy'. In the end, the convention convened on nine occasions and two of the convention's recommendations - legalising same sex marriage and reducing the age of eligibility for president to 21 - were put to a referendum. The passing of the same-sex marriage legislation was an undeniable victory for the convention with Elkink et al claiming that it was "the first time in Irish history that a referendum was called as a result of aprocess of deliberation involving ordinary citizen, indeed it is also one ofthe first times in the world that a deliberative process has resulted in areferendum and certainly the first to have succeeded."
When analysed in its entirety, however, the merits of the convention and its capacity to continue to invoke real change were dubious to say the least. The same-sex marriage recommendation was a politically palatable reform which had the overwhelming backing of at least one of the government parties (and most of the other). On other issues the record is not as impressive. David Farrell, an academic who had been one of the most foremost voices in favour of the convention when it began, disappointingly asserted that of the 40 recommendations made by the convention across the nine reports, the government only responded to 15 of them and this, he claims, represents
a “most charitable reading of governmental reaction”. Even when the government did respond it did not necessarily mean that the conventions' recommendations were adequately addressed. In its first report, for example, the convention recommended that the voting age should be reduced to 16. Then Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan responded to the recommendation in the Dáil and announced "The Government therefore commits to holding a referendum before the end of 2015 ona proposal to amend the Constitution to provide for a voting age of 16." No such referendum was forthcoming however with an Irish Times report in 2014 reporting that there was "considerable opposition" among senior figures in the government.
This was always the fear with the Constitutional Convention and with the now rebranded Citizens' Assembly. The government need only take note and respond to the recommendations of the assembly- and as we have seen they don't even do that - rather than actually put them to a referendum. As Silvia Suteu noted, in the aftermath of the conventions, "Such government discretion aligns with scholarly observations that political elites
will adopt mechanisms such as citizen assemblies on serious matters, but will
“make sure that change does not come too easily, and that they can, if
necessary, block an unpalatable reform." If the convention comes up with something the government finds uncomfortable they can - to the best of their abilities - simply ignore it. Would the government ignore a recommendation on repealing the eighth amendment from the citizens' assembly if it felt calling a referendum would weaken their grip on power? Who knows.
In any case, given the last government's behaviour it's easy to see why the public would be cynical about citizens' assemblies but the shunting of the abortion issue over the to the assembly gives them another reason. This government has set a precedent - from now on if the ruling parties of the day wish to dodge an issue for fear of alienating core voters or upsetting backbenchers they have an escape route. Rather than tackle it head on in the legislative chamber or simply go to the people with a referendum they can kick the can very much down the road. The citizens' assembly and deliberative democracy could have a part to play in Irish politics. They could be used to refine and improve the constitution and improve how we conduct our democracy. They could tackle questions regarding local government, electoral systems and issues relating to democratic structures. They should not be used as a device for upholding fragile governments because that devalues them.
Should we be surprised about all this? No, of course not. There's a reason the term 'new politics' is used almost exclusively in jest - nobody actually believes anything substantive has changed in how our major parties conduct themselves. They're simply adapting to new, uncomfortable surroundings. The misuse of the citizens' assembly is but one example of this. The confidence and supply arrangement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil has not ushered in a new era of conciliatory and cooperative politics but is a desperate attempt to uphold the old political party hierarchy. Initiatives such as citizens' assemblies are supposed to represent a shift in political discourse and decision-making, better incorporating the views of the citizen. But they don't. They're window dressing and a convenient outlet for pretending to care about reform and dodging uncomfortable decisions. Real political change will not come from the established parties; the behaviour of Fine Gael with regards to the abortion issue simply serves to highlight this.
As this wretched US Presidential election stumbles towards its graceless denouement, attention is turning to what it tells us about the state of mainstream politics. How is it that a candidate as obviously unqualified, as flagrantly misogynist and racist, as narcissistic, as morally debased and as unbelievably thick as Donald Trump managed to win the nomination of a major political party in the US and convince a still sizeable chunk of the population that he is fit to hold office? In any normal election cycle, we're told, Trump would have been derailed by any one of his numerous scandals. It would be a mistake, however, to see Trump's rise in isolation; while much of the analysis has rightfully focused on the socioeconomic and racial factors that have led predominantly white working class and middle class males to backing Trump, less attention is paid to the role of the media in his rise. This should not come as a surprise. The media is not very good at self-introspection. This was in evidence here in Ireland last year during the Banking Inquiry when former editor of the Irish Times Geraldine Kennedy was unapologetic about the role of the media in inflating the property bubble during the Celtic Tiger, denying the reliance the Irish media had on the property sector for ad revenue affected their editorial independence.
The media in the US are similarly guilty of this kind of tunnel vision when it comes to profit undermining editorial standards. While Trump and his surrogates routinely accuse mainstream media outlets of bias in their reporting of him and his campaign, they ignore inconvenient facts such as a report from May by mediaQuant which showed that Trump had received the equivalent of almost $3bn in free advertising thanks to the hours of airtime and column inches devoted to him by the US media. His nearest rival for the Republican nomination at the time Ted Cruz received $771m in free advertising while Hillary Clinton received $1.1bn. No matter what way you slice it, the Donald was the big winner in the early stages of this campaign and it's easy to see why. Thanks to his celebrity and the outrageous things he did and said, he was a ratings winner for news stations.
I mean, it's not even like the mainstream press particularly likes Trump. He's alienated and belittled reporters like Megyn Kelly and Serge Kovaleski and not a single major newspaper in the US has endorsed him for president (which is a record). It's just that the mainstream press was so utterly transfixed by this perma-tanned, politically illiterate buffoon that they could do nothing else but disproportionately devote hours of coverage to him. The profit motive in commercial media can be damaging for editorial standards and also, in this case, political discourse. Because everyone professes to wanting to "stick to the substantive issues" or "focus on policy" but that's not what draws in the viewers. And let's not pretend that this is some new phenomenon, exclusive to the 2016 race.
The shameful disregarding of policy and real political issues is perhaps best reflected in the almost total neglecting by the media of the other elections in the US which take place on the same day as the presidential election. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 out of 100 seats in the US Senate are up for grabs, as well as many state and local elections, including 12 states who are holding gubernatorial elections. This stuff really, really matters. If Hillary Clinton is elected but the Republicans continue to control the House and the Senate then many of the policies she wishes to pursue - from infrastructural investment to an increased federal minimum wage - are likely to be blocked by congress. It's worth remembering that during the Obama years the US Congress descended into a sort of temple of non-productivity, with the number of laws passed by it each year reaching almost record lows, as both parties engaged in the basest kind of factionalism. In addition, control of the state legislatures is really important given America's federalised system of government and the ability of states to set their own laws. The rolling back of abortion rights in the US over the last number of years, for instance, has happened at state level.
What's more, while the Democrats are expected to do well in the Senate elections, their lead is narrowing significantly. As the excellent FiveThirtyEight website puts it, "The presidential election is sucking up everyone’s attention, but make no mistake: Control of the next United States Senate, remains very much in doubt." Hillary Clinton has soared ahead of Donald Trump in the polls, but those numbers have not been replicated for the Democrats elsewhere. While FiveThirtyEight reckon Clinton has an 88% chance of clinching the White House, they estimate the Democrats have only a 54% chance of controlling the Senate - the chamber of the US Congress with the most power and prestige.
Given these elections are almost as important to the American political process as the presidential election itself, you'd naturally presume they should be the express focus of the mainstream press now, that the presidential election is all but wrapped up - how is Hillary Clinton going to enact the policies she's advocated throughout this campaign without her party also controlling the congress? But that's not the case. Given the fact that the Presidential Debates have proven so blockbuster - the first one is thought to have been the most watched in American history - the newscasters are continuing to focus on the presidential elections while largely ignoring the congressional and state elections.
This is not unique to America, though America is probably the most gaudy example of the deterioration of mainstream politics to a sort of popularity contest bankrolled by special interests. One of the problem I have with how the media reports on politics today is that it reduces politics to personalities and events. Instead of issues and policies being teased out and the processes behind them analysed, media focus continues to be trained on individuals and their perceived strengths and weaknesses. So, when it comes to election time a leader's likeability or their 'leadership qualities' or their soundbites are immeasurably more important than the policies they present. This is especially evident in the UK where a poll by YouGov recently showed that the British public actually prefer the economic policies of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party to the Tories - but only when they aren't told they're actually his. Corbyn, much like his predecessor as Labour leader Ed Miliband, has been the subject of a character assassination by the right-wing press in Britain who routinely characterise him and his supporters as incompetent, extremist, Britain-hating loonies. Corbyn and his team have undoubtedly had their failings when it comes to media strategy and communications, but the bias of the British press is undeniable.
So what are the solutions? Is the media really all to blame? If you were to ask media executives they'd tell you they're simply giving them what the public wants. The public doesn't care about the intricacies of policy, the background to big politcal issues, boring down-ballot elections - the public likes political drama, demagogues, backstabbers and tragic heroes. That's illustrated in the viewing figures that Donald Trump speeches, rallies and controversies pulled in. But the damage this does to political discourse and debate is so profound we need to seriously consider what we can do to fix it. Is political education from a young age to ensure that young adults leaving school have a basic grasp of political issues and ideologies a solution? Is opening up the policy process to the public and governments providing better transparency in how they formulate it a solution? It's difficult to envisage a proper solution within the confines of a capitalist economy because news corportation will always be at the mercy of their viewing figures and their balance sheets. But as long as politics and news is presented as light entertainment there'll always be a chance another Donald Trump will appear.
