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Latest US GDP data shows biggest quarterly contraction since the war (annualised rate of 32.9%). In the week ending 18th July, seventeen million were collecting unemployment benefits.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the day these figures were released we hear this from the President: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1288818160389558273?s=21 https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1288818160389558273
FYI the chances of the election actually being delayed are near zero and even if it were chance of Trump’s term being extended are precisely zero. It would require an Act of Congress to delay the election and a constitutional amendment to extend Trump’s term.
Trump may or may not be aware of this but clearly the more likely it looks that he will lose, the more we’ll probably hear attempts from the White House to delegitimise the process.
So though the election itself is unlikely to be delayed, you can almost certainly bet your bottom dollar that given number of postal ballots and likelihood of either side querying result (Trump most likely of all) we could be waiting a long time for the actual official outcome.
Constitutional stipulations make it v hard and impractical to postpone a US election and that’s why it’s probably the only major democracy never to have done so. Hence they had elections in the middle of a civil war (1864), in a pandemic (1918) and in a world war (1944).
So though President Trump’s feelings about this are v unlikely to affect the date of the election and the legal situation is clear, it’s certainly another hack at the norms of American democracy, with potentially damaging results come the autumn.
But I repeat where I started this unplanned thread- I think the news below is the context in which you should see the news above. https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1288822994245165056?s=21 https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1288822994245165056
