By Dr. Jack Rasmus

National opinion polls show that with just one week to go in the US presidential election, Trump and Harris are virtually tied at 47 percent each. But national opinion polls are irrelevant as they predict little in terms of the actual outcome. This is because, in America’s archaic election system, it is not the people but the Electoral College (EC) delegates, appointed by their respective states, who decide who wins.

Technically, these delegates cast their votes for president based on whichever candidate receives the majority of the votes in their respective states. However, as the world witnessed in the 2020 US election, some EC delegates were prepared to vote contrary to the voters in their state; and some governors and legislatures were prepared to send competing delegations to the EC.

The election is still not over when the EC delegates meet in December to cast their states’ votes. The delegates’ votes are recorded and the results are sent to Congress on January 6. Technically, Congress could choose not to accept the delegates’ votes—as nearly occurred on January 6, 2021. Since 2021, Congress has passed new rules to seek to clarify the process—but those rules are still untested and remain unclear, in some respects, as to how Congress will confirm the EC tally this December to determine the final outcome of the Harris versus Trump contest. The Congress has the final say in regard to accepting the EC delegates’ votes.

Further uncertainties may arise after November 5, should either party challenge the state vote outcomes in court, delay sending delegates to the EC counting in December, or otherwise tie up the new procedure in the courts before the January 6 final confirmation by Congress. It is well known that both parties have been preparing to spend millions to legally challenge the results in several states, in particular the “swing states,” either to delay or even overturn the vote results or EC delegate appointments. In other words, post-November 5, events may prove even more dramatic than those that followed the November 2020 election.

Decision by swing states, not popular vote

However the process unfolds, it is in the seven swing states that this year’s outcome will be decided—just as it was in 2020 and 2016. And if current trends continue through the final week before the election, the result may turn out a close repeat of the 2016 one. In that election, the outcome was determined, essentially, in the swing states.

The seven swing states are: Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Some analysts say that Virginia—once solidly Republican but lately shifted to the Democrats in slim margins—should be included in the swing state column this time as well.

To reiterate a key point: what happens in those seven (or eight) swing states will determine the election, not the popular vote as predicted by the polls. And perhaps not simply by the voters in those key states, but by the two parties’ legal teams and other behind-the-scenes political machinations by the political elites.

So, the likelihood is great that the American public will not know on November 6 who their president will be in 2025. That may take weeks. Or months.

Such is the legacy of the limited electoral democracy in the United States, where “one person, one vote” is not, nor ever was, the rule for electing presidents. At one point in the past, senators were selected in backroom wheeling and dealing by state legislatures and governors. Changing that “system,” and bringing in “one person, one vote,” took longer than a century. That this has not been done for the presidential election testifies to the fact that neither of the two main parties has any serious interest in abolishing the Electoral College and switching to direct election of the president. The parties like it this way. Direct election would eliminate the many possibilities to manipulate the election that the EC system enables (possibilities we saw play out in 2020 and may see again this year).

Several other important trends may also influence the election outcome. One of these, not surprisingly, is money.

Political party realignments

In 2010, the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to allow virtually unlimited campaign contributions by wealthy donors and corporations, a trend that has continued to escalate ever since. Billions of dollars are now spent on the elections. In recent weeks, for example, Kamala Harris and the Democrats reportedly raised $1 billion in just three months (July–September). And, in the past week, another $97 million. In contrast, Trump spent $417 million during the summer and just $16 million in recent weeks. This represents a historic shift: traditionally, it was the Republican Party that received the big-money contributions. With 2024, that mantle has been passed. Today, the Democrats are the party of big money.

At the same time, money flows from or on behalf of foreign nations have also accelerated. For example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has admitted to spending more than $100 million on 2024 election candidates—and that is only what’s admitted publicly. Of the organizations that make election contributions on behalf of foreign powers, AIPAC is the only one exempt under US law from registering as a foreign agent.

There may also be, since 2016, another party realignment underway—not simply in regard to support from wealthy donors but also from other constituencies. Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, are clearly making a bid for working class support, with proposals to cut taxes on tip income, overtime pay, Social Security benefit payments, childcare tax credits, state and local tax deductions, and other measures. To a limited extent, Harris has mimicked some of these proposals. Perhaps most interesting is Trump’s proposal to eliminate the tax on Social Security benefits (not to be confused with the payroll tax). Although this tax is still a relatively recent one, introduced under Reagan in the 1980s, Trump now proposes to repeal it. Meanwhile, Harris and the Dems—once the champions of Social Security—are conspicuously silent. Can it be that the Trump Republicans are now shifting toward working class constituencies, while Harris and the Democrats focus on identity issues and Trump’s personality? Further evidence that such a realignment is underway, if still in the early stages, comes from key neocons and anti-democracy political characters such as Dick Cheney and John Bolton, who now support Harris and campaign with her. Are today’s Democrats now the party of war and empire?

Another important trend is the recent emergence of social media channels and personalities as key outlets of communication to voters. It is well known by now that voters under 35 don’t watch mainstream outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and the like; nor do they read the New York Times or the Washington Post—or any print media, for that matter. Instead, candidates are seeking out interviews with social media celebrities as never before.

Defining issues for 2024

The current election is notable not only for the issues being raised by Trump and Harris, but for the issues the candidates decline to address. Since the start of this year, national polls have indicated that the economy—and specifically inflation—is the number-one issue. A recent Gallup poll showed the economy to be the most important issue by far, with a huge majority of respondents calling it either “very important” or “extremely important.”

The issue of second-highest concern is democracy. This is a more complex issue, one that means different things to different voters. For Democrats, this means concerns about Supreme Court decisions and the future of abortion and women’s rights, but also points to support for the Democratic Party’s incessant focus on Trump and the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots. For Republicans, it means concerns about the Democrats in relation to censorship, widespread “ballot denialism” against challengers (whether former Democratic Party members or third-party challengers), Democrat manipulation of their own party’s primaries, the Dems’ use of “lawfare” (in particular legal attacks on Trump), and general concerns regarding manipulation of election vote counts.

The number-three concern, according to the Gallup poll, is immigration, often linked by Trump to issues, real or imagined, such as crime, loss of jobs to “illegals,” privileging of immigrants over US citizens for welfare assistance, housing availability, and other social conditions.

All other issues—from education and health care to taxes and abortion, climate change, race, transgender rights, and foreign policy—rate lower in terms of voter interest. Foreign policy issues, it seems, are not much on US voters’ minds this cycle.

Notably, among the Gallup respondents, Democrats did not list the economy among their top-five concerns—or immigration, crime, taxes, or war. For Democrat voters, this election is mostly about Trump, January 6, the Supreme Court, and women’s and transgender rights. In other words, the Democrats’ messaging centres mostly around what Republicans call “woke” issues and a personal focus on Trump. In contrast, Trump supporters focus on more traditional “pocketbook” concerns: inflation, wages, taxes, crime, and national security issues like war and terrorism.

A deeper inspection of these issues suggests the Democrats may again be “fighting the last war,” as the saying goes. Polls show undecided voters in swing states—in contrast to hardcore party loyalists—just don’t care that much about January 6. Neither are charges regarding Trump’s behaviour among their greatest concerns. Yet the Democrats, nonetheless, continue to hammer away at the personality issue: Trump instigated the January 6 Capitol riot, or Trump is a felon, a womanizer, a Putin pawn, and a Hitler lover. Or, more lately (and with some irony given recent events), Trump suffers from early dementia. Not be outdone, Trumps calls Harris a “fake Black,” unintelligent, and a Biden puppet. For undecided voters in the swing states, however, all this personality bashing, on both sides, is likely just so much political “noise.” And, at this point in the campaign, they are the voters who matter.

Yet the candidates address economic issues like inflation with political platitudes, focus on their distorted interpretations of “democracy,” and continue to engage in personality bashing. Perhaps even more important, there’s been no discussion of the existential issues that will impact voters—and the country’s very stability—even more dramatically in the months immediately following the election.

Such existential issues include the growing fiscal crisis, as US deficits approach $2 trillion per year and the national debt spirals toward $40 trillion and beyond; the near certainty of severe austerity measures including program spending cuts in 2025, regardless of who wins the election; an escalating series of proxy wars leading to region-wide conflicts, perhaps even nuclear ones, in Europe and the Middle East; and the expansion of the BRICS economic block, which threatens to replace US/G7 dominance over the global economy and would bring a deep contraction of living standards in the US and the G7 countries.

It is notable that issues so critical as these are barely ever mentioned by either candidate. Nor were they raised by moderators in the presidential debates. Nor are they addressed in the mainstream media, even at this late date.

What follows is an analysis of such key, often existential issues, which have either received scant mention by the candidates or simply not been addressed at all.

Inflation and the economy

Since the beginning of 2024, polls have shown that the economy, chiefly inflation, is the number-one voter issue for voters. The Democrats tout a slowdown in the rate of price increases to approximately 2.5 percent in the past year. But is it this recent slowdown, or the cumulative rise in the general price level, that is giving voters the impression that inflation is the biggest issue?

Harris and the Democrats focus on the levelling-off of gasoline prices over the last year and the official government inflation index showing food prices have risen only one percent in the last twelve months. Harris has proposed a $25,000 credit toward down payments for new home buyers to partially offset increasingly unaffordable house prices, and touts the Biden program for reducing expensive drug prices for ten new itemized prescription drugs to take effect in 2026.

Trump and the Republicans charge these are just economic band aids and argue the general price-level rise since 2020 is the key inflation indicator, despite the recent slowdown. Households face prices that have levelled off some, yet remain 30–35 percent higher than in 2020.

The reality appears closer to the Republican view. Prices of the most frequently purchased grocery items are up 21 percent since 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal. A few of these increases include: gasoline at the pump (+38 percent), eggs (+113 percent), milk (+24 percent), loaf of bread (54 percent), chicken breast (+37 percent). Even the price of fast food meals at McDonald’s is up 40 percent since 2019. Premiums have risen for home, health, and automobile insurance—the latter by more than 20 percent in just the past year. And housing prices are up 47 percent, according to the national Case–Shiller index. And that doesn’t count what working class voters actually pay for their homes each month in mortgage payments, which have risen 114 percent since 2020 due to interest rates and other fees.

The Democrats conveniently ignore the fact that the government’s official 2.5 percent consumer price index rise over the past year doesn’t include mortgage rates or fees. Nor do official inflation indexes include any other interest rate hikes, for that matter. Average credit card rates have risen from 16 percent in 2020 to 23 percent today, as US households carry over bigger-than-ever unpaid balances on their cards from month to month. The same can be said for student loan rates, auto loan interest, and installment loans—all of which have risen sharply since 2022.

This surge in price levels has devastated real disposable income for US households. And that’s what they’ll remember when they vote.

The inflation level might not be an issue if real wages increased at a similar rate. But they haven’t for four years. Real median weekly earnings (i.e., hourly wage x hours worked) have contracted slightly. They decline even faster if you count the more than 50 million part-time, temporary and gig workers in the US economy, per federal government figures. And real weekly earnings would decline further yet if interest rates and tax increases were included in the government’s inflation adjustment, which they aren’t.

Even official government data for full-time workers’ median weekly earnings, when adjusted for inflation in 1983–84 prices (the base year the government uses to measure long-term real wages), show that real wages declined by 2.8 percent in 2021–23, levelling off at 0.4 percent the past year; whereas during Trump’s first three years (2017–19), they rose a modest one to two percent.

Not surprisingly, Trump and Vance talk about the reduction in real take-home pay impacting all workers, not the average hourly full-time wage, unadjusted for inflation, touted in the Harris-Walz campaign messaging.

Decline of democracy

The second-most important issue to voters is the very real impression that the norms and practices of democracy in America have been subtly but steadily dismantled over recent decades. This problem surfaced in the public consciousness during the 2000 election when the Supreme Court, in its Bush v. Gore decision, in effect “selected” George W. Bush as president by halting the Florida vote recount. The threat to democracy intensified the following year in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which US neocons leveraged to impose the Patriot Act, reversing long-standing civil liberties, and launched a program of intensified surveillance of US citizens that continues to this day. A decade later, in 2010, the Supreme Court issued its Citizens United ruling and gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, effectively endorsing widespread gerrymandering of House of Representatives districts by both parties. Then came the court’s decision that the two main parties need not abide by any democratic principles in running their respective organizations. The parties, it would seem, are essentially private clubs.

Neither party nor their candidates offer any concrete proposals to rescind the Patriot Act and its attack on civil liberties. Or to pass legislation to override the Supreme Court’s disastrous green-lighting of unlimited campaign contributions. Or to abolish the Electoral College. Or to reverse the Congressional gerrymandering, which has ensured that no more than 50 House seats are ever competitive contests. Or to restore the Voting Rights Act. Or to undo voter suppression. Or to reform their own organizations democratically, to ensure the party members actually choose the candidates.

The Democrats, in 2024, have reduced the issue of the decline in democracy to the events of January 6, 2021, in order to tag Trump as a “demon of democracy” who, if elected, will open the floodgates to authoritarian and even dictatorial rule. The Republicans remain silent about their voter suppression initiatives, seek to reverse mail-in ballots, and complain about Democrats’ ballot denialism, plans for social media censorship, and politically weaponized “lawfare,” but propose no action.

Illegal immigration

The third issue of greatest interest to voters is, according to Gallup and other polls, the issue of illegal immigration along the country’s southern border. Government data shows that an average of two million people per year crossed into the US in 2022 and 2023. Data for 2024 are not available yet. Immigration slowed in 2020–21, due largely to a weak US economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democrats focus on Trump’s demand to deport the “illegals,” specifically the cost and likely impossibility of physically enforcing such measures. Trump focuses on the consequences of the Biden-Harris policies of the past four years, impacting jobs, housing, and crime. Both accuse the other for the thousands of children of immigrants that have gone unaccounted for during both administrations. Trump takes a page from the old “welfare reform abuses” playbook, accusing the Democrats of giving each “illegal” a $2,000 cash debit card and setting them up with free housing, while millions of Americans languish with little to no housing and without cash resources. Democrats accuse Trump of sabotaging a recent bipartisan congressional bill to regulate immigration simply to boost his campaign.

While Trump and Harris push their respective positions at rallies and appearances across the northern swing states over the election’s closing weeks, neither says anything about the existential issues noted previously: the deficit and debt, the coming austerity program cuts, the escalating proxy wars and slide toward potential nuclear confrontations with Russia or Iran, and the BRICS challenge to US global economic hegemony.

Deficits and debt

Neither candidate admits how much each party has contributed to the deficits and debt during their recent administrations. In 2000, the US national debt was $5.674 trillion when George W. Bush entered office; when he left, it was $10.024 trillion—nearly double. Starting with Bush’s $10.024 trillion as a base, when Obama left office at the end of 2016 the national debt had risen to $19.573 trillion, nearly doubling again. By the time Trump left office at the end of 2020, it had risen to $26.945 trillion in just four years. As of October 2, 2024, under Biden—just another four years—the national debt rose to $35.680 trillion. By year’s end, it is expected to be $36.260 trillion.

So, if we compare who performed worse, Trump or Biden, in their four years in office: Trump added $7.372 trillion to the national debt and Biden added $9.315 trillion.

For both presidents—and, indeed, since 2000 generally—the rise in deficits and debt is attributable to four factors:

• $16 trillion in tax cuts, at least three quarters of which have accrued to corporations, businesses, and wealthy investors (as well as slow growth of the US economy, and therefore also tax revenues, after 2008).
• $8.5 trillion for US wars, the Pentagon, and US defense spending in general, which now costs more than $1.2 trillion per year.
• Price gouging by health insurance and Big Pharma companies, which have driven up the cost of government-subsidized health care programs.
• Crisis-related government spending programs in 2008–10 ($1 trillion) and again in 2021–22 ($3 trillion).

None of the $36 trillion national debt, by the way, includes spending by the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, whose total balance sheet debt rose from $0.8 trillion in 2007 to $5 trillion by 2016 and then to $9 trillion by 2021. Nor does the $36 trillion figure include state and local debt, which averages around another $2–3 trillion. (Shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare programs do not form part of the annual budget deficit or national debt figures above.)

The growing fiscal crisis will likely erupt at some point during the next president’s term in office. On average, deficits have exceeded $1 trillion and been rising every year under both Republicans and Democrats since 2016. In 2024 alone, the official US deficit figure was $1.8 trillion. This has meant that annual interest payments to wealthy bondholders, domestic and foreign, this year cost $950 billion—more than the Pentagon budget. The deficit acceleration will continue. The Congressional Budget Office, the research arm of Congress, estimated this year that another $20 trillion will be added to deficits, rising to $56 trillion in 2034. That’s a continuing average of $2 trillion per year and means that, by 2034, interest payments on the debt will rise to $1.7 trillion.

That’s $0.95 trillion today, and $1.7 trillion in a decade, rushing out of the annual budget and into the pockets of wealthy bondholders! That’s more than Social Security and more than even the Pentagon. A fiscal train wreck is around the corner in America.

In short, deficits and debt are issues of immense importance to the stability of the economy and standard of living for millions of Americans over the next decade. But neither candidate, Harris or Trump, has spoken a word about it. And neither candidate will, because they would in effect be pointing the finger at themselves.

Austerity and program cuts

In terms of solutions to the fiscal crisis, neither party will raise taxes for the wealthy and their corporations to reduce the deficit. Democrats have shown over the last four years that, despite promises to the contrary, their actions have been fully in accord with Trump’s $4.5 trillion in tax cuts in 2018, which contributed greatly to the rising deficit. Trump favours the permanent extension of these cuts (80 percent of which accrue to investors and businesses) when they come up for renewal in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this will represent an additional $5 trillion hit to the deficit and debt. The Democrats’ big-money donors will not permit them to reverse the tax cuts either.

Neither Harris nor Trump will address the root causes of the annual trillion-dollar-plus deficits and escalating national debt. Whoever wins in November will continue to raise Pentagon spending to support America’s imperial proxy wars. They will ensure that the Treasury continues to pay bondholders $1–1.7 trillion each year to prevent a collapse of the US dollar. And they will enact even more tax cuts for businesses and investors.

Instead of reversing tax cuts, they will implement social spending cuts—and these will include Social Security—even as they have said nothing about the coming austerity cuts and tell lies about how they won’t cut Social Security.

The BRICS challenge and the decline of empire

While Trump and Harris campaign, the economic foundations of their very system are fracturing. Formed in 2009 by five countries— Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—the BRICS was initially created to bring together the leading economies of the Global South to address the consequences of the global financial crash and recession of 2008–09. By that time, the world had moved on from the 1980s, when the leading global financial and economic powers, the US and the UK, introduced what has been called the neoliberal policy revolution in response to the economic and political crises of the 1970s.

US capitalism was not only rescued in the 1980s but set out upon a massive worldwide economic expansion. America’s global hegemony was restored and its empire grew. That growth accelerated in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the opening of China to Western investment, and the further deepening of neoliberal policies. In 2008, however, the expansion and its associated policies hit a wall from which the US global economic empire has still to recover fully. Trump tried to restore it, but failed. History will show the same for Biden.

In the 21st century, the US has sustained itself on the strength of its foreign investments, financialization of the economic system, and new technologies. However, the Global South has expanded economically. It is no longer the Global South of the 1980s, which was largely dependent on the West economically, and much weaker politically and militarily than the US and its G7 allies.

With the advent of neocon control over US foreign policy beginning in the late 1990s, US elites have resorted to wars and violence to maintain their empire. In the face of crises in 2008 and 2020, they have struggled with the rise of the BRICS—particularly the competitive challenge from China, Russia’s recovery from its post-USSR depression of the 1990s, and growing assertiveness by Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia as well as India, Brazil, and others. The Global South wants a bigger voice in the institutions of empire. So far, however, the US and its G7 allies have allowed them only token participation in those institutions.

In the midst of the 2024 election, therefore, the rise of the BRICS is moving to a new stage, as its current and prospective members met in Kazan, Russia, this past October. Twelve new member countries are in the process of joining the current nine. Notable among the new additions are several important nations and economies: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, in Southeast Asia; Algeria and Nigeria, in Africa; several Central Asian countries and Turkey; and Bolivia and Cuba, in Latin America. And it is reported that as many as 80 countries are interested at least to some degree.

The eventual outcome of the BRICS challenge will be the displacement of the key institutions underlying the US global empire: the SWIFT payments system, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and, eventually, the US dollar as the dominant global reserve and transactions currency. The recent BRICS Kazan Declaration is a 108-clause blueprint that outlines where the organization is headed and describes a set of global economic institutions parallel to the Bretton Woods system created in 1944, upon which the US post-war economic empire has been based ever since.

The BRICS represents an existential challenge to the United States. However, neither Trump nor Harris, nor their respective Republican and Democrat leaderships, are saying anything about it during this election. Perhaps to do so would be too dangerous for their political aspirations, the consequences too great? Or perhaps they simply haven’t formed a consensus on a strategy yet, beyond “strong-arming” the Global South into submitting once again to their “rules-based international order”?

It is likely, however, that once the election is over the BRICS will become the key topic of debate among the US elites and their G7 allies concerning “what is to be done.” By then, the November 2024 election will be history. And voters will have had no say on what actions the US imperial elites and their allies will take in response to the existential challenges currently on the horizon.

About the Author

Dr. Jack Rasmus is the author of several books on the United States and the global economy, including The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump (2020), Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy (2016), and The Twilight of American Imperialism (forthcoming later this year form Clarity Press). He is a host for the radio show Alternative Visions on the Progressive Radio Network, a journalist, a playwright, and a former professor of economics at St. Mary’s College (retired). He worked for 20 years for various tech start-ups and global companies, prior to which he served for 15 years as an organizer and local union president with several American unions.