MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2020) The drama over the narrow presidential vote margin in several US swing states has the potential to unleash violence if the final outcome is dragged out, Madelyn Hoffman, a longtime environmental and social justice activist, who was the Green Party candidate for the US Senate election which was held on Tuesday, told Sputnik.
So far, Biden is in the lead with 238 electoral votes against 213 electoral votes for Trump, as reported by the Fox news broadcaster. He has recently increased his lead on Trump in the key state of Michigan. Other swing states, including Pennsylvania, have yet to conclude vote counting.�
"The longer the intrigue lasts, unfortunately, the greater the possibility of violence in the streets," Hoffman said.
Asked how long the intrigue around the new US leader would last, Hoffman replied that it solely depends on "how close it is in certain swing states." She also doubted that Biden would concede if the numbers remain close.
According to Hoffman, the demonstrations and protests both from Trump and Biden's supporters would likely to be "very intense."
"The animosity in this country toward Donald Trump is so strong that I believe he will face tremendous pressure not to concede until all votes are counted or until the US Supreme Court issue a ruling - and even then, who knows what will happen? It would be the same should Biden win by a small margin," Hoffman said.
DEMOCRATS WILL NOT SUBMIT TO TRUMP
According to Hoffman, the so-called hyper-partisanship that already exists in the country will only worsen should Trump become president for a second term.
"The Democrats will not submit to him and will have to at least look like they're offering stronger opposition. I say 'look like' because on all the major issues like military spending, the border wall, health care, the Green New Deal, confronting climate change, campaign finance reform and more, the two mainstream political parties don't disagree all that much," she said.
Speaking on the position of Trump in all-important Florida and other battleground states where he gains the votes, Hoffman noted that the Trump administration was "extremely skilled at creating divisions and confusion within the US population."
She noted that there is a serious disagreement in the US over the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"So for every loud voice criticizing the Trump administration over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a loud voice on the opposite side politically speaking out just as loudly. Some people on the left describe the argument over the mandate to wear a facemask as a war and equate it with US wars of imperialism. That then affects their vote," she said.
If Trump wins, there may be more racial divisions in the society, a growing rift between the rich and the poor, more spending on the military and less on efforts to confront climate change, according to Hoffman.
"A Trump victory will continue to drum into people's heads that the problem in the U.S. is not the major corporations and the wealthy profiting off the low-to-moderate income people, but immigrants (Muslims and Latinos) and African-Americans," she concluded.
Yet she believes that there may not be tougher sanctions on Russia.
"The story about Russian meddling in our 2016 elections no longer has much traction. Perhaps many Democrats still believe that such meddling occurred, but after the impeachment attempt in 2019 which resulted in Trump remaining in office, the sting was taken away from those charges. Many people in the US no longer pay attention to such allegations," she said.
Relations between Russia and the United States deteriorated in 2014 under then-US President Barack Obama during the crisis in Ukraine, when Washington imposed sanctions on Moscow. Since then, the United States has expanded and tightened the sanctions regime following accusations of Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in Ukraine and in the US political system.
