Is the “Granger effect” rubbing off on Donald Trump?

Dear Editor,

A nail-biting Tuesday Election Day in America came and went as “The day the earth stood still.” There was no certain answer but a “wait and see” process that can involve days of a nervous and perhaps passionate waiting for the country and the rest of the universe at large.
There is a dreaded lull in the country also as the disciplined forces are on the alert and ready for any riots as expected in many states.
If the result is unsatisfactory and rejected in certain quarters, demonstrations are anticipated and looting can follow.

The situation can become threatening and dangerous and can induce violence in the streets. Many of the business premises have already taken precaution and boarded up and the police remain present, patrolling the scenes along with volunteer guards. Many shoppers hustled to the stores to stock up on groceries and food stuff.

Biden started Election Day by attending a church service and visiting the graves of his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and his wife Neilia and daughter, Naomi, who died in a car crash in 1972.
He stopped at his childhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he wrote a message on the wall that read: “From this house to the White House with the grace of God. Joe Biden 11-3-2020,” He finished the campaign in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that is likely to play a key role in the election.

Trump gave an unprecedented speech early Wednesday morning, brazenly and falsely claiming that he had won the election and claiming—with no evidence—that election officials were engaging in electoral fraud to try and prevent his victory.
The president demanded that officials stop counting votes in certain states and suggested he would appeal to the Supreme Court to do so. Legal experts have said there is no clear reason for Trump to do so.
According to the NY Times, President Trump spoke with a mix of defiance, anger and wonder that the election had not yet been called in his favor. The president recounted his standing in an array of battleground states before falsely declaring: “Frankly, we did win this election.”

By so doing, he ended his campaign by doing what he began to do from the beginning, i.e. to corrupt the election.
What remains certain, if anything, according to Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf is: “We repeat what the Vice President said tonight: Donald Trump does not decide the outcome of this election. Joe Biden does not decide the outcome of this election. The American people decide the outcome of this election. And the democratic process must and will continue until its conclusion.”

The US election is certainly taking a grip with world leaders and it has a frenetic global effect of uncertainty with mixed and interesting reactions. The planet weans on American speediness and this unprecedented delay is creating havoc and mayhem in the market, leaving the pundits in fear, scratching their heads and resorting to the guessing game for a winner. Stocks moved higher Wednesday as markets digested a still-uncertain election that appears to be signaling a continued split government no matter who wins the presidency, with Republicans keeping control of the Senate and Democrats holding the House.
In mid-morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average surged about 600 points, or 2.2%, to edge above 28,000.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose nearly 3% to 3,466. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped nearly 4% to 11,596.
Twitter and Facebook are censoring all election claims and have put rules in place before the US presidential election restricting content from candidates claiming premature victory.
Meanwhile, underscoring how the drama captured the global audience, here are a few summed up reactions: Chinese social media users watched election day in the United States with bemusement and mockery, as President Donald Trump complained of a “major fraud on our nation” and falsely claimed victory before millions of votes had been tallied; “I’m hearing it may take some time before things are sorted out,” said the Japanese Finance Minister, Taro Aso.
“I have no idea how it may affect us.”

In Paris, a Spanish resident, Javier Saenz, was stunned to wake up without a declared winner; Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who has been poisoned and attacked for challenging the Kremlin and trying to make Russia more democratic, even suggested that the delay was comforting, a sign of democracy at work; “That was such a ‘Trump or we burn the country’ moment,” quipped Danny Makki, a Syria analyst, referring to slogans of “Assad, or we burn the country.”

Europe appealed for patience and rigorous vote-counting as in Slovenia, the birthplace of first lady Melania Trump, the right-wing prime minister, Janez Jansa, claimed it was “pretty clear that American people have elected Donald Trump,”; the German defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said that “the battle over the legitimacy of the result — whatever it will look like — has now begun,”; “Africa used to learn American democracy, America is now learning African democracy,” tweeted Nigerian Sen. Shehu Sani.
In Zimbabwe, the ruling ZANU-PF party’s spokesman, Patrick Chinamasa, said: “We have nothing to learn about democracy from former slave owners.”

But others said U.S. electors distinguished themselves by voting in great numbers in the midst of the pandemic.
“That would be a remarkable story for democracy, no matter what the result is,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, an international relations expert at the Chatham House think-tank in London.
“But if what we see in the next few days is a contested election, a president alleging fraud, people on the ground descending into some sort of fighting over the results, trying to block counting, then I think we’re in a wholly different situation.”
Is the USA experiencing what Guyana encountered earlier this year and is the “Granger effect” rubbing off on Donald Trump?

Jai Lall.