America’s Electoral Process ‘Corrupted’: US Author

“I am indifferent to the outcome, honestly. I do not vote, because I think it is time Americans stop putting their names on an electoral process that is too corrupted to work. A vote is an endorsement of this system,” Patrick Lawrence based in Norfolk told Tasnim in an interview.

Lawrence is a writer and columnist. He has published five books and is now at work on his sixth. He served as a correspondent abroad for many years and is also an essayist, editor, and critic. Lawrence has taught at universities in the US and abroad and lectures widely. He currently produces two commentaries (weekly and bi-weekly), primarily on foreign affairs and the media. Apart from his staff work, Lawrence’s reportage, commentary, essays, criticism, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Business Week, TIME, The Washington Quarterly, World Policy Journal, The Globalist, The Nation, Asian Art News, and numerous other publications. He is now foreign affairs columnist at The Nation. He makes frequent television and radio appearances.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Tasnim: The election is underway across the US. Local polls are currently pointing to the potential for a landslide Biden victory. What do you think? Who do you think and hope will win the 2020 presidential election?

Lawrence: It is too close to call, in my view. All the polls suggest Biden will win, and if I had to say, I would predict Biden. But we must recall 2016 when the polls had it entirely wrong.

I am indifferent to the outcome, honestly. I do not vote, because I think it is time Americans stop putting their names on an electoral process that is too corrupted to work. A vote is an endorsement of this system.

In the matter of policy, what is important to me is the dismantling of empire and an end to aggressions against nations such as Iran that insist on their independence and identity. Neither candidate will go anywhere near this question. 

To me, the question before Americans for some time now is whether this nation can self-correct. The choices in this election suggest the answer to this is no. 

Tasnim: President Donald Trump continued his assault on the integrity of the US elections in the final segment of the first presidential debate, extending argument against mail voting and saying it was ripe for fraud and suggesting mail ballots may be "manipulated." "This is going to be a fraud like you've never seen," he said. Do you think there will be a peaceful transfer of power?

Lawrence: As many have said, the best outcome would be a decisive victory, and to me, this applies to whichever candidate wins. Short of this, there could be trouble, yes. And I think the Democrats are as great a problem here as the Trump people. To recall 2016 again, the Democrats, dead certain Clinton would win, complained loudly that the Republicans would not accept the result, would not accept Clinton as their president, would go into the streets, would cause confusion, and so on. Immediately after Trump won, the Democrats did all of these things in reverse, and they have not ceased for four years.

We are a critically, perhaps fatally divided nation. It is common to blame Trump for this, but what some of us all illiberal liberals, or liberal totalitarians, are at least as much to blame, if not more to blame.

Tasnim: Do you think the potential election of Biden as the new president will change the US foreign policy on Iran?

Lawrence: I would like to think so, but I am not confident. The common wisdom is that he will return the US to the 2015 accord governing Iran’s nuclear programs. It was an Obama policy and Biden is a creature of Obama. But it is not so simple. Iran has been shamefully demonized these past years, and the common consciousness has shifted radically in consequence of this. Returning to the JCPOA would prompt resistance on Capitol Hill. More to the point, Secretary of State Pompeo’s Iran policy—and our policy is his, not Trump’s—has drawn the US closer to Israel to an unprecedented degree. Rejoining the Iran accord is thus complicated in this way, too. Precedents have been set. Biden, of course, is quite obviously beholden to Israel and the Israeli lobby. In sum, it is simple arithmetic to say Biden the liberal will restore some sanity to US-Iran relations, but the true calculation is more complex and does not suggest the same thing.

There is a useful parallel to consider as regards Venezuela. Biden’s foreign policy people say there will be no more violent interventions in Latin America—this after more than a century of them. In this context, is it conceivable that a Biden administration will reverse American’s criminal conduct against the Maduro government? It is not.