Contributed by Joe Montero

The world has seen the caricature of Donald Trump desperately trying to hang onto office, and looking like a pathetic, ego driven buffoon. This narrative doesn’t quit add up. there is far more to it than this.

It is important. The above narrative hides the real purpose behind what Trump is doing and disarms people from the extend of the danger this poses.

Trump and those around him would like to hold onto the presidency. They realise they may not be able to, and the primary objective is to set the scene for what comes next. The strategy, I would suggest, is to work on consolidating the political movement that has already been established and prepare it for tasks in the new conditions.

Election result denial and shots fired against the legitimacy of the process are an important part of this, designed to erode trust in the political institutions.

Donald Trump is the figurehead. The head of the beast is a section of corporate America and the political elite associated with it. This is the reason why almost all the Republican machine continues to stick by Trump and the movement that carries his name.

This section of corporate America provides the funds, the support network, and corporate media platform.

By failing to admit this is the case, the Democrats have been unwilling or unable to challenge the corporate connection and what this means, have shown a knack to avoid the core issues, and fail to put forward a real alternative.

The emergence of the hard-line corporate faction backing Trump, is an outcome of a deepening political crisis that has its foundation in national economic and social decline, and the global challenges faced as a weakening superpower.

The faction sees delegitimisation as a necessary precondition seizing more direct political power through a political movement that galvanises its followers, as the foot soldiers to tear down the institutions and bringing perceived enemies to account, and through this, achieve its goals.

These goals are to impose controls on a population getting more restless as the crisis bites and remove barriers to a much more extensive distribution off income upwards.

The next phase, should the Biden administration take over, which is by no means certain, is to shake the political ground into greater instability, make the Biden term unworkable and provide the best conditions to unleash the prepared foot soldiers into the streets.

Whether this comes to pass remains to be seen. But the Democrats, because they too are dependent on corporate patronage, although from a different faction, have shown a great talent to ignore the real issues. The main difference is, the Trump side is more closely tied to finance capital, and the Democrats to other forms of capital, including Silicon Valley.

Consequently, the interests of the two groups diverge in some ways and are similar in others. It means that the Democrats cannot offer anything significantly different.

The Democrat faction sees that its interests are best secured through a measure of compromise, maintaining the traditional political institutions, and reliance on politicking, rather than overt compulsion, an alternative seen as too risky and too tied to factional interests contrary to their own.

But it is the rise of an alternative movement from below, which the pro-Democrat corporate interests fear the most. This is the reason why so much attention has been paid to suppressing the rise of a progressive movement within the Democrat machine and outside it.

Joe Biden’s newly chosen Biden team is overwhelmed by people who come from the corporations, big media, the Pentagon, the State Department, Neoliberal think tanks, the CIA, and other intelligence services. This is an administration made up of the same elite, who will act for the interests of those they truly represent.

America’s political landscape has changed and will not be going back to the days before Trump. By failing to recognise this and adjust as needed, the Democrats will most likely be doomed to undermine their own position, as the crisis deepens and calls out for new solutions.

If Biden gets to take over the presidency, and this is by no means certain, he will do so, with a crippled economy, the continuing ravaging of Covd-19, and the reality that a large part of America sees his administration as illegitimate.

Take the nation’s sovereign debt. It now stands at $US 26.9 trillion. Up till now a significant part of it was held by Europe and China.

A good example of the rough waters ahead is the building sovereign debt crisis and weakening dollar. This debt now stands at $US 26.9 trillion, and up till now, a significant part of it has been held by Europe and China. Some of it has been through the purchase of Treasury bonds. A bigger part has been transferred through trade and capital flow agreements favourable to American finance capital.

Europe and China are increasingly disposing themselves of the bonds, and the capacity to use trade agreements to export the problem is shrinking. This is pressuring the exchange rate for the U.S. dollar to decline, and it is expected to get worse in the new year.

In the face of this, the already cut tax revenue base, growing uncertainty and a shrinking economy, the pressure will be on to slash government spending on already inadequate services, and to channel resources for a bigger bail out the corporations.

The Democrats might just put themselves of the back foot, and this will be good news for the movement that bears Donald Trump’s name.