Last weekend’s Serbian election produced a clear winner. The Student List will have 140 seats in the 250 seat Serbian parliament. On Tuesday, the Israeli election produced a more ambiguous result. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition lost seats while his opposition gained, though neither will have sufficient seats to form a majority in the Knesset. I fear the American election will produce similar results: a Democratic House and a Republican Senate.
Even Serbia’s unequivocal vote can produce anomalous results. Former President Vucic has not lost his tentacles, which extend into the public administration, media, banks, corporations, and secret service. The heavy dose of professors and other professionals on the Student List knows little or nothing about politics. They may be brainy, but are they canny?
Only a herculean, united effort will pry control from Vucic. In the meanwhile, he will be doing whatever he can to split the new majority, or at least wean a few of its seats over to his opposition, and maintain his control of the state and its appendages.
Vucic, amazingly, repeated Milosevic’s mistake of calling early elections and losing them. But he won’t be surrendering as completely as Milosevic did. And let’s remember what happened to Zoran Djindjic, who was assassinated. The secret service and mafia were responsible for that. There is as yet no clear leader of the Student List, which will however have to generate a presidential candidate. The election is slated for December 26. Assassination is not unknown in Serbia.
So, yes, the Student List won. But in order to govern it will need to transfer power from an unwilling former president and prime minister. He will make every effort to resist and make himself a winner even if he lost.
The more ambiguous result in Israel has not unseated Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose governing coalition lost a significant number of seats. He can no longer hope to gain the majority, but he remains as caretaker during government formation, which could take months. He can even take Israel to war, making an early rematch impossible.
In the meanwhile, he is doing his best to keep the opposition from forming a governing coalition. He is alleging voter fraud and claiming it would be illegitimate for Arab parties, which did well in the election, even to support the opposition from outside the government, never mind enter the coalition. Without Arab support, opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has no way to come to power, except to form a “national unity” government with Netanyahu. That would amount to the winner losing, unless it forces Netanyahu into retirement.
The US election Tuesday is arguably the most important of the three. But it risks also producing an ambiguous result. Donald Trump will remain in power no matter what. A narrow Democratic win in both the House and Senate will be a rebuff to his politics of insult, cruelty, and war, but his habit is to double down. That could make things worse.
The only way of avoiding a situation in which Trump the loser gets to stay in office and do as he pleases is an overwhelming Blue wave, with at least a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That would mean 60 Democratic seats, which is not happening. The result may be as bad as what President Obama called his “shellacking” in 2010, but Trump is no Obama. He will use and abuse presidential authority until either the Congress or the Supreme Court stops him.
It might be nice if elections were translated directly into results that people voted for. But that’s not what is happening with these three polls. Losers can win and winners can lose.
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