Is the United States Facing a Crisis of Legitimacy?

No matter who wins on Nov. 5, tens of millions of Americans will find evidence that their political system is broken

America “is today at war with itself” says analyst Ian Bremmer, founding president of the Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk analysis firm that each year offers a “State of the World” address.

And this time, he finds that the United States, his country and the world’s leading economic and military power, is in a real crisis. “No matter who wins on Nov. 5, tens of millions of Americans will find evidence that their political system is broken. And they are not wrong about that,” he noted.

Indeed, he warned that “the post-election period is uniquely dangerous, as we are about to have an election whose outcome will be perceived as illegitimate by nearly half the country. So, what are we going to do about that? We will get a president in the United States. I mean, not on Nov. 5. We won’t know on the day who’s going to win. We might not know in a week.”

But the real problem is that half the country won’t take it well. It doesn’t matter how legal or how clean their win is, because each side will have its version, and it will have to be decided by the courts — even though the Democrats complain that the Republicans have “loaded” the judiciary with conservative judges.

In 2021, President Donald Trump questioned early voting and mail-in ballots, lobbied state officials to overturn unfavorable results, and although he presented no proof, he has questioned the integrity of the U.S. election system for four years.

Now they are preparing for what already looks like the closest election in U.S. history. “It’s most likely it’s going to be so close that both sides will say that they’ve won. And then there’ll be lawsuits, and there’ll be different lawsuits,” Bremmer said.

“The Democrats will have lawsuits in some states where they say there was voter harassment and intimidation, they couldn’t get to the polls. They’ll say that there was a wrong certification by local elected officials who decided to go political.”

Bremmer’s report adds that Republicans, in turn, “will say that Democrats shouldn’t have won in some states because illegals were allowed to vote and that they had a win and then it was overturned by vote stuffing, and it was rigged.”

In real terms, the U.S. economic and geopolitical situation is fundamentally unchanged. Surrounded by two oceans and with two friendly countries, Canada and Mexico, on its borders, it does not appear to face any threat. But the problem is structural, and it is faced with polarized and even opposing versions of democracy.

Internal disagreement is causing the U.S. to withdraw from the global leadership role that they, to some extent, sought and forged after World War II, and for which they came to see themselves as the indispensable nation.