Election Day 2020

Astrologers always get asked about elections and their predictions for the outcome of the same. This year has been particularly charged in relation to the choices being made in the US election. Biden or Trump: who will prevail? Well, there is more to a presidential election that choosing between presidential candidates – much more. There are also elections for state governors, local officials and members of Congress. As it stands, this election is a whopper of a choice, the Presidential race being the least of it, and the astrology for the US shows the same. It is one of the most charged astrological figures for the US I have seen for some time. We’ll have a look at that here and what we can most likely expect as to the outcome of Election 2020.

Before we get started, this post will not be about the Presidential candidates. Instead, it will be about the astrology behind the election and what the election will mean for the States. The expectations for the outcome of this election are low. From a recent poll, only 22% of Americans think this will be a free and fair election. And when we dig below the surface a little, it becomes apparent that it will make little difference which candidate goes to the White House in January in terms of policy. It is more a matter of personalities. As a result, this post is also about some of the realities facing Americans this time around. But, it will end on a more positive note.

The chart for the US on Election Day with directions and transits is below (bigger):

The gates open for the election in DC at 7:00 am EST. The chart shows Philadelphia, due to the software, but it makes no great difference. The rising degree for DC is just over a degree less than what is showing, same for the MC and Vertex. But those points are not actually what concern us. The lunar degree, however, is important. At 7:00 am the Moon is at the Descendant of the US Sibley chart. The Moon represents the voting public, and it is partile the Descendant, marking this election as particularly important for the people, more so as a referendum on the laws of the land (7^th house). It also marks this election as being one of the most contentious and divisive ones in recent memory.

Elections in general are ruled by Uranus (change) and Neptune (public opinion), the latter especially with the fluctuating nature of said opinion and its fickleness when it comes to personalities. The 12^th house also plays a role in elections, as it represents mass psychology and large masses of people.

Uranus is transiting square the US nodal axis on Election Day. In general this shows sudden or unexpected changes in relationships, upsets and in general, political associations advocating progressive reforms. That will probably happen in this election, but it will not be at the presidential level. We’ll get to why the latter is the case shortly. Further, we see a direction of Jupiter to Ceres and squaring the US Uranus, which goes to reinforce progressive programs. By progressive, we mean programs that raise the social standard of living and improve the lot of the people. Neither our current ‘liberal’ politics nor ‘conservative’ reflect the will of the people. ‘Liberal’, in this sense, should not be conflated with ‘progressive’.

From here, the picture for the election takes a more strident tone. We note that there are several bolded connecting lines in the chart, marking them as being more important or weighted. The Uranian square to the nodal axis is one such, just noted. The next to consider is the transiting Mercury/Saturn square making a midpoint with the US Ascendant: “The tendency to seclude oneself from others, going one’s own way in life, the tendency to be preoccupied with one’s own ideas and thoughts, a short journey, separation.”

The bolded text above shows the very nature of public opinion and US attitudes to the rest of the world these days – the public secluded in social media echo chambers, the US going its own way in foreign policy (supported and championed by the media), a more isolationist tone in the present administration increasingly with public support and so forth. We are speaking in wide, general terms here, of course. However, this vote is indeed about the direction our foreign policy will take over the next four years, and it is tending more and more toward isolationism and separation from old allies. This is bipartisan, too.

The transiting Mer/Sat=Asc midpoint also contains the transiting Moon: “A retarded development of mind and soul, a love of variety, inconstancy. – The opportunity to gain abundant experience, the absorption and digestion of many different impressions,…” As an old saying goes, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. Foreign observers of US public opinion and foreign policy see these bolded points clearly. The US is no longer considered to be agreement-capable in foreign affairs. The American public is heavily propagandized via the mainstream and social media, and we could say that is increasingly the case across the West. But the US particularly stands out.

For close to a year now we have been primed for a highly contested election, with all sorts of dire or fanciful predictions. The preliminary polling shows that the election will be close. But what if one of the candidates wins in a landslide? Or what if they gave an insurrection but nobody came? Violence isn’t particularly shown in the figure. And as I can say, as an American, most Americans have no interest in and oppose violence resulting from an election that does not go their way. Between COVID, fires, hurricanes and flooding, a collapsing economy and so forth, most people just want to get on with their lives and raise the standard of living in the country. Yes, there will be some pissed off people and others gloating, along with sporadic protests and a little violence, but on the whole, I would doubt there will be much in the way of widespread violence or large protests for more than a few days no matter which way the election goes.

Once we step out of all the spin, hyperbole and theater of the election, certain facts stand out. Firstly, neither man running for President is very mentally competent. Both men show signs of mental decline. Both men are elderly and not in the best of health. What should be a very significant consideration in choosing one or the other is their running mates. One is an evangelical Christian, science denier, anti LGBT and anti-feminist. The other was known as the Top Cop in California, advocate of the prison industrial complex and very much tied to the establishment of the Democratic Party. She also let an apparent Freudian slip when in an interview she mentioned a ‘Harris administration’. She has ambitions for the top job, and no one really expects Biden to be able to finish his term if he is elected. We examined Harris in a previous post.

The point here is neither a Trump nor a Biden administration is going to ‘save’ the nation. Only sustained public pressure will bring that about, and non-violent pressure at that. Getting Trump out of office will not change things either, because both parties represent the donors, not the people, and Trump has benefitted the Republican Party greatly, along with Wall Street. The presidential race is about who will represent the oligarchy, and it is much the same with Congress. The Moon/Mercury/Saturn/Horizon combination described above shows that a deep inward-turning national introspection is due to take place with this election, and it will especially affect women, with women taking a more active role in that as the next months pass. The US needs more women’s voices across the board. That introspection will be the real gift of this election.

The most important elections that will take place on the 3^rd are not for President, but for Congress and the gubernatorial races. Even more important are the local elections, whenever they take place, because those are the proving grounds for the higher offices later on. We definitely need more independents and (true) progressives in Congress, not tied to corporate interests. That will take time, though, in terms of change, and many people I have spoken with and comments I have seen have doubts that the changes needed will come quickly enough. The protests and violence we are seeing in the nation now are reflective of the level of frustration in the nation and go toward the sense that change in the direction of the will of the people needs to happen more quickly. That frustration is shown in the election chart, with our next bolded lines to consider – transiting Mars to the natal Sun/Saturn square.

The Mars transit just mentioned forms a midpoint, Sun/Mars=Saturn: “Obstructed manifestation of vitality, pessimism, weakness, inactivity. – Difficulties or obstacles in vocation or profession, defeat in a fight or contest, separation. The suffering or worries of the husband/men.” I would not necessarily read the ‘defeat’ part as a defeat of Trump. Either Biden or Trump will be defeated on the 3^rd. But the pessimism in the nation is definitely there. However, the Sun does rule leaders and rulers. We shouldn’t rule anything out.

Much of the above so far appears to be negative, and in fact the mood in the nation is dark at the moment, amidst the COVID and financial crises and so on. Social media reflects the mood of the public on all sides and it is not especially positive. In fact, it is very divisive, with few posts if any speaking of opportunities for advancing the public interest, unless of course ‘their man’ wins. If we step out of our personal preferences for a moment, however, and take a look back, no President since Johnson has advanced the welfare of the general public and even he escalated the Vietnam War to terrible levels, all the while he was advancing the cause of civil rights and domestic welfare with his Great Society legislation. Vietnam cost him the presidency, however, had he decided to run and he thereby declined to run for a 2^nd term as a result. Successive administrations since Johnson have each whittled away at the Great Society, bringing us to the next factors to consider in the chart.

The next bolded line to consider in the chart involves the 2^nd/8^th house axis – the financial axis of the US. There we find Saturn within a degree of Pluto on the Antivertex. The last time we had that situation at an election was in 1932 at the height of the financial collapse that precipitated the Great Depression. FDR was elected that year. Realities hit home for the US and there were sweeping changes instituted in the financial/banking sector, with the New Deal to come, the rise of labor unions, reworking of the banking system, etc. It brought socialism with capitalist characteristics to the US, otherwise known as a type of democratic socialism. We are facing a similar situation as in 1932 today, but with major differences.

There is at present no workable labor movement in the US, nor is there much in the way of political will to change the system as it is. Too many politicians and vested interests benefit from it. In the ‘30s we did not have the military-industrial-surveillance state. There was no internet or social media in the ‘30s. There were no social safety nets until Roosevelt instituted them. Thereby, the populace was at its wits’ end and saw it had nothing left to lose. That is not the case today, but it will be if the next administration and Congress sees fit to do away with Social Security and Medicare.

The bottom line regarding the transit of Saturn on the Antivertex and conjunct Pluto is that it is a powerful indicator of realities for the US, especially financial realities. Saturn-Pluto combinations with angles (the Vertex is an angle) show the need for very hard work, often separations, darkness of mood and financial hardships. Those can either rally people to action or lead to the depths of despair. At its best those combinations can show occultists and people unafraid of self-sacrifice or hard work. They can bring forth very strong leadership, too, as we saw with both Roosevelts (‘Teddy’ and FDR) and Kennedy. We don’t have that in either candidate for President now. A look at past such conjunctions shows the tendency of its possibilities, as follows:

The last time there was a Saturn transit to the Pluto/AVx conjunction was at the start of Desert Storm, the 1^st Gulf War, along with a brief recession. Before that, there was Berlin Wall, the Bay of Pigs and the start of our involvement in Vietnam (1961). There was also a recession. Before that there was the Great Depression and FDR (1932). Prior to that, Cuba gained independence from the US and there was a recession (1902). In 1873 there was the Panic of 1873 and the start of the Long Depression. The next previous one was in 1844, which was an anomaly, in that it was the end of a sharp recession, but public confidence was buoyed by a transit of Jupiter to the US Moon at that time.

The next transit of Saturn to the US Plu/AVx was the height of the War of 1812. Washington was burned in that year and during that transit of Saturn to Pluto (1814). And the first time Saturn transited over the Pluto/AVx conjunction was in 1785, just after the end of the Revolutionary War. The US entered the Panic of 1785, which lasted for four years, the result of a combination of war debts and an overinflated economy due to a business boom after the war. With these past transits in mind, we now come to what should be the main issue in the campaign, one which neither Presidential candidate will put on the table.

In the past four decades, the top 1% of Americans in terms of wealth have skimmed $50 trillion out of the public purse. That actually started in the Nixon administration, taken up in earnest with Reagan, and turbocharged by Clinton. Australia and the UK had their versions of Reagan and Clinton, too – Thatcher and Blair for the UK, and Hawke and Keating in Australia. The net result of their brand of neoliberalism has been stagnant wages that have not kept up with inflation – in fact are only about half what they should by in the US, adjusted for inflation – jobs and factories being offshored (one of the reasons I decided to leave Australia), cuts to social services and social programs, rising prices for basic utilities and food, sharply rising prices for housing, cuts to workers’ rights and benefits, skyrocketing prices for medical care, skyrocketing prices for a university education and so on. Do we need to go on? It has meant austerity for the masses and socialism for the 1%. Neither Party will address this because they have been complicit in promoting it. Where is it headed, then?

At present, there is again growing instability in the stock markets, with talk of inflation by the Fed. The national debt is at its highest-ever level. Due to the small amount of stimulus given to the average household in the US during the COVID crisis, people are now able to save a little, but that poses a problem to the administration and the Fed. If people do not spend, the economy is not stimulated. Businesses fail. The service sector contracts (70% of the American real economy). And eventually the stock market will crash. That will precipitate what many financial analysts say will be a depression worse than the Great Depression and the fall of the American dollar from its reserve currency status. Congress is not moving to produce more stimulus for the real economy, meaning the true economy of the US will further contract. It will also mean a further financial bonanza for the American oligarchy, as they will be able to buy up properties and take over businesses at bargain basement prices.

The Saturn/Pluto conjunction at the US Antivertex will again do its work for the populace of the US. It always highlights the banking interests and the moneyed classes, in that the resultant austerity it produces will call the public to action. The crises of 2020 in the US have done a good job of waking many people up to what has been going on under their noses in the past decades and they are not happy with what they see. Confidence in the media and leadership is at all-time lows. It started working its magic in February of this year, when the virus cases began to spike in Seattle, LA and New York. It made its retrograde pass across Pluto and then the Antivertex in August, when the US was in its 2^nd spike of infections and there was widespread opposition to restrictions. It will make its final pass around Election Day. And America will decide. The next four years will be full of turmoil in the US, and that opens many opportunities across the board. But it will be a hard struggle for the people. There is no other way to state the matter, given what is transpiring.

It may seem to be a hard saying, but hear this out: Americans need to give up hope. Why? Because basing one’s future solely in hope places outcomes in someone else’s hands, unless one is willing to do the hard yards to produce an outcome. We need activism more than ever in the US rather than hope. Sitting back and eating popcorn waiting for a leader to clean up Washington will get us nowhere. Christians know the saying better as ‘God helps those who help (work to advance) themselves.’ That saying can have altruistic and selfish connotations, but the point should be clear. We should also be aware that we have been in similar situations before in the US, with high levels of poverty and no social safety net, yet have always prevailed and gone on to produce a better, kinder society. Such is the nature of the human spirit. There is some hard work ahead, and there are powerful interests who want to keep us poorer, cowed and complacent, as in ineffective. With that in mind, a word is needed about the recent death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Trump has said he will choose a woman to fill Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court. There are five in the running and the announcement as to who it will be is due Friday. The two most touted replacements are Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa. The former is the one most likely to be chosen and Trump has stated as much in the past, but the latter would be a canny political choice because it would probably swing Florida in Trump’s favour in the election. Florida is an important swing state. For either to be confirmed before the election would mean a conservative-leaning court for decades to come, a big blow to any efforts to promote progressive laws in the country.

The Republicans will try to push through the SCOTUS nominee before the election, fearing a Democrat in the White House. The Dems will do their best to block such a move. But because the Senate is Republican-controlled there may be little hope in doing so. So, this process will mean more divisiveness for the country leading up to the 3^rd. There is bipartisan hypocrisy on the matter all around. With Republicans saying they want to rush this through it sends the message that it is not about issues or what is in the public interest, but instead about who holds the reins of power.

The point to the discussion on Ginsburg and the SCOTUS is that the Saturn/Pluto conjunction can also – and often does – represent reactionaries. The Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn in January saw a swift reactionary response across the West that continues, one that will see their fortunes increased while the public looks at lingering restrictions and austerity. Reactionary administrations tend toward fascism, in that they support corporate interests, military posturing, austerity for the masses, heavy indoctrination and a narrow focus and tolerance of views. A conservative-leaning court would likely side on those lines in decisions, though not always.

If the SCOTUS nominee is pushed through prior to the election, then if the election is contested, as it was in 2000, then a Republican victory would be a more likely outcome. That is a big reason for Mitch to push through the nominee. The Democrats may come to rue the day they side-lined Bernie Sanders. Sanders was the popular choice. The selection process for SCOTUS will have a strong political element to it and whoever is selected will probably come from a swing state.

As much hype as there has been about the possibility of there being no inauguration on Jan 20^th, the Constitution mandates someone will be inaugurated on the 20^th. There are clear procedures for selecting the President in the case of a hung vote or contested election. In the worst-case scenario, the Speaker of the House becomes de facto President on the 20^th if there is no clear winner from the 3^rd of November and all other means for selection fail. The Speaker’s instalment is only temporary, though, until the Presidential post can be filled. That brings us to our last consideration, the Pluto direction to the US Midheaven.

Directions of Pluto to angles indicate life-changing events – life milestones. Though they may seem dark or catastrophic at the time of their occurrence, there is also very often a silver lining. Pluto to the Midheaven can indicate coups if other factors are present, the emergence of powerful people, and sudden turns in a nation’s or person’s destiny. It can take up to several years to realize what the silver lining is, if any.

Pluto represents the end of old situations, as we saw with the Great Depression about 89 years ago, which led to the banking system being reorganized and Wall Street being reined in. The same was true in 1841/42 with Pluto on the IC, which saw riots on the White House lawn over the veto of a central banking bill, the first invasion of Texas by the Mexican army and then the ‘silver lining’ – the first recorded discovery of gold in California, leading to a small gold rush.

There is the possibility – I would say the probability – of a silver lining taking place as the result of this election. For one, it is very possible that the President-elect will not finish his term, due to age and incapacity. For another, there could be big changes in the composition of the Congress. And probably the biggest possibility is that the people of America will say we have had enough, finally, and force the changes we have wanted for years. It is worth remembering that Trump won because of two factors – the evangelical vote and because people cast their vote in protest of the establishment, not because he was particularly popular. If it were not for ‘the deplorables’ and Mike Pence, Trump would not be President today. Those ‘deplorables’ are we.

So, we end here on a positive note. We know change is coming, and big change, for the United States. I do not hold that it would be dystopic. There will be some pain the process, for certain. But by the time the 2024 election cycle comes around, the US will be a changed nation. It’s ‘in the stars’. The end of this year marks the start of the air cycle of Great Conjunctions (Jupiter and Saturn) every 20 years, which will carry us fully into the Aquarian Age. That dynamic will be slow to start but will gain momentum as the years pass. The growing and prevailing focus in societies worldwide will thereafter be on ideas instead of material interests, on technology, on science and toward solving the world’s problems instead of seeking material gain and security. Americans are an inventive and forward-looking people. There is no reason to expect that we cannot change the current system more toward our liking.

For one, I do not have hope for America. Instead, I have faith that we will see through these uncertain times and go on to build a brighter future for ourselves, no matter what happens on November 3^rd and beyond – and maybe, actually, in spite of the outcome of the election. My faith is based in historical precedent and the goodness and generosity of the average American. Let us see whatever happens with this election as a call to action instead of a fait accompli. Though public opinion is divided now, opinions can and do change with the wind, and the winds of change are picking up speed. There is more that unites us than divides us.

Vote! It matters!

Featured pic from the US Embassy in Syria