It's true that the American election was not a total repudiation of the Republican Party. But it was, Jonathan Freedland writes, a victory nonetheless:
It will be hard for Joe Biden to do what so urgently needs to be done, whether that’s tackling the climate crisis, racial injustice, economic inequality, America’s parlous infrastructure or its dysfunctional and vulnerable electoral machinery. And it is glumly true that even if Trump is banished from the Oval Office, Trumpism will live on in the United States.
And yet none of that should obscure the main event that has taken place this week. It’s a form of progressive masochism to search for the defeat contained in a victory. Because a victory is what this will be.
Biden has actually done something quite remarkable:
Donald Trump becomes only the third elected president since Herbert Hoover in 1932 to try and fail to win re-election. Trump would take his place alongside Jimmy Carter and George Bush the elder in the small club of rejected, one-term presidents. As it happens, both those men were gracious in defeat and admirable in retirement, but Trump won’t see them that way. He’ll regard them as stone-cold losers. And he’s about to be one of them, his place taken by a decent, empathic man with the first ever female vice-president at his side.
It’s worth bearing all that in mind when you hear the predictable complaints that Biden was too “centrist”, or that Bernie Sanders would have done better. It could be argued that Biden outperformed the rest of his party, pulling ahead even as Democrats lost seats in the House and failed to make great gains in the Senate. Note that Trump’s prime attack line – that “far left” Democrats were itching to impose “socialism” on America – cut through in this campaign, clearly alarming Cuban and Venezuelan voters in Florida, for example. But it was a hard label to stick on a lifelong pragmatist like Joe Biden: most Americans just didn’t buy it.
Biden is no radical. But he is the right person who will be in the right place at the right time.
Image: The Guardian
14 comments:
The Right Person?
Well he may be better than Trump but so would be a Macaque monkey.
I see him as another apparatchik who will do as he is told by his backers. He, we hope, will be a bit better for US citizens---at least his advisors way do something about the pandemic---but I see little reason to expect much on the international front.
Frankly, I really do not care all that much about the terrible internal US mess despite having friends and relations down there. I am much more concerned about a failing colossus flailing about and hurting us and other countries. The US is a narcissistic country and really cannot recognize that there are human beings in other countries.
Biden may be a marginal improvement internally but externally he has a lot of pro-war baggage that worries me.
I wrote earlier this week that the United States is beyond redemption, jrk. But its decline has a longer horizon than what the world faces immediately. And, at this moment, Biden is the right man at the right time.
I wouldn't waste one second on the stupid argument that the socialist label cost the Dems votes among Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants. Those are for the most part rich rightists who left their countries to avoid a more just wealth distribution. Many are of Spanish stock and consider themselves superior to other Hispanics, especially those from Mexico. Others, like Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, are straight up fascists. These are Trumpists, not reachable voters!
The election results are clearly a rejection of Trump, not a great embrace of Biden and the Democratic Party. The Dems lost ground in the House and failed to achieve the predicted majority in the Senate. Run-offs may change this, but for now things should be similar to Obama's last six years. In other words, the pre-Trump status quo, minus all the ground lost in the last four years. I don't see the US pulling out of its tailspin.
Cap
Biden is the right man at the right time.
I must disagree. Biden is, hopefully the least bad of a terrible two person choice that was created by a very corrupt and incompetent Democratic Party "leadership" in a weird country that has a defacto institutionalized two-party political system.
What leader, left or right, doesn't at least accommodate his "backers"? To believe otherwise is naive, akin to the notion of a truly self made man. In Canada, Biden is derided by both the right and the left, the latter unwilling to accept anyone other than Bernie. The narrow win for the Democrats, including the loss of seats in the House, suggests that Bernie wouldn't have been palatable to as many voters as Biden won. Trump would have been re-elected and it's conceivable that the Repugs could have taken a super-majority in the Senate.
There's no question that Biden can't fix what's broken in America. He can, however, be a great improvement over a second-term Trump presidency beholden to no one, not the GOP, not the Republican caucus, not his "base." He would be free to run wild within the limits of today's considerable executive powers. Trump likes to push buttons for, as they say, shits and giggles.
JRKR ignores the perils averted, dismissing them as inconsequential. They're not, far from it.
Freedland is a weird one. Shafted Assange. Drove away all the Guardian's good journalists to start things like Off-Guardian and Jonathan Cook his own website while living in Nazareth. Freedland hopped on his white charger and joined in the chorus to dun good man Corbyn as an anti-semite. So I read anything Freedland puts out as chief Whoopededoo editor at the Guardian these days as somewhat suspect, because there's always an agenda behind it, much as there is with Monbiots's pious bleatings on the environment on the one hand and his ditto dunning of Assange on the other. Well, it's Guardian policy and thus two-faced by policy. Luckily for Freedland's short term credibility, nature gifted him with an upper-class oaf as PM in the UK, so he can have a go at Boris and nobody objects in any way at all.
Now, if you wish to read what someone who can actually write thinks about Biden, have at dekko at the aforementioned Jonathan Cook's take on the man, and wonder at the pleasureable thouight -- this could have been what the Guardian put out these days if they hadn't taken a commercial decision with Freedland about 7 or 8 years ago to toe the neoliberal line. The fact they haven't covered Assange's kangaroo court extradition hearing is a sign it's all surface guff, with a hint of truth now and then if it doesn't step on anybody important's toes, like Israel. Since the corporate world is Pro-Joe anyway, Freedland can afford to be philosophic.
The Cook link:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/11/the-task-before-sleepy-joe-is-to-put-liberal-america-right-back-to-sleep/
BM
The American decline will continue, Cap. But, at least, Biden will (I hope) moderate the present American insanity.
We'll see, jrk. Character is destiny. And I believe that Biden's character will be very influential in the immediate future.
I agree, Mound. Biden is far from perfect. But he is far better than Trump.
No one should underestimate corporate influence in the United States, BM. But I suspect that Biden will not be totally beholden to incorporate donors.
2 @ The Disaffected Lib
JRKR ignores the perils averted, dismissing them as inconsequential.
I understand your point. I don't think I am ignoring the Trumpian horrors; it is just that I am not all that optimistic about Biden and team in the international arena. He should re-introduce some level of sanity (Iran maybe, WHO) but he still looks like a US warmonger to me.
Essentially I feel that the USA has dropped an narcissistic idiot to adopt an old hack with a bad record. This is, I hope, marginally better but I am not jumping with joy.
It's true that Biden is old, jrk. But that experience will come in handy -- both domestically and internationally.
Owen Gray said...
It's true that Biden is old,
So was Regan and we all know what his mental state finished up as.
We should not lose sight of the fact that the US is an empire in decline.
Yes it will be nice that a US president holds the same world view in the pm as he did in the am but we have yet to see what a 'healing' president Biden will do to appease the Confederates, sorry Republicans.
All said and done I can only expect the unexpected in this day of Covid ; it's the known knowns and the unknown knowns all over again.
TB
No one knows how this will work out, TB. Biden does not face an easy time. But his age and his experience could be his strongest assets.
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