Biden’s project is to enlist the nation, not the Squad

Zoom back, for a moment, from the Trump team lawyering up and zone out Joe Biden’s Hallmark card slogans. Is the US election cause for hope or fear? It’s not only America looking for a way through polarised politics, economic challenges, bad actors abroad and elite-mainstream cultural conflict at home. Many nations, Australia included, are in uncharted territory with plenty of risks ahead. If we are to find our way, we need to understand what’s happening. That means talking to people we don’t agree with and expecting that the views of opponents will be well articulated in the media. It feels like a win to quash “wrongthink”, but in the end a world view not exposed to regular reality tests leads only to miscalculation and nasty surprises. Open debate and accurate reporting of a wide range of facts and opinion are essential tools for a society that functions. The failure of groupthink media, not just in the US, is stark.

Donald Trump has a legal entitlement to challenge vote results but most people have factored in a Biden presidency with the Republicans still holding the Senate. If mastery of congress is denied the Democrats, that’s a reason for hope. It might help keep in check the far left of the party with its authoritarian tendency and reckless utopianism. The firebrand “Squad” of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and their adoring media allies were hoping a “blue wave” of voters would underwrite a radical mandate for more dismal identity politics, leftist policing of free speech and the economic deadweight of a “Green New Deal”.

The promised blue wave didn’t come and American voters seem to have produced the potentially pragmatic power balance that is the mark of a democracy. Mr Biden, regarded as a decent human being, looks like securing a clear endorsement on the popular vote and in the electoral college. If Mr Trump goes, Trumpist politics will remain a force. It wasn’t only Democrats who bridled at the president’s conduct and style but many voters ignored leftist hyperbole about him, just as they didn’t get too distracted by his antics. Told by the commentariat that the commander-in-chief was a white supremacist on the brink of a coup, many Americans just saw an administration with some achievements amid the incompetence and recognised the Democrats’ own vulnerabilities. Higher turnout was supposed to unleash a pent-up surge of progressivism but it also brought countercurrents of conservatism.

This shouldn’t have been such a surprise. Ever since Hillary Clinton was denied “her turn” as president and Brexit voters showed themselves not enamoured of the European ideal, politics on the right has been more populist and nationalist, and multilateral projects and Friedmanite fiscal virtue have fallen out of favour. In Britain last year Boris Johnson swept to power with startling support in the north of England and a friendlier Tory take on public services. In Australia, Scott Morrison defied the pundits and doggedly worked the mainstream to win office the same year, and he too has been a pragmatist loosening the public purse strings, prodded by COVID-19. The common thread is centre-left parties with prominent activists not cultivating the centre but denouncing it as hateful and bigoted. The Biden campaign avoided this rhetoric but the Democrats seem to have paid a price for the relentless identity politics driving those “mostly peaceful protests” in US cities. While white leftists justified violence and rioting, it fell to black leaders to deplore pointless destruction of city precincts where many black people live those lives that matter. But elite commentary insisted November 3 was nothing but a verdict on the “racist” in the White House.

Exit polls suggest Mr Trump improved his vote among blacks, Latinos and gays and lesbians, with only white men giving him less support after four years of supposed white supremacy. Those polls may not be accurate but the panicky reinterpretation by race-obsessed anti-racists was telling. One New York Times writer suggested the surge in minority support for Mr Trump was proof of “the power of white patriarchy”, as if these black voters were all Uncle Toms. Another line was that “white Cubans” were hiding in the Latino category. Revulsion at the reductionism of skin-pigment voting assumptions was probably a factor in some minority support for Mr Trump.

The Manichean tendency to see a stark divide between enlightened progressives and the bigoted remainder is a serious threat to the success and competence of centre-left parties. There is no such thing as the end of politics, in which one sanctimonious group declares others hateful and refuses to engage in compromise and an attempt to balance competing interests. This denial of reality has a lot to do with intemperate social media, and can be seen at work in Kevin Rudd’s and Malcolm Turnbull’s talk of a royal commission into journalism. Garbed as a formal inquiry, this is more like an online campaign to deter independent coverage of progressive orthodoxy and rehabilitate their records as deeply flawed leaders.

Internal party management and realism in reform will also be vital for Mr Biden if he is to make progress on real-world issues such as health, education and lifting up the poor. It looks as if he’ll have to do business with Republican senators. He made the right centrist noises about this in his victory speech and we’ve heard much about his record of working across the aisle. A crucial test will be appointment of effective moderates to his cabinet.

Mr Biden will come under pressure not only from a Trumpist Senate but from radicals within his own party. They learned nothing from the defeat of 2016 and they will catastrophise negotiation, let alone reversal in congress. That Mr Biden is unlikely to seek a second term may help him stand firm against progressive folly; it may speed and intensify the power struggle within the party. The risks are many but hope remains. At its best, the presidency is an engine of American achievement and, for all the conflict and dissension, it is still an international beacon.