US Election 2020: Healing a divided America is Biden’s Herculean task
Joe Biden inherits an American crisis that is sunk deep into the hearts of the people. He must now deliver on his promise to unite, to heal and to bind up the wounds.
For Joe Biden, a win is a win is a win. But if the Donald Trump presidency is dead, the Trump populist movement is still alive.
Trump, a known bad loser, claims fraud, but if this doesn’t work he seeks to de-legitimise the Biden presidency for stealing the election.
Biden inherits a divided government and a divided country. His capacity to navigate a successful transition for America away from the Trumpian revolution must be seriously doubted. The 21st century American trauma is not over — it has merely entered a new chapter, filled with potential opportunity but great risk.
Is Biden up to the job? He promises to unite, to heal, to bind up the wounds. But this American crisis is sunk deep into the hearts of the people. The task of moral regeneration demands a charismatic genius to gather up the nation’s woes and redirect them — sadly Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan are no longer available.
Trump is a contradictory and confounding American genius, sinister yet seductive, corrupting yet compelling. The obvious gain from this election is terminating the Trump nightmare at one term, given his assault on stable government and democratic integrity. But Trump has been underestimated twice — in 2016, and again now in 2020. Trump’s rebellion has deep roots in the American psyche and contemporary tribulations. It is surely true and deeply sobering that without the pandemic, Trump would have probably been re-elected.
Even with a Biden victory there are rival narratives. Trump declared on election night that “as far as I’m concerned we already have won”, setting up the narrative of a stolen election. Many of his backers will embrace this as an article of faith. Yet Trump’s reckless narcissism is on display as a deposed president who cannot accept the public’s choice with either grace or dignity.
While the vote is tight, it is likely the Republicans will control the Senate and thereby throttle Biden’s agenda. This will jeopardise, in turn, the Biden/Bernie Sanders policy peace pact on which the Democrats won. And the close nature of Biden’s win will leave his progressive wing impatient and his Trumpian Republican opponents smelling weakness right from the outset.
The key point to grasp about the American trauma is that politics is the manifestation of a deeper crisis. It has been fermenting for 25 years. It cannot be solved in one election, nor one term. It originated in the cancellation of the great America Dream — the inspiring story of successful upward mobility over one generation.
US social and economic life has been mired in low wages, poor services, family disintegration, income and wealth inequality, rigid class ossification and an exaggerated emphasis on the individual at the expense of the good society.
The demise of the social compact has been turbocharged by the culture war: the embrace of cosmopolitan, progressive and woke values across elite institutions that leave many Americans in rural, working-class and low-paid jobs — the poor but patriotic class — feeling their country has been stolen. Trump is their Messiah.
Let’s dispel one great myth gaining traction around the world, namely that this is a bad result because Trump, while beaten, was not repudiated in a landslide swing based on moral revulsion. That would have finished Trump but accentuated the American trauma. It would have empowered every element of progressive triumphalism and sown the seeds for much deeper conflict.
Biden has no choice; he must try to govern as a centrist. It will be messy, contradictory, transactional, frustrating and, ultimately, it may fail. But the only hope for America is through rebuilding the political centre (whether centre-right or centre-left) and holding at bay the ideologues on both extremes with their self-righteous dogmas.
The immediate test is whether this flawed but idealised American democracy can make a successful transition of power short of violence and legal obstructionism.
There is much to celebrate. Sure, Americans still can’t conduct an election efficiently, but 150 million voted because they cared and believed. Biden’s victory saw him win the popular vote — at 6.30am AEDT Sunday, he led by more than four million votes — and emerge triumphant in the electoral college.
The big plus is that Trump — the destructive disrupter, the President who thrives on anger, grievance and division, the populist who corrupts every conservative value from duty, integrity and sacrifice, and the flawed chief executive who faltered before COVID-19 — is gone.
Whenever Biden stumbles, and it will probably happen many times, Trump will proclaim the folly of this election result. But that will be wrong. Another four years of Trump’s rebellion would only have accentuated the American crisis and the risk to the world.
What was disappointing was the false moral logic of those many conservatives who insisted that Trump must be supported in order to defeat the progressive quest to remake society. Sorry, you don’t support a bad candidate for a good cause, one of the core moral lessons of the 20th century.
As a political veteran, Biden’s main contribution will be to restore stability and coherence to the US executive government and claw back some international credibility. The Gallup poll shows 70 per cent of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction — a corrective opportunity for Biden, but a risk if he cannot reverse the sentiment.
His corporate tax increases are now unlikely, and his huge spending agenda and green infrastructure plan will face serious cutbacks in congress.
Former Australian ambassador to the US, Michael Thawley, vice-chairman of US Capital Group, said: “A likely Republican-controlled Senate means Biden’s radical agenda on tax, climate change and unions is now completely off the table. Politics now won’t be radical or populist, even though US politics will move a bit further to the left.”
Assuming no decisive economic swing to the left, fiscal support for US households and businesses will be more limited, and the role of the central bank, the US Federal Reserve, will become even more important via credit creation. A new climate-change urgency will be prioritised. Biden will rejoin the Paris agreement and he will champion net-zero emissions by 2050.
Whether Biden has the strength and skill to retool US capitalism, lift all boats at home, and offer US global leadership with spine, must be doubted. Biden was the best candidate the Democrats could find. But if he falters in office, unconvincing and unpersuasive, the damage will be incalculable. And Trump will be waiting in the wings.
Biden’s chief problem is a fractured society. Election 2020 has confirmed the broken nation story of election 2016. America is divided: urban and rural, white and non-white, coastal and inland, college-educated and working-class.
Strategic analyst James Curran told Inquirer: “Biden still looks into the abyss of a riven America, its confidence shot, its gaze still trained inwards. The question is what does this mean for the growing gap between American resolve and American capability. The resolve to remain pre-eminent is strong, but what is the capability? The gap between those two makes Canberra nervous.”
This goes to the heart of rivalry with China. Biden becomes leader of an America facing the most serious strategic competition in its history. He needs to provide effective leadership short of a military encounter. Biden will be a protectionist on China, but more nuanced and seek greater consistency of messaging. He will look for some areas of co-operation and be tougher on human rights, but he will follow the inexorable pathway of deepening rivalry.
“A Biden administration will steer away from the fierce ideological crusade adopted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others, but it is still unclear whether China will accept these new American schemas,” Curran says.
“It is not clear where Australia fits into these new agendas. We’re in the position now where we are the whipping boy of choice for Beijing in terms of economic punishment. Arguably, this nailbiting election in some ways underscores an intellectual failure in Australian political leadership to come to terms with what a changed America means. Over the past four years, our leaders have preferred to look away and hold their noses rather than come to grips with the social, cultural and political convulsions Trump rode to power.”
Beijing is convinced the wheel of historical power is turning towards China and against America. The contest with China is comprehensive — economic, military, cultural, technological and ideological. The shocking irony, at present, is that internal cohesion seems to be more a Chinese asset than an American one.
This election reveals the dilemmas facing both major parties, Democrat and Republican, with relevance for Australia. Despite winning the White House, the Democrat surge fell well short of expectations, undermined by its contradictory constituencies.
Biden had to win back the white working class while holding the party’s culturally powerful and progressive loyalists.
Yet this struggle over competing constituencies is getting worse for centre-left parties across the West. It nearly cost Biden his win after it ruined Hillary Clinton in 2016 and helped to ruin Bill Shorten in 2019. Biden got enough votes in the rust-belt states to get over the line, winning back Michigan, Wisconsin and the prize of Pennsylvania. But this constituency is vulnerable. Anthony Albanese knows this. It is the traditional ALP voting constituency that he needs to reignite, without which he cannot win the next election.
Despite Biden’s limited win, the progressive movement around the world, and in Australia, will be empowered. The Democratic Party’s return to the White House will roll through the global commons like a political tidal wave. That’s a risk for Scott Morrison as Biden re-enters the Paris Agreement and Labor at home launches a campaign to cast Morrison as an outlier still not pledging net-zero emissions by 2050 for Australia.
Yet this is also a risk for Labor. Having the progressive movement and media in Australia even more empowered won’t necessary translate into more ALP primary votes. That’s the trap. For Albanese, tackling Morrison on climate change is easy, but sorting out a Labor strategy is hard — riding the renewed climate-change momentum while also winning back the traditional ALP vote.
Biden probably prevailed more on an anti-Trump platform than a pro-Biden one. If true, that’s a problem. It means Biden’s victory disguises the extent to which the Democratic Party’s shift to the left nearly cost it the election and saw Trump vindicated. The campaign constitutes a setback for progressive cultural ideology with its obsessions on race theory, identity politics, minority activism and scepticism over national ethos. Biden knew he had to suppress these ideas in the campaign proper, and he succeeded.
On the conservative side, Trump republicanism has been defeated but it remains a potent force. Herein lies the Republican Party’s dilemma. It has lost the White House but Trump’s takeover of the party — based on the fierce loyalty of his base — seems complete.
American conservatives and Republicans now confront two brutal truths. First, Trump’s rebellion failed to sustain his 2016 victory. He is a vanquished, one-term president. He couldn’t govern successfully. The irresistible verdict on Trump is this: incredible campaigner, but inept president. Now Trump can return to campaigning, but will the American people trust him again? Much depends upon Biden’s performance.
The second brutal truth is that Trump was a minority president. Sure, he won in 2016 and, sure, he nearly won in 2020. But Trump’s political rebellion and chaotic style turned too many institutions, power centres and middle Americans — think suburban mums — against him.
The man was offensive. His style was incoherent. He alienated people for no purpose or reason. The presidents who change American history usually require two terms in office for the job.
If Trump goes on to lose Arizona, mark it down to his crazy, dishonourable attacks on deceased former Arizona senator and genuine war hero, John McCain, whose widow, Cindy, committed to the Biden side. Any Arizona loss is Trump’s own work.
Trump was a populist outsider who gatecrashed the system, but there is a rule about populists — after being elected, they usually cannot sustain their place without tampering with the democratic process and tilting it in their favour. The judgment on Trump will be that he provoked a rebellion but failed to translate that rebellion into sufficiently effective programs, policies and plans from office. There are, admittedly, serious exceptions to this assessment, notably a job-generating economic record and Supreme Court appointments destined to favour cultural conservatives for years.
At home, Morrison, a pragmatic centrist, will face calls from populist conservatives to be more like Trump, thereby energising the base and sharpening his differences with Labor. You can be certain Morrison will be wary of such advice. After all, Trump lost in 2020 and Morrison won in 2019.
“We are a working-class party now, that’s the future,” was the tweet from Republican senator Josh Hawley, a former attorney-general from Missouri who made his name fighting big business and big government and is seen as a long-run future presidential candidate. It reminds us of what the Republicans must start to do — take the Trump legacy and shape a new form of Republican conservatism without Trump’s negatives, but drawing upon the new constituencies he has created.
In his recent New York Times article, conservative scholar Yuval Levin, from the American Enterprise Institute, wrote that Trump “plainly neglected to ask himself how a president should act”. It’s such a simple but true remark. But Levin then turned his remark around and applied it to some of Trump’s critics “who have forgotten their distinct responsibilities — as journalists or scientists, legislators or law enforcement officials — and have instead become performers in our own manic political theatre”.
The loss of American integrity is not just on Trump’s side. It pervades many of his opponents, notably in the media and politics.
Will they change? If the American malaise is to be cured, it requires far more than Trump’s defeat. In the past 48 hours, Joe Biden has pledged to restore hope and healing to the country. But that means many of his own supporters must change their ways.
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