Can ‘President’ Joe Biden fix the ‘Divided States’

I am jumping the gun, but not by much: It is hard to imagine Joe Biden not emerging as the winner in today’s presidential election in the United States.

He has an overwhelming lead over President Donald Trump in all the major polls and the media’s own grassroots reporting has highlighted the incumbent losing hordes of supporters due to his disastrous handling of the deadly and economically ruinous Covid-19 pandemic.

One single fact makes it clear how difficult it is for President Trump to win: All analysts agree that, to be re-elected, he must win the state of Pennsylvania — where all polls show Mr Biden is ahead. But even if Mr Trump wins Pennsylvania, he will still need to win at least another eight major “battleground” states, in all of which Biden has a much bigger lead than in Pennsylvania. This is a seemingly impossible task. Unless all the pollsters, who say they have changed the methodologies after their stark 2016 fiasco, turn out to be wrong again.

Another telling sign of the Trump’s reduced standing, and of the ferocious interest that this election has sparked, is the unimaginable 90 million people who have voted early, breaking all such records by miles. In Texas, which has the second-highest number of Electoral College votes, the early turnout by Friday had exceeded the total vote from 2016.

Official figures show that more Democrats than Republicans voted early; so, one can assume that Biden has a head start when voters swarm to the polls today. For the record, this massive early vote will be counted after those cast on election day.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic hit eight months ago, Trump seemed on course to re-election. Tough-talking and armed with a right-wing agenda and a populist message of hope, he was able to connect with tens of millions of disaffected Americans who were left behind by the export of industrial jobs, shrinking incomes, job insecurity and declining government services as Wall Street and corporate America strengthened their hold on the political system. Trump also has a fanatical following of red-blooded Americans who believe in freedom from government control and to carry arms openly.

Virulently divisive

But at the same time, Trump had alienated millions by being virulently divisive, using openly racist and xenophobic language in his search for power. He was also deeply misogynistic and personally offensive, viciously abusing anyone who criticised him politically. He eroded long-term American commitments to fundamental values such as democracy, voting rights and inclusion, which, while not always fulfilled or pursued, were nevertheless aspirations that many believed in.

ButTrump has sustained his base. As the New York Times wrote in a front-page article last week — in a rare acknowledgement of his successes ­— he was responsible for “record-low unemployment rates, supercharged confidence levels and broad-based gains in personal income” before the coronavirus hit, benefiting not just the intended super-wealthy but lower-income workers and African-Americans.

In early March, when Biden emerged as the leading Democratic candidate, I was utterly disheartened. I felt that he didn’t stand a chance against the brutish Trump. The former Vice-President — under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama — is a mild-mannered, gracious and personally decent person, an infinitely better human being than the president, but you need a lot more than that to win the presidency. In addition, he was not only 77 but visibly past his prime, faring poorly in the debates and the three crucial first primaries, with many interpreting his confusing speech as cognitive decline, a fear furthered by his very limited public appearances and press conferences during the campaign. Amazingly, he got better as the campaign unfolded.

Everything changed with Trump’s unforgivable failure in tackling the pandemic and his public statements belittling its horrible human losses and, suddenly, Biden’s decency and humanity really mattered and stood out.

He ran an unimpressive campaign focusing on broad generalisations about his goals but not dwelling on what concrete policies he will follow, except that we might see Republican John Kasich in the Cabinet. But it turns out that whatever Biden did succeeded in throwing out Trump, or in pushing him to self-destruction.

Divided society

Nothing is important now except to do everything possible to get the vote out to defeat Donald Trump. Another four years will see the extreme, armed elements he has emboldened grow in strength, pitching a divided society straining at the seams into further free-fall.

I imagine there will be at least 60-70 million Americans who will vote for him as they did before and most of them will be decent law-abiding people who believe he is acting in their best interest, even if they do not like his rough, uncouth manner.

Is Joe Biden capable of undertaking the challenge he will inherit and reach out to these millions, not with soothing words of unity but economic policies that will address the profound deprivation that so many live with?

 Because if the grievous ills that have been festering unchecked for decades and pushed tens of millions into disaffection from the mainstream are not addressed, we could see the emergence of yet another strongman who will feel that he has the support for even stronger authoritarian actions than Trump deployed.

There is not much in Biden’s past that points to his taking bold and decisive action in the economic arena. Even the thoroughly establishment and moderate New York Times, in endorsing Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren as the best Democratic nominees, wrote that he was trying to “merely restore the status quo. Mr Biden is 77; it is time for him to pass the torch to a new generation of political leaders”.

The economic area is key to the recovery from Trump’s horrors. Biden’s initial and overwhelming economic priority will be the terrible current recession and the extreme deprivation that millions have been plunged into. He has said he was in charge of the 2009 Obama recovery package, which has been roundly criticised by Paul Krugman and Prof Stephanie Kelton.

Biden has repeatedly emphasised that there are no Red States or Blue States; only the United States. The initial political successes of Donald Trump revealed that what we have are two ‘Divided States’, which are pulling farther and farther apart. That should be ‘President’ Biden’s overarching goal, to arrest that split with concrete actions.