When Hillary Clinton first ran for the presidency in 2008, she faced many opponents. It wasn’t just the young Illinois Senator Barack Obama who made life difficult for her, a certain Senator Joe Biden from Delaware was running for the presidency for the second time. Joe Biden’s first attempt failed in 1988 due to plagiarism allegations. When the situation came to a head during the Democratic primary and the election would fall to either Hillary Clinton as first presidential candidate or Barack Obama as first African American presidential candidate, Barack Obama in particular had the full halls and energy of the party on his side. Just before she had to give up her candidacy, Hillary said sarcastically that every time Barack Obama took the stage he would play choirs of angels and violins because he was such an incredible political talent.
Twelve years later, the US is facing a situation where another sarcastic remark by Hillary Clinton describes pretty well what many people are feeling. After the 8 years presidency of Barack Obama, who is just publishing the first part of his memoir, and four years of Donald Trump in the White House, Joe Biden has now been elected 46th President of the United States. The reactions in mainly the eastern and western cities on the coasts such as Boston, New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco showed something like a collective sigh of relief. Evil was finally defeated and the joy of a democratic president, whom most of the people in the primary elections were still elected absolute evil, had now risen to the savior of the nation and the messiah of the West. Now we can finally save the climate and end the pandemic. The angel choirs sang through the liberal cities of the USA, of course, accompanied by violin music.
Not an easy job
But Joe Biden, at 78 years of age, has no easy job ahead of him. The legislative, executive and judicial institutions are under immense pressure and his Democratic Party has everything but a clear victory in the election in early November. In addition to the presidential elections, there were also elections for the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. The Democrats won the White House and won the House of Representatives elections, but lost 10 seats. In the Senate, the Democrats do not currently have a majority, unless they win both Senate seats in Georgia in a re-match in early January.
So where was Landslide? Where was Joe Biden’s great success? There wasn’t. Was this choice an approval of Joe Biden’s moderate left course, as he himself likes to say? Or was this election the final division of the (no longer so) United States of America?
Donald Trump
For Donald Trump, the matter is clear. Joe Biden stole the election and he’s already begun to delegitimize the election of the elected president and his Trump party (what used to be Republicans) continues to support the president. Of course, this is also due to the fact that Donald Trump has done nothing in the past four years than to promote candidates for Congress who support him. As a result, criticism can hardly arise, since over half of the Republican parliamentarians * follow their Donald in silence.
The Republican Party has changed a lot anyway under Donald Trump. The party that once stood for global trade and conservative values has changed today in a trade protectionist, right-wing extremist movement around Donald Trump. By scaring off and shattering international cooperation and promoting polarization in the United States, Donald Trump actively destroyed the image of the United States for four years through his divide and rule strategy.
Joe Biden will have to find out why the Republican Party has changed so much. Joe Biden is a hero of bipartisanship. The former Vice President was a member of the Senate from 1972 to 2009, where he also worked with Republicans time and again to push laws, amendments and budgets through the Senate. Sometimes in the opposition and sometimes as part of the ruling party. There was also criticism from his Democratic Party when his current Vice President Kamala Harris attacked him, among other things, for working with senators from the Republican Party in the 1970s who preferred racial segregation.
It is precisely this racist resentment that has always been part of the Republican Party. That of the 1970s, which essentially meant that Republicans were actively promoting racial resentment against African-Americans in order to get white voters in the southern states excited about the Republican Party. Back then, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Great Society gave African Americans more civil rights. The Republicans’ strategy was not necessarily to attack this policy, but rather assumed that the majority of African Americans would identify as Democrats and that the whites from the south would opt for the Republicans out of a phobia.
The reason why Joe Biden became a presidential candidate and will now be president is only down to the African-Americans, who overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden in precisely the southern states such as Georgia. The main ideological pillar of Republicans is the fact that they can incorporate conservatism, libertarianism, racism as well as American traditionalism. A homogeneous group around President Donald Trump who polarizes the masses.
Working together?
Joe Biden wants to work with these people? Barack Obama tried. The only Republican response to Barack Obama’s efforts to work together was the promise made by Senator Mitch McConnell, Majority Leader in the Senate, to make Barack Obama one-term president. It doesn’t look like Joe Biden will ever get a deal with these people on guns, healthcare, or climate. Joe Biden was not elected because he will change the world.
The voters knew very well that the US simply could not stand Donald Trump for another four years. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had a vote of only 48% in a poll and only Donald Trump exceeded this negative value and had an approval value of 39%.
Four years later, Joe Biden won the presidential election and, on the popularity scale in polls, the president-elect has a 54% approval rating. The voters in the USA do not necessarily have positive feelings for their own party or their own candidate, but their dislike of the other party or the other candidates is greater than their approval of their own party. Closing this hole will be Joe Biden’s central task. Joe himself calls this task “the battle for the soul of the nation”. Nice words. And despite the collective sigh of relief and the angelic choirs, over 70 million Americans gave Donald Trump their vote.
Good luck,Joe Biden.
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