A weak presidency, a radicalised party
After the attack on Capitol Hill and the end of the Trump presidency, the newly elected president Joe Biden will have to undertake the daunting task of healing the rift in the American social fabric.
I discussed the possible scenarios with Dr Tom Packer (Institute of the Americas, University College London, and Rothmere American Institute, Oxford).
What are the perspectives now for the GOP? Are there any chances Trump might actually found a new party?
In terms of perspectives for Republicans, I think they’re going to do is mostly resist, because that’s what oppositions parties tend to do. In a certain sense it will not be that coherent, no American party is, they’re not Lega or the Democrats, they don’t have the same party structure. That’s how Trump became a Republican nominee, there wasn’t much of a structure, the candidates even for president are picked by Republicans, it’s as if everyone who was willing to register with a right wing in Italy can vote for the right wing candidate, and every left wing person could vote for the left wing candidate. The Republicans are pretty coherent about Joe Biden’s agenda, at least the extent of it, expanding the welfare state, introducing secularism and wokeness in social issues-they oppose almost all of it. Joe Biden’s majority is so tight that he will struggle to get his plans through, and he might end up with a much more moderate version in terms of legislation.
In terms of prospects for the GOP, it might be relatively good, the usual rule of thumb is that once you have a President the public will start pushing back against him. The congress tends to move to the other party: so, for example with G.W. Bush when he came the Republicans had the Senate and the House of Representatives, the same happened in reverse with President Obama. Currently the Democrats hold the Senate by one vote, so really tight because they rely on the vice president casting vote, and they have a slim majority in the house, so it won’t take much for the Republicans to regain either of them.
In terms of Trump forming a third party, I don’t think it’s likely to happen, they are very difficult to get anywhere in the American system. He could try to run as a spoiler in the general election, but he doesn’t seem to want to do that. It’s the kind of thing that requires consistency, and willingness to accept a likely defeat- all things which aren’t very Trump. I think he might want to run for the Republican nomination again, I think he won’t but that’s a lot more plausible and could be a major issue. Or he could prefer to just retire and be a kingmaker -which is what I think he will do. But one never really knows with Trump.
There are of course lots of parallels with Ross Perot, as there were earlier, they are both very anti-globalisation, anti-immigration, sceptical of free trade, outsiders, but there are quite a lot of differences as well, I think Ross Perot used to be a lot more ideologically focussed, and also Ross Perot was a very rich a billionaire, and it’s very expensive to run as a third party candidate, of course Mr. Trump could try and raise money due to his popularity, but he would not be able to spend money on himself or his corporations so I don’t think he will run as a third party candidacy. He doesn’t like spending his money or losing commercial opportunities.
Biden has inherited a divided country. What are they going to do for that, and what sort of relationship are they going to have with the EU and post-Brexit Britain?
Biden will of course be more supportive of the EU than the Trump administration, Dems tend to have a better relationship with European leaders (though not all of them, for example Viktor Orban). That said I would not overstate the practical difference it would actually make, apart from tariffs it’s hard to think what Trump has actually done to undermine Europe’s interests in any significant way. He talked about pulling troops out, but didn’t-and Biden wants Europe to spend more money on defence too.
It might have been interesting if we had a hard Brexit but that looks very unlikely now. I think in general Biden is seeing his role as getting on better with allies, whom Trump was seeing as alienating (though Britain is not one of them). The cultural ties and even more the huge intelligence and military ties are not going away between the UK and US . I don’t think there will be a significant change in the close alliance between Britain and the United States. Joe Biden is not interested in getting rid of that, and the only thing that might have posed a little complication, the border in Ireland, appears more or less settled.
In terms of bringing America together I think he has taken some steps in what he sees as that direction. The tendency to massively personalise dispute, what you could call pettiness in Donald Trump, is very unlike Joe Biden, he doesn’t tend to pick fights or make personal comments about others. Indeed, he is unusual in how little he holds grudges. The fact Kamala Harris has been nominated is a striking example of that. In the primary campaign she essentially said Joe Biden was a racist for the policy he took against the school bussing of children, which she is in fact in favour of herself, and yet he put her on the ticket after he’d crushed her for the Democratic nomination. . The fact though is that division didn’t come from nowhere and what drove the anger around Trump was fear of social liberalism, fear of hardcore secularism and fear of massive transformation through immigration, which Joe Biden wants to accelerate and quite significantly liberalise. As far as he tries and succeeds to do that it’s going to massively divide the country and probably provide a backlash against that him. That’s how democracy works really, it’s just like the Fifties in Italy when the country was very divided about things that came down to fundamental ideas of nation and God. While Biden is going to be very divisive, he will try not to be petty about it.
One interesting question, is about the talk about the new anti-terrorism legislation. It could either mean whoever commits political offence could be arrested and prosecuted at national level rather than the state, so if you burn down a store writing Trump is the real president, they’ll prosecute you, if you burn down a store and write Black Lives Matter they will prosecute you. Of course, burning stuff down is illegal but that enforced at state level- this would create a national offence of doing so for political reasons. If it were strongly enforced it could maybe stem the tide towards violence in American politics. If on the other hand it becomes very targeted to what you would call the extreme wing of the Republican party or people in that kind of milieu, I think it will then become divisive in its own right, but America has the first amendment, which would mean the courts will rule unconstitutional prosecuting on grounds of views.
Key is that Biden lacks a proper majority in congress. Again, I know I keep repeating this, but it's extremely important- it’s very much like the situation in the Italian government at the moment in a sense, it doesn’t really have a majority, he’s severely limited in what he can achieve, it’s not just that his majority is small. Also and the parties are as always divided between among themselves and members of congress are accountable to their own voters-there is no national list. For example the most right-wing Democrat in the Senate, Joe Manchin. of West Virginia. Now West Virginia voted for Trump by, I think about 40 points, so he’s very concerned not to upset Trump voters too much. This really limits how radical President Biden can be.
One additional issue I haven’t talked about is the US supreme court. The new conservative majority could also check Biden’s achievements. .Conservative American judges take issues such as religious freedom quite seriously, very worried new legislation in the name of equality might violate the first amendment on religious freedom, they also take very seriously that government cannot discriminate on the grounds of race even if the discrimination is done to help underrepresented groups. And so, if Joe Biden pushes too hard on, say, some of the things he's talking about such as for example expelling people from public universities without a process claim when they are accused of rape or, trying to force religious organisations to hire people whose lifestyle they disagree with, it could well be struck down in courts. This of course was a consistent theme with Mr. Trump. While I am sure Joe Biden’s administration will be better organised (like every other administration) and will do a better job writing its laws to prevent them from being struck down, we should keep in mind there are six conservative members of the supreme court out of nine, which is a very big restraining force.
Parties have become very tied to identity, nowadays for example more religious people vote for the right, less religious people for the left, with some exceptions like African Americans who are quite religious but nearly all vote Democratic . In the 1950s the Americans were shocked at the party polarization in Italy, now it’s become pretty much like that, with more people that would dislike their children to marry somebody of the other political party, not because people have become more political, but because it’s part of social identity. Also, the parties are firmly apart politically
For example, president Biden has supported an act which would not just keep abortion legal up to birth but protect it from state regulation and subsidise it completely and make it harder for insurance companies and employers not to cooperate . Would President Biden actually do all that if he had the power, I’m skeptical. But the way the American system is he can propose it and have it die in Congress. Similarly, Donald Trump says he would ban almost all abortion, now Roe vs Wade in congress he can’t do anything of the sort, but obviously lots of people tend to be very frightened of illegal abortion particularly in more sympathetic cases. Moreover Republicans and Democrats tend to live in different places nowadays. Just like the South of Italy used to be super Christian democratic, the South of America is very Republican. Increasingly Republicans and Democrats don’t live in the same neighbourhoods anymore So people in rural areas and suburban are Republican, non-white people and people in the cities tend to be Democrats. I think Mr. Biden has tried to reduce that fear and to be seen as a figure of unity, but democrats are in a very radicalised mood, very much feeling that Trump if not fascist was close to it and keen to use their majority for radical ends.
Any emerging figures in the Republican party?
That’s a very interesting question, there are a lot of potential nominees, if Trump ran, he would struggle to win the nomination, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it became Trump versus the non-Trump. I think Pence is in a very strong position if you look at the polls, apart from Trump he’s the most trusted figure among Republicans. He was very loyal to the former president, but at the same time doesn’t have some of Trump’s baggage, such as arguably having triggered the recent riot.
There are lots of other people, some trying to be more Trumpian and nationalist, often combining it with a strong Christian feel, like Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri .Then there others who were not Trumpian but on good terms with the former president, like Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. She’s definitely running , though unlike Pence I am not sure she is a very strong candidate, but I could be wrong, it’s very early days and we could still be surprised by someone completely different. That’s what happened in 2016 after all!
Published in Atlantico Quotidiano