“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America,” Barack Obama said in 2004. “While I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did,” Joe Biden said this year.
Both Democrats preached one nation, but the 2020 presidential election has exacerbated fractures of American society: a profound polarisation that veteran journalist Carl Bernstein referred to as a cold civil war. Some fear that another victory for Donald Trump could tear the nation apart.
And few are under any illusions that a Biden win on Tuesday would drain the poison overnight. Trump and Trumpism would persist, perhaps in an even more raw and angry form, its sense of racial grievance and injustice festering in opposition. Economic, social and racial fault lines predated the 45th president and will survive him.
“That division and hatred and fear and frustration and anger are not just going to disappear the day after the election,” said Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director. “The difference [if Biden wins] is that you have a president who wants to do what he can not to split the country apart but to bring it together.”
“But it’s going to take time. It isn’t something that is going to be resolved by one election or one speech or even one bill passed through the Congress. It’s going to have to become a pattern that people ultimately agree is a better way to live in our country.”
Since he rode down an escalator in June 2015 and fulminated about Mexico sending “criminals and rapists”, division and divisiveness have been defining hallmarks of the Trump era: female v male, Black v white, young v old, liberal v conservative, urban v rural, Hollywood v heartland, college-educated v blue collar, pro-choice v anti-abortion, “elite” v “deplorable”, instinct v science, hipster v hunter.
The split that Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, once characterised as “Bubble-ville” against “Bubba-ville”, is intensified through the echo chambers of social media and finds myriad cultural expressions. Polls show that Democrats are more willing to wear masks to combat the coronavirus pandemic, whereas Republicans are more likely to heed Trump’s insistence that it is overhyped and fading fast.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
