Elections

When my oldest son was 3 years old we got him into a preschool class at an elite private school across the street from Prospect Park in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.It was more than we could afford — we couldn’t even afford to live in Park Slope, but instead lived in the neighboring Prospect Heights section — but, nervous and stressed by the unreasonable pressure new parents often feel with a first child to give them the absolute best at all costs, we found the money anyway.I thought my son was well adjusted. I had worked evening or late shifts since my son was born. He spent his mornings with me. I took him to the park and to play spaces with other children. He always seemed to socialize well with them. In the interview for the preschool — yes, there was an interview for a 3-year-old — the admissions officer dumped a tub of toys on the floor, watched him play with them, and asked him questions. Apparently, he passed.On the first day of school, I took him to class. He seemed fine, navigating the space with comfort and ease. But, then they told the parents that it was time for us to go. We nervously shuffled out and stood near the door in the hall, peeking through the gaps in the artwork taped to the window.Some of the children cried, but none of them like my son. He threw a full tantrum, fighting and scratching the teachers who tried to calm him, screaming and crying until he finally threw up. I was stunned and anxious and mortified. I came back into the room and they let me take him home. His tiny body heaved in my arms as I walked him home until the crying stopped and he dozed off.I realized that he was always so comfortable when in the park or in play spaces because I was always there. I was the comfort. I was the safety. I was his power.For a week, I took him to class, and the scene repeated itself every day: fighting, scratching, screaming, crying and then the vomit. At which point, each day, I would collect him and take him home.This could not continue. I asked his teachers if I could sit in the back of the class with him — his school day ended at noon — until he got comfortable. They allowed it. So, every day I would sit in the back of the class in a chair design for a preschool — yes, they are very, very, very small and low, like sitting on a small stack of books — with my coffee and newspaper, him glancing over every now and then to make sure that I was still there.When they snacked, I snacked. When they went out for recess, I went out for recess.This went on for months until one day when we were heading out for recess, he turned to me and said, “Dad, it’s OK, you don’t have to come.” And that was it. That was the last day I stayed with him at school.I am reminded of that story now that President Trump is refusing to concede the election and throwing into question whether or not he will peacefully relinquish power: He is acting like a child throwing a tantrum because he is being displaced from his comfort and power. The smattering of states that four years ago handed Trump the presidency abandoned him this year and he is unable to handle that idea.But, my son didn’t hold the power of the presidency. Americans simply don’t have months to let Trump grow up and get comfortable with his loss.So he is doing, and has done, everything in his power to undermine the legitimacy of this election. And, among his supporters, that is working. A poll this week by The Economist/YouGov found that 86 percent of Trump voters believe that Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the election. That would represent about 62 million voters under Trump’s misinformation spell.Trump is of course being aided and abetted in his deceit by a devout, deceitful conservative press and the conservative cowards in Congress who don’t want to get crosswise with him, even if Trump does damage to our democracy.Trump has essentially thrown in the towel on fighting the surging coronavirus pandemic, instead choosing to fight the will of the majority of the American electorate.Many legislators think that they can simply ride Trump’s anger as he works his way through the stages of grief, finally to acceptance. That’s the mistake they made when Trump was first elected. They thought he would grow into the normalcy of the presidency. He didn’t. He took their silence as license. And by the time they thought they needed to confront him, he had grown too strong for them to do so.Trump is once again taking Republicans’ silence as license, and by the time they speak up, he could be too invested in the idea of resisting the Election Day reality.Trump isn’t only throwing a tantrum, he’s cutting his teeth.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday.Over the past few days, there’s been much consternation over this year’s polling of the presidential race. How did we end up with a close election in key swing states after months of surveys that suggested there could be a Democratic landslide?It’s a familiar crisis: After the 2016 election, pollsters faced a chorus of recrimination about missing the mark and conducted a major analysis of what went wrong.Charles Franklin, the director of Wisconsin’s best-known political survey, the Marquette University Law School Poll, helped compile that 2016 report. He’s been involved with political polling since 1980 and has been polling his swing state for more than a dozen years. This cycle, his polls missed the mark again — though not by as large a gap as many of his competitors (including the New York Times/Siena College polls).I talked to Dr. Franklin about the crisis of confidence in polling, the challenge in identifying Trump supporters and why the surveys got it wrong, again. As usual, our conversation has been edited and condensed.You and I spoke last year about what the polling got wrong in the Midwest in 2016. Well, here we are again, with another poll-defying outcome.The last Times/Siena poll of Wisconsin, conducted just days before the election, gave Joe Biden an 11-point lead in the state. Your survey had Mr. Biden leading by five points. He won Wisconsin by less than a point. What happened?I want to begin with the obvious, which is that I know about my data, but I only know what I know from public sources about everybody else’s.What we see in our data is that we have been getting the Democratic vote amazingly close. Almost all of the error in our 2016 poll came from a substantial understatement of Trump’s vote. It was clear that we were understating Trump’s vote in the suburbs, especially in the Milwaukee suburbs and to a lesser extent the Green Bay suburbs.Flash forward to this past week. I was worried that we had Trump voters lurking that we didn’t find in 2016. So what we did this time is, for voters who said they were undecided or declined to say how they would vote, we used their favorable or unfavorable views of the candidates to allocate them to either a Biden or a Trump vote. If you were favorable to Biden but not favorable to Trump, we allocated that person as a Biden voter, and vice versa. (Three percent of respondents were still unallocated, most of whom were unfavorable to both.)After doing that, we did a lot better this time than four years ago. We were off on the winner last time — we had Clinton up by six points and Trump won by 0.77 points. So a seven-point error for us last time. It’s a four-point error this time. That’s better.We have the right winner but the same phenomena occurred — accurate on the Democrats, understating Trump.That seems to be a trend in the polls again this year. Why did pollsters have so much trouble finding Trump supporters?I don’t think this is the “shy Trump” voter in the way we’ve understood it, as people not wanting to admit they’re voting for him. Lots of effort has gone into finding evidence of that and it just doesn’t seem to exist.I’m more inclined to think we’re seeing a phenomenon of some fairly small segment — 3 or 4 percent, maybe, of Trump supporters — who systematically decline to do surveys altogether. That would fit with the notion that some segment of his supporters are pretty anti-press, anti-polls and in a lot of ways anti-conventional political engagement. But they may also be people who are not, in fact, strongly identified with the Republican Party. My hypothesis going forward is to search for the evidence that there is this small but critical segment of the electorate.I’m going to hold out one other possibility, which I don’t have the data for yet. And that is the possibility that there was a surge in Election Day turnout that we didn’t catch in the polling, given the partisan imbalance between early and Election Day voting.So if Trump is no longer on the ballot, will polling become more accurate? Or has it simply become more difficult to survey Republicans? If that’s true, it would really complicate our ability to get a sense of the electorate.The worry that we have is that survey nonresponse might become correlated with partisanship. One of the questions that I always get is: “I never pick up the phone if I don’t know the number. How can you possibly do surveys?” And my routine answer is that Republicans and Democrats alike hate telemarketing and scam phone calls. That has been the great blessing of the political polling industry. While our response rates may be lower, it has been an equal opportunity.Election 2020 More

Donald Trump stepped out of the White House for his first official appearance in six days as he laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark Veterans Day.
This was Trump’s first outing, other than to play golf, since Joe Biden was declared president-elect over the weekend. Trump has declined to concede the election to Biden.
‘It must be made to fail’: Trump’s desperate bid to cling to power
Pressure builds on Trump to concede as Biden pushes ahead with transition plan More

Key events

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8.44am EST08:44
Florida bracing for second hit from Hurricane Eta

8.03am EST08:03
Joe Biden’s vote lead over Donald Trump stretches to more than 5 million

7.48am EST07:48
Canadian PM Trudeau says looking forward to working with Biden on climate change, economy and Covid response

7.11am EST07:11
Texas becomes first US state with more than 1 million confirmed Covid cases

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10.06am EST10:06

Even Donald Trump’s own campaign is acknowledging they have failed to produce any evidence of election fraud.

Jessica Silver-Greenberg 🕵🏻‍♀️
(@jbsgreenberg)
A Pennsylvania judge asked a Republican lawyer whether he was alleging any fraud. His answer, in direct contradiction of @realDonaldTrump: “at present, no.” pic.twitter.com/nUxMt6W0bB

November 11, 2020

Appearing before a Pennsylvania judge yesterday, one of the president’s lawyers was asked flat-out whether the campaign was alleging fraud in connection to a batch of ballots.
The lawyer replied, “To my knowledge at present, no.”
Just to be crystal clear: there has been absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud in the presidential election.

9.48am EST09:48

Republican Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia city commissioner, defended the integrity of his city’s vote count after Donald Trump and his team raised baseless concerns about election fraud.

New Day
(@NewDay)
“I realize a lot of people are happy about this election, and a lot of people are not happy… one thing I can’t comprehend is how hungry people are to consume lies and to consume information that is not true.”- Phila. City @Commish_Schmidt on claims of widespread voter fraud pic.twitter.com/XoweYxMUQO

November 11, 2020

Schmidt said the city had to stay focused on counting valid ballots before the certification deadline, a goal that “should not be controversial.”
“I have seen the most fantastical things on social media, making completely ridiculous allegations that have no basis in fact at all,” Schmidt told CNN.
“I realize a lot of people are happy about this election, and a lot of people are not happy,” Schmidt added. “One thing I can’t comprehend is how hungry people are to consume lies and to consume information that is not true.”
As Schmidt’s interview aired, Trump accused the city commissioner of being “used big time by the Fake News Media to explain how honest things were with respect to the Election in Philadelphia.”
“He refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty. We win!” Trump said in a tweet.
In reality, Joe Biden currently leads Trump in Pennsylvania by about 48,000 votes, and the president’s team has provided no evidence to substantiate allegations of election fraud.

9.29am EST09:29

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
Donald Trump’s advisers are privately acknowledging they are unlikely to prevent Joe Biden from taking office, after the president-elect was named the winner of the electoral college.
The Washington Post reports:

[E]ven some of the president’s most publicly pugilistic aides, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and informal adviser Corey Lewandowski, have said privately that they are concerned about the lawsuits’ chances for success unless more evidence surfaces, according to people familiar with their views.
Trump met with advisers again Tuesday afternoon to discuss whether there is a path forward, said a person with knowledge of the discussions, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. The person said Trump plans to keep fighting but understands it is going to be difficult. ‘He is all over the place. It changes from hour to hour,’ the person said. …
The vote counting, meanwhile, continued apace as the states work toward certifying the vote, a process that should largely be finished by the beginning of December. In Georgia, the deadline for county certification is Nov. 13, but the majority of counties had already completed the task by Tuesday afternoon. Next comes a statewide audit, after which Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, must certify the results no later than Nov. 20.

As a reminder, every major news outlet has declared Biden to be the winner of the presidential race, and the Democrat currently leads Trump in the popular vote by more than 5 million votes.

9.01am EST09:01

Speeches from candidates conceding defeat in past US elections have been resurfacing after Donald Trump refusal to speak out since losing to Joe Biden. Here’s a little supercut to remind you of the way things used to be done after an election defeat.

Incidentally, while they are attracting a lot of attention, Trump’s claims that voter fraud has denied him victory is cutting little mustard with the broader American public. A Reuers/Ipsos poll released Tuesday showed 79% of US adults believe Biden won. That includes around 60% of those who identified themselves as Republican supporters.
And with that I shall hand you over to Joan Greve in the US. Thanks for reading, I’ll be back next week…

8.57am EST08:57

You’ll probably want to pop this in your diary.

CBS News
(@CBSNews)
Barack Obama will be interviewed on “60 Minutes” and “CBS Sunday Morning” on Sunday, November 15, in what will be his first television interviews following the 2020 presidential election https://t.co/JbJfKbcoxs

November 11, 2020

8.52am EST08:52

It wasn’t just the presidency and Senate and House races on the ballot last week. Lots of states were also asking their residents to make decisions of statewide laws. Kari Paul in San Francisco reports for us on one that might have a much wider significance – California’s Prop 22.

After a historic spending spree and an aggressive public relations campaign, Uber and Lyft emerged victorious on election day when California voters passed a ballot measure that exempts gig companies from having to treat their drivers like employees.
For big tech companies, the win was a crucial step in their fight to protect their business model, and they hope it will serve as an example for tech legislation around the US.
For opponents, it showed the power of big money in fighting legislation, and represents a harbinger of the labor rights battle to come.
Prop 22 was authored by Uber, Lyft, Doordash and Instacart, and will carve out an exception for these firms from AB5, a landmark labor law in California that came after years of complaints from driver organizers and would have forced ride-share and delivery companies to treat drivers as employees.
Under Prop 22, workers at gig companies will continue to be classified as contractors, without access to employee rights such as minimum wage, unemployment benefits, health insurance, and collective bargaining.
The ballot initiative, opponents warned, would continue poor wages and substandard working conditions for gig workers, and it would leave them with little recourse to fight those conditions. Labor advocates fear the victory for tech firms could mark the beginning of similar efforts across the US.

Read more here: Prop 22 – why Uber’s victory in California could harm gig workers nationwide

8.44am EST08:44

Florida bracing for second hit from Hurricane Eta

Residents in Florida are still dealing with the flooding that tropical storm Eta caused earlier in the week – and there’s now further bad news. Associated Press report that Eta has regained hurricane strength and the state needs to brace for a second hit from the storm. More

Isaiah Rendon was certain that he had registered to vote by the deadline. But when he went to the polls in San Marcos, Texas, on election day last week, the 21-year-old was only offered a provisional ballot.
It was Rendon’s first time voting. He hadn’t been interested in politics before. But this year, amid so much party infighting, he felt the urge to speak up.
“I need to go ahead and make sure I am heard,” he said, “for what I believe in.”
Confronted with a faltering economy, systemic racism, the accelerating climate crisis and a global pandemic, young Americans showed up to vote this fall, far exceeding turnout from four years ago. Youth, especially from communities of color, were one of the key constituencies that propelled Joe Biden to victory. And nowhere did they generate more buzz than in Texas, as Democrats aggressively pushed – but ultimately failed – to turn the red stronghold blue.
During early voting, more than 1.3 million Texans under age 30 helped drive surprisingly high voter participation in a state infamous for chronically low turnout. However, consistent with a long history of voter suppression, young people still got caught in onerous laws and frustrating bureaucracy, even after doing everything by the book.
“There’s just a lot of confusion on the ground, especially for first time voters, of what is their right, what is the law, and how can they vote,” said Catherine Wicker, a deputy field organizer for Texas Rising and graduate student at Texas State university.
In Hays county, Wicker’s home base, Texas State dominates the city of San Marcos with a majority-minority student body nearly 38,000 strong. Hays flipped for Biden last week, but not everyone from the area was onboard: San Marcos recently made headlines after a caravan of Trump supporters literally drove a Biden campaign bus out of town. More

As the Donald Trump era draws to a close, many world leaders are breathing a sigh of relief. But Trump’s ideological kindred spirits – rightwing populists in office in Brazil, Hungary, Slovenia and elsewhere – are instead taking a sharp breath.The end of the Trump presidency may not mean the beginning of their demise, but it certainly strips them of a powerful motivational factor, and also alters the global political atmosphere, which in recent years had seemed to be slowly tilting in their favour, at least until the onset of coronavirus. The momentous US election result is further evidence that the much-talked-about “populist wave” of recent years may be subsiding.For Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has yet to recognise Joe Biden’s victory, Trump’s dismissal struck close to home. “He was really banking on a Trump victory … Bolsonaro knows that part of his project depends on Trump,” said Guilherme Casarões, a political scientist from Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil.As the reality of a Trump-free future sunk in last Thursday, Bolsonaro reportedly sought to lighten the mood in the presidential palace, telling ministers he now had little choice but to hurl his pro-Trump foreign policy guru, Filipe Martins, from the building’s third-floor window.The election result represented a blow to Bolsonarismo, a far-right political project modelled closely on Trumpism that may now lose some of its shine. And on the world stage the result means Brazil has lost a key ally, even if critics say the relationship brought few tangible benefits. It brings an end to what Eliane Cantanhêde, a prominent political commentator, called Bolsonaro’s “megalomaniacal pipedream” of spearheading an international rightwing crusade. More

I absolutely hate political ads. They are usually nasty, formulaic, contradictory. Each will point out that candidate X is a lying, untrustworthy person who will destroy the very fabric of society. Candidate Y, however, will fix everything, if only I cast my vote their way. Switch candidates and repeat, repeat, repeat. Eventually they are recognizable by the tone of voice. My husband and I race for the remote to mute them, even when we agree with them.
We cast our ballots and awaited the outcomes with bated breath – with some cheers, some groans. Now, after days of counting, we have a new president. But the honest truth is that we are going to remain heavily divided.
Elections do not mute political animosity. We, the people, save our democracy when we reconnect at the personal level. Some people we see the most often may be the most at odds with us – neighbors, fellow worshipers, soccer parents, our own family.
How do I reach out to someone whose beliefs are diametrically opposed to my own? How do I retain my convictions while connecting?
Some want discussion to stop so life can return to normal. Normal means status quo. It means, “let me have my life back the way it was before.” If your life is one of generational wealth, privilege, economic opportunity, relatively good health, and all the freedoms and happiness those imply, that might be fine for you and others just like you.
The concept of democracy is based on the promise of freedom, rights and justice for all. We know that is absolutely not the case for everyone in the United States. Many are denied justice, generational wealth, quality education, medical care, housing and freedom. They are not afforded these due to skin color, place of birth, gender, gender identity, physical or mental condition. Simply returning to normal means abandoning them. And that is not acceptable.
Most of my life, I’ve been surrounded by the Appalachian Mountains. They are a fixed part of my horizon. They represent strength and stability, born of the Earth’s crust, pushed and shaped by circumstances beyond their control. They stand the test of time, largely immutable. I envision my convictions as mountains. Here are my places of strength from which I reach out to others.
My mountains are antiracism, affordable healthcare and justice for all. My beliefs are based on the notion that when any of us is marginalized, we all are. These concepts bolster what I do, what I study, how I spend my money and how I cast my votes. It is essential to me to entice others to those mountains if I want to see those changes.
This requires moving out of my comfort zone to find others equally willing to act in good faith. Trust and respect allow us to hear one another. Otherwise, our words bounce off the walls between us. A level of transparency can give us authentic points of connection. Difficult conversations ensue as we as ask people to talk about their mountains and why they chose those mountains. We then truly listen to their answers, trying to understand. And we, ourselves, participate in moments of true reflection to talk about our own mountains.
Some people are simply tourists, wandering the terrain of their own lives not having chosen to stand on any mountains. A few have been enticed into a course of action that they may not actually want, but are unsure of their options. And others are perfectly content with their mountains, but are at least willing to discuss them.
Some groups of people have been speaking for decades, and we have not been listening at all. We can uncenter ourselves and pay attention to what they are saying. We are responsible to educate ourselves, reaching out only as we are better informed and cause no further harm.
In reaching out, I can plant seeds of understanding which perhaps are brought to fruition by others. Some may never come to a place of compassion or comprehension. There are more people out there who want to make this democracy work than those who do not. They just might be a bit overwhelmed at the moment and swept along in the current, trying to find a firm footing once again.
We, the people, cast our votes. And now we must take ownership of our democracy.
Susan Bro works as an advocate for positive social change through the Heather Heyer Foundation and hate crime legislation More

It brought a tear to the eye and a hand to the heart. Joe Biden, in his acceptance speech, called for unity and healing. He would work “to win the confidence of the whole people”. I just hope he doesn’t mean it. If he does, it means that nothing has been learned since Barack Obama made roughly the same speech in 2008.
The United States of America is fundamentally divided. It is divided between exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed. There is no unity to be found with kleptocrats and oligarchs. Any attempt to pretend there is will lead to political failure. It will lead not to healing but to a deflected polarisation. If Americans are not polarised against plutocrats, they will be polarised against each other.
I understand that, in a sentimental nation, bromides like Biden’s might be considered necessary. But I fear he believes what he says. When he spoke to wealthy donors at the Carlyle hotel in Manhattan last year, he told them not only that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change”, but also that “you have to be able to reach consensus under our system”. In this context, consensus looks like appeasement.
Obama’s attempt to reconcile irreconcilable forces, to paper over the chasms, arguably gave Donald Trump his opening. Rather than confronting the banks whose reckless greed had caused the financial crisis, he allowed his Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, to “foam the runway” for them by allowing 10 million families to lose their homes. His justice department and the attorney general blocked efforts to pursue apparent wrongdoing by the financiers. He pressed for trade agreements that would erode workers’ rights and environmental standards, and presided over the widening of inequality and the concentration of wealth, casualisation of labour and record mergers and acquisitions. In other words, he failed to break the consensus that had grown around the dominant ideology of our times: neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism has been neatly described by William Davies, a professor at Goldsmiths College, as “the disenchantment of politics by economics”. It sees politics as an ineffective or illegitimate means of social improvement. Decision-making should be transferred to “the market”, a euphemism for the power of money. Through buying and selling, we establish a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Any attempt to interfere in the discovery of this natural order – such as taxing the rich, redistributing wealth and regulating business – will inhibit social progress.
Neoliberalism disenchants politics by sucking the power out of people’s votes. When governments abandon their ambition to change social outcomes or deliver social justice, politics become irrelevant to people’s lives. It is perceived as the chatter of a remote elite. Disenchantment becomes disempowerment.
Before neoliberalism triggered the financial crash of 2008, its doctrines were treated as orthodoxy across the political spectrum. Obama had a chance to break from this cage, to confront the powers that “the market” disguised and the social divisions it caused. But he chose not to take it. Grace and decency alone cannot defeat structural injustice.
Trump stormed into the political vacuum. Chaotic and unscrupulous, in some respects he offended the neoliberal consensus, ripping up trade agreements, while in others he reinforced it. But the important point is that he was a monster the consensus created. His success was a product of the fake unity and fake healing of elite political agreement. When mainstream politics offered only humiliation and frustration, people turned to a virulent, demagogic anti-politics.
Biden has turned leftwards since he was Obama’s vice-president. There are some strong policies in his platform. But there is also a determination not to break the consensus by directly confronting the donor class. His “clean energy revolution”, which envisages massive investments in renewables and greener infrastructure, covers half the necessary effort to prevent climate breakdown. But without an active programme to retire dirty infrastructure and leave fossil fuels in the ground – in other words, directly confronting fossil capital – it will be less effective than he imagines.

His measures to support small business are positive, but they will count for little unless he also breaks up big business, starting with big tech. He has promised to raise taxes for the rich. But the plutocrats will laugh at him until he wages war on tax havens and secrecy regimes, starting with his home state of Delaware. Unless Biden unites the people against the oligarchs who dominate the nation, the people will remain divided against each other.
Biden will be tethered by circumstance. If the Democrats fail to win both Senate seats in Georgia, he will face a hostile upper house. Trump’s appointments ensure that not only the supreme court but also many federal judges will seek to frustrate progressive measures. Much of his time will be spent firefighting the pandemic, and the economic and social crises it has caused.
It might seem strange to note that the US was lucky to get Trump, but it was, in this respect: while he is power-mad and entirely lacking in conscience and empathy, he is also impetuous and incompetent, and failed to follow a clear programme. In other words, he was a hopeless wannabe dictator. He was also unfortunate: were it not for the pandemic, he might have won again. But he has blazed a trail for someone more effective: someone with Trump’s absence of moral constraint, but with a determined programme and a cold, strategic mind. If Biden fails to break the political consensus, in 2024 he could open the door to a competent autocrat. Writing in the Atlantic, Zeynep Tufekci names some plausibly frightening candidates.
Before we consider solutions, I think we have to recognise the possibility that US politics might not be fixable. The system is constitutionally padlocked; beholden to the power of money, which is reinforced by the supreme court’s catastrophic Citizens United decision, removing the caps on political spending by lobbyists; perhaps now terminally confused, frightened and angry. But if there is a solution, it must involve the re-enchantment of politics.
What does this look like? I suspect it means a tub-thumping left populism, inveighing against billionaires, against big money in politics, against the stripping away of public protections, against white collar crime and in favour of the radical redistribution of both wealth and political power. It would reach past an obstructive Senate and supreme court to appeal directly to the people. It would build and sustain social movements that are bigger than the Democratic party, using its activist base not just to win elections but also to drive home political change.
Though Biden is a political chameleon, and though I will never abandon hope, it is hard to see him fulfilling this role. Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic, but at this early stage his presidency looks to me like an interregnum between something terrible and something much worse.
• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist More