US Politics

In Detroit, auto plants have for decades churned out trucks built with Motor City steel and fueled by gasoline. But this week’s rollout of the Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck offered a vision of the future in America’s automotive heartland: aluminum-clad pickups running off of electric powertrains with lithium batteries.An electric model of the nation’s best-selling vehicle at an accessible $40,000 has the potential to shift the auto industry’s course, and do more to advance the transportation sector’s electrification than any recent development, analysts say.“Offering a well-known vehicle at a competitive price could really help push the EV agenda in the US,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at Edmunds.com.Meanwhile, Ford characterized the Lightning’s introduction as a “watershed moment,” but it also represents a major gamble. The F-150 embodies American ruggedness, and it raises the question: isthe truck market’s meat-and-potatoes base ready to embrace environmentally friendly electric vehicles (EVs)?It’s uncharted territory, said Autotrader executive analyst Michelle Krebs. The success of the Lightning or any EV hinges on a major infrastructure build-out that’s far from certain.“There’s no EV pickup market at the moment, so we just don’t know how big it could be, or what consumer acceptance will be,” she said.Truck consumers are generally unwilling to switch to cars just to go electric, Krebs said. So pitching them on the Lightning not only opens a new market for Ford, but is a critical step in the nation’s efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, of which the transportation sector accounts for 29%. The EV transition is a key component of Joe Biden’s climate plan, which calls for the nation to cut emissions by 50% from 2005 levels by 2030, and net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050.Though EVs only make up less than 2% of new-vehicle sales in the US, there’s perhaps no better line to push the needle on those figures than the F-Series. Last year, Ford generated about $42bn in the sale of over 800,000 F-Series trucks, according to data from the company and Edmunds.com. Sales of the F-150, the line’s light-duty truck, exceeded 556,000.The Lightning feature that seems to be catching the most attention isn’t under the hood or in the cab, but on the price tag. With EV tax incentives, the truck’s base model could cost about $32,000 – less than a $37,000 gas-powered F-150 with a crew cab. By contrast, the GMC Hummer EV and Rivian R1T, are priced at $80,000 and $70,000 though they are slightly flashier.The Lightning also marks one of the first attempts to electrify a well-known, everyday vehicle that appeals to a mass market. Previously, EVs were mostly small, unconventionally designed cars that appealed to environmentally minded people who made a personality statement with their vehicle, Caldwell said. The “pendulum has swung” in terms of design, she added.The Lightning’s range is also notable. One charge will take a base model Lightning 230 miles, or, for an additional $20,000, the extended range trim will travel 300 miles. It can haul up to 2,000lbs of payload and tow up to 10,000lbs. However, Ford doesn’t offer any data on range with a heavy payload or tow, and Car And Drive estimated it at as little as 100 miles.That’s the type of detail that could keep consumers away from not just the Lightning, but all electric pickups. On a 150kw DC fast charger, the extended-range trim targets up to 54 miles of range in 10 minutes, or just under an hour for a full charge.It’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which someone who may be buying a truck to tow a camper a long distance once or twice per year opting for a gas-powered F-150 instead being inconvenienced with an hour-long stop to recharge every 100 miles or so, Caldwell said.But several once-in-a-while Lightning features are generating a buzz, like a drain hole in case the cab needs to be hosed out. Its dual battery system can power tools in the field, or a house for three days during an outage. The F-150 Hybrid was utilized as a mobile generator in the recent deadly Texas blackouts.The Lightning’s power is another selling point – it can go 0-60mph in just over four seconds, offers 775lb-feet of torque, and the extended range model targets 563 horsepower.That was enough to impress Biden, who test drove a Lightning during a Michigan stop last week. “This sucker’s quick,” he declared.Among those who will need to harness the truck’s full power and hauling capacity are contractors. It’s worth consideration, said Dave Alder, an electrician in Detroit, especially if it could save on gas money. But he worried about where he would charge it, and said it’s a bit of a “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” situation with his gas-powered Chevy Silverado.The Lightning has the support of the United Auto Workers union, which at times has been skeptical of electrification. The truck will be built at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, which sits just outside of Detroit and next to the Dearborn Truck Plant that produces gas-powered and hybrid F-150s. Lightning production is slated to start next spring, with the trucks hitting the lot in mid-2022.Critical to its success is an infrastructure build out, and Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan includes $174bn to support the EV transition.The president has framed his pitch by repeatedly claiming the US is in an electrification race with China.“The future of the auto industry is electric. There’s no turning back,” Biden said during the Lightning’s unveiling. “The question is whether we will lead or we will fall behind in the race to the future.”Buy-in from the auto industry could help Biden push his proposal with Congress, though it’s uniformly opposed by the GOP. Republican leadership has pointed to the lack of infrastructure as a chief reason for opposing spending on the EV transition, but at the same time opposes funding an infrastructure build-out.American consumers have said they won’t buy an EV without the infrastructure in place, Krebs said, which leaves the industry facing a “chicken and egg” situation.“That’s key – they have got to have the charging infrastructure in place or this will all go kaput,” she said. More

A sudden fall from power always comes hard. King Alfred was reduced to skulking in a Somerset bog. A distraught Napoleon talked to coffee bushes on St Helena. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia hung around the haberdashery department of Jolly’s in Bath. Uganda’s Idi Amin plotted bloody revenge from a Novotel in Jeddah. Only Alfred the Great made a successful comeback.All of which brings us to Donald Trump, currently in exile at his luxury club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Whingeing amid the manicured greens and bunkers of his exclusive golf course, the defeated president recalls an ageing Bonnie Prince Charlie – a sort of “king over the water” with water features. Like deposed leaders throughout history, he obsesses about a return to power.Yet as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell moves to kill off a 9/11-style national commission to investigate the 6 January Capitol Hill insurrection, the pressing question is not whether Trump can maintain cult-like sway over Republicans, or even whether he will run again in 2024. The question that should most concern Americans who care about democracy is: why isn’t Trump in jail?The fact he is not, and has not been charged with anything, is a genuine puzzle – some might say a scandal, even a conspiracy. Trump’s actual and potential criminal rap sheet long predates the Capitol siege. It includes alleged abuses of power, obstruction of justice, fraud, tax evasion, Russian money-laundering, election tampering, conflicts of interest, hush-money bribes, assassination – and a lot of lies.Let’s take these allegations one at a time. District of Columbia investigators say they have charged 410 people over the Capitol breach. Some could be tried for plotting to overthrow the US government – a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison – or even for murder, given that five people died. Yet Trump, who urged supporters at a Washington rally that day to “fight like hell” to stop Congress certifying his election loss, is not among them. He has not even been questioned over his indisputably pivotal role.For sure, Trump was impeached – but he declined to appear before Congress, and Republican toadies made a mockery of the process, voting to acquit him of inciting insurrection. In March, DC attorney Michael Sherwin said federal investigations involving Trump are still under way. “Maybe the president is culpable,” he mused. But updates about this key aspect of the affair are unaccountably lacking.Letitia James, New York’s attorney-general, last week confirmed a criminal investigation into alleged wrongdoing by Trump’s business empire. This inquiry is running in tandem with another criminal investigation into the Trump Organisation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance. Alleged false accounting and tax irregularities appear to be the main focus.Yet these long-running investigations lack tangible results. Nor do they appear to be examining potentially more politically illuminating allegations such as Trump’s dealings with Vladimir Putin and Russia’s oligarchs, money-laundering via the New York property market, and the past role of disgraced Deutsche Bank. While claiming it’s all a “witch-hunt”, Trump may be happy for these limited inquiries to drag on indefinitely.Why, meanwhile, has Trump not already been arraigned on charges of obstruction of justice and abuse of power? Exactly two years ago, special counsel Robert Mueller cited 10 instances of the then president allegedly obstructing investigations into collusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia. They included his firing of the FBI director, James Comey, and an attempt to sack Mueller himself.Mueller plainly indicated there was a case to answer, but said he was unable to bring indictments. “A president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office,” he said. Even if that is legally correct, Trump is no longer in office. Merrick Garland, William Barr’s thankfully less Uriah Heep-ish successor as attorney-general, should be all over this. Why isn’t he?Trump’s well-attested attempts to induce Georgia state officials to manipulate November’s election count in his favour were a crime, Fulton County prosecutors suggest. If so, why the delay? Charge him! Add to the rap sheet allegations of the ex-president corruptly channelling US taxpayer and foreign funds into his hotel and resort businesses.Trump, who promised to ‘drain the swamp’, waddled knee-deep in sleaze. So charge him!“Special interest groups likely spent more than $13 million at Trump properties” in order to gain access and influence, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an independent watchdog, reports. This typified an administration “marked by self-interest, profiteering at the highest levels, and more than 3,700 conflicts of interest”.In short, Trump, who promised to “drain the swamp”, waddled knee-deep in sleaze. So investigate and charge him!Trump has much to answer for internationally, too. The UN says the assassination he ordered last year, without just cause, of an Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani, was an unlawful act – possibly a war crime. And if all that is not enough, then consider – from a moral if not a legal standpoint – the thousands of avoidable Covid-19 deaths attributable to Trump’s denialism, stupidity and reckless incompetence.It’s truly strange that in a land of laws, Trump still walks free, strutting around his fancy-pants golf course, holding $250,000 a head fundraisers, evading justice, encouraging sedition, and daily blogging divisive bile about a stolen election. The Big Kahuna peddles the Big Lie. What other self-respecting country would allow it?The dismaying answer may be that to lock him up – the fate he wished on Hillary Clinton – would be to risk another insurrection. That’s the last thing Joe Biden and America’s wobbly democracy needs. But letting him get away with it harms democracy, too. In office, Trump ruled by lawlessness and fear. In exile, fear keeps him beyond the reach of the law. More

Donald Trump’s presidency was capricious and chaotic, but there was one issue on which he focused with laser-like discipline: tilting the judiciary to the right.Now America is about to reap that harvest. In the next year the supreme court is set to consider healthcare, voting, LGBTQ rights, guns and, most explosively, abortion. The cases provide a vivid demonstration of how, after being rejected at the ballot box, conservative partisans could push their agenda through the courts instead.“Next year’s supreme court term is shaping up to be the revenge of Donald Trump,” said Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School.It was always said that, long after the tweets and leaks were forgotten, Trump’s judicial legacy would endure. He appointed 234 judges, including 54 appellate judges, outpacing Barack Obama’s first term total of 172 and George W Bush’s 204.The blitz included three supreme court justices, most recently Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic, who replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg following the liberal linchpin’s death, handing conservatives a 6-3 majority.Just after Barrett’s arrival and Joe Biden’s victory, the court heard arguments in a new challenge to Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act. A decision is expected soon. If the court’s conservatives overturn Obamacare, they would succeed where Republicans in Congress failed.That outcome is seen as unlikely, but the right is expected to fare better in two cases brought by Democrats contending that voting restrictions in Arizona are racially discriminatory. A ruling, expected soon, could make it harder to challenge dozens of other Republican-led voting measures in the wake of last year’s election.Another looming case involves a Roman Catholic adoption agency in Philadelphia that argues it is entitled to discriminate against potential foster parents on the basis of sexual orientation. Arguments at a hearing last November again implied that the conservative majority will rule in favour of the agency.The supreme court’s 2020-21 term offers further flashpoints. The nine justices will review a challenge to New York’s restrictions on people carrying concealed handguns in public. It will be the court’s first major gun rights case in more than a decade, even as Biden pushes for Congress to tackle America’s firearm violence epidemic.And, it emerged this week, America’s highest court will also consider a bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The eventual ruling could undercut the seminal 1973 Roe v Wade decision that enshrined a woman’s right to abortion nationwide.Fallone believes the move is a sign that the court’s conservatives are no longer worried about Chief Justice John Roberts casting a decisive vote against them. “The only reason to take this case would be to overturn Roe,” he said. “They’re pretty confident they can succeed without it.”Despite holding the White House and both chambers of Congress, Democrats have few options in the short term. Fallone, who unsuccessfully ran for the Wisconsin supreme court as a Democrat, added: “I don’t really think realistically that there is much that the Democrats can do about the court. The conservative majority is going to be emboldened next term.“They’ve been waiting for that moment for a long time and it’s finally going to arise. The second amendment case involving the New York law against carrying firearms openly in public is also setting up next term to be a big win for conservatives potentially as well.”A commission established by Biden to study potential changes to the supreme court held its first meeting on Wednesday. It has six months to issue a report on reforms including possibly expanding the number of justices to 13, an idea championed by some liberal activists and Democratic members of Congress.Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the pressure group Demand Justice, said: “From the gun violence prevention case to the abortion case, the Republican super majority on the supreme court is showing that it is full steam ahead with its ultra-conservative agenda regardless of what the country thinks.“Ultimately we have to grapple with the need for structural reform of the supreme court. We’re just starting to build the education and activism around this and gaining momentum in Congress. As the supreme court continues to take these grossly political steps, unfortunately they’re going to make the argument for us about why the supreme court needs to be reformed.”A bill to expand the court was introduced in Congress last month but Democratic moderates have expressed scepticism. Kang insisted: “Sooner or later, this is going to be a question that comes to the Democrats about how we’re going to preserve our democracy. The need to add supreme court seats, regrettably, is going to become very clear within the next couple of years.”Republicans have opposed the idea of expanding the number of justices, sometimes described as “court packing” and last seriously attempted by the Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. They deny that they are using the courts as a workaround to subvert democracy and impose a form of minority rule.Curt Levey, president of the rightwing advocacy group the Committee for Justice, said: “I don’t see Biden’s narrow victory as an endorsement of abortion on demand, which is pretty much the current regime or, for that matter, as an endorsement of draconian restrictions on handguns. So I guess I don’t really see it as being out of step.“I think the opposite was true for many decades where the supreme court represented elite opinion that was out of touch with the majority. Perhaps for the first time, the supreme court is more in line with the American people generally. I certainly understand why the left is upset that they’ve lost an institution that helped them to implement their agenda.”In fact Biden won the national popular vote by 7m ballots. About six in 10 Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center, although the partisan split over the issue has deepened in recent years.Meagan Hatcher-Mays, director of democracy policy at the grassroots movement Indivisible, said: “Most people in the United States think that abortion should be legal and easy to access so it’s not really a political winner for Republicans, especially among suburban women, to go at women’s bodily autonomy like this legislatively.“If the courts do it, then they get what they want and they don’t face any blowback for it because it wasn’t them that did it. They didn’t pass a law that says abortion is bad; they got the supreme court to do it. And so that’s what this 40-year project has been about: stacking the courts with people that are conservative loyalists and who will do the unpopular dirty work of Republicans that they can’t get done legislatively.”It is a very long game. A recent article in the Atlantic magazine noted that Trump’s judges will not reach the peak of their influence until the early 2040s, when they are likely to lead nearly every appeals court at the same time.Hatcher-Mays warned: “The lower courts also have been hijacked, frankly, by people who are loyal not just to conservative values but Republican political outcomes. That was Trump’s big legacy. Not every case goes to the supreme court; a lot of them are decided at the lower level; a lot of those people that he picked are Trumpian-type judges. So that’s really, really scary.” More

Maybe it’s wishful thinking to declare the pandemic over in the US, and presumptuous to conclude what lessons we’ve learned. So consider this a first draft.1. Workers are always essentialWe couldn’t have survived without millions of warehouse, delivery, grocery and hospital workers literally risking their lives. Yet most of these workers are paid squat. Amazon touts its $15 minimum wage but it totals only about $30,000 a year. Most essential workers don’t have health insurance or paid leave. Many of their employers (including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, to take but two examples) didn’t give them the personal protective equipment they needed.Lesson: Essential workers deserve far better.2. Healthcare is a basic rightYou know how you got your vaccine without paying a dime? That’s how all healthcare could be. Yet too many Americans who contracted Covid-19 got walloped with humongous hospital bills. By mid-2020, about 3.3 million people had lost employer-sponsored coverage and the number of uninsured had increased by 1.9 million. Research by the Urban Institute found that people with chronic disease, Black Americans and low-income children were most likely to have delayed or foregone care during the pandemic.Lesson: America must insure everyone.3. Conspiracy theories can be deadlyLast June, about one in four Americans believed the pandemic was “definitely” or “probably” created intentionally, according to the Pew Research Center. Other conspiracy theories have caused some people to avoid wearing masks or getting vaccinated, resulting in unnecessary illness or death.Lesson: An informed public is essential. Some of the responsibility falls on all of us. Some of it on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that allowed misinformation to flourish.4. The stock market isn’t the economyThe stock market rose throughout the pandemic, lifting the wealth of the richest 1% who own half of all stock owned by Americans. Meanwhile, from March 2020 to February 2021 80 million in the US lost their jobs. Between June and November 2020, nearly 8 million fell into poverty. Black and Latino adults were more than twice as likely as white adults to report not having enough to eat: 16% each for Black and Latino adults, compared to 6% of white adults.Lesson: Stop using the stock market as a measure of economic wellbeing. Look instead at the percentage of Americans who are working, and their median pay.5. Wages are too low to get by onMost Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So once the pandemic hit, many didn’t have any savings to fall back on. Conservative lawmakers complain that the extra $300 a week unemployment benefit Congress enacted in March discourages people from working. What’s really discouraging them is lack of childcare and lousy wages.Lesson: Raise the minimum wage, strengthen labor unions and push companies to share profits with their workers.6. Remote work is now baked into the economyThe percentage of workers punching in from home hit a high of 70% in April 2020. A majority still work remotely. Some 40% want to continue working from home.Two lessons: Companies will have to adjust. And much commercial real estate will remain vacant. Why not convert it into affordable housing?7. Billionaires aren’t the answerThe combined wealth of America’s 657 billionaires grew by $1.3tn – or 44.6% – during the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, with $183.9bn, became the richest man in the world. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, added $11.8bn to his $94.3bn fortune. Sergey Brin, Google’s other co-founder, added $11.4bn. Yet billionaires’ taxes are lower than ever. Wealthy Americans today pay one-sixth the rate of taxes their counterparts paid in 1953.Lesson: To afford everything the nation needs, raise taxes at the top.8. Government can be the solutionRonald Reagan’s famous quip – “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” – can now officially be retired. Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” succeeded in readying vaccines faster than most experts thought possible. Biden got them into more arms more quickly than any vaccination program in history.Furthermore, the $900bn in aid Congress passed in late December prevented millions from losing unemployment benefits and helped sustain the recovery when it was faltering. The $1.9tn Democrats pushed through in March will help the US achieve something it failed to achieve after the 2008-09 recession: a robust recovery.Lesson: The federal government did not just help beat the pandemic. It also did more to keep the nation afloat than in any previous recession. It must be prepared to do so again. More

CNN has dropped former Republican US senator Rick Santorum as a senior political commentator after racist remarks he made about Native Americans at an event in April.News of Santorum’s termination was first reported by HuffPost. A CNN spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that the network has parted ways with Santorum. No further comment on the firing was provided, though an anonymous CNN executive told HuffPost that “leadership wasn’t particularly satisfied with that appearance. None of the anchors wanted to book him.”Speaking at an event for the Young Americans Foundation, a conservative youth group, Santorum said that there was “nothing” in the US before Europeans colonizers arrived.“We came here and created a blank slate,” he said. “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans, but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”The comments sparked outrage among indigenous groups, including the National Congress of American Indians, which specifically called on CNN to fire Santorum over the remarks.“Televising someone with [Santorum’s] views on Native American genocide is fundamentally no different than putting an outright Nazi on television to justify the Holocaust,” said Fawn Sharp, the group’s president, in a statement from last month. “Any mainstream media organization should fire him or face a boycott from more than 500 Tribal Nations and our allies from across the country and worldwide.”Following the backlash, Santorum was invited to speak to Chris Cuomo to explain his comments. Santorum said he “misspoke” and denied that he was “trying to dismiss what happened to Native Americans”.“Far from it. The way we treated Native Americans was horrific. It goes against every bone and everything I’ve ever fought for as a leader in the Congress,” he told Cuomo.CNN anchor Don Lemon, who follows Cuomo’s show on the network’s primetime schedule, said Santorum’s non-apology was infuriating.“I can’t believe the first words out of his mouth weren’t ‘I’m sorry, I said something ignorant, I need to learn about the history of this country,” he said. “Did he actually think it was a good idea for him to come on television and try to whitewash the whitewash that he whitewashed?”Santorum has not publicly commented. More

With a giant Stars and Stripes and two gleaming cars at his back, Joe Biden turned to focus his remarks on one member of the audience. “From my heart, I pray that your grandmom and family are well,” he told Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress. “I promise you, I’m going to do everything to see that they are, on the West Bank. You’re a fighter.”It was a characteristic peace offering by the US president, even as protesters rallied outside the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and Tlaib herself challenged Biden over his unyielding support for Israel. But Tuesday’s gesture, and even a Middle East ceasefire declared on Thursday, may not be enough to heal a growing rift in the Democratic party.Biden’s first hundred days as president were striking for their rare display of Democratic unity, pleasantly surprising the left with his ambitions for government spending, racial justice and the climate crisis. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, said his administration “definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had”.Even when a crack appeared last month over Biden’s plan to retain former president Donald Trump’s cap on the number of refugees allowed into the US, the White House backed down within hours after fierce blowback from progressives and harmony was restored.But Israel’s bombing campaign against Hamas in the heavily populated Gaza Strip, which killed 65 children over 11 days, was of a different magnitude. It exposed a generational and political divide in the party that cannot be so easily bridged.On one side are Biden, 78, the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, 78, House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, 81, and House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, 81, all of whom grew up in a political era when reflexive support for Israel was axiomatic. Hoyer said this week: “We must not allow extremists to hijack important discussions about securing a better future for Israelis and Palestinians by promoting a false narrative.”On the other side is “the Squad”, progressive members of Congress and people of colour who include Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez (both called Israel an “apartheid state”), Ilhan Omar of Minnesota (who described Israeli airstrikes as “terrorism”) and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts (who tweeted “We can’t stand idly by when the United States government sends $3.8 billion of military aid to Israel that is used to demolish Palestinian homes, imprison Palestinian children and displace Palestinian families”).The generation gap reflects a broader trend among the US population. John Zogby, a pollster, notes considerably more sympathy for Palestinians among voters under 40 than those over 60. “Older folks are able to conjure up the original legend of David Ben-Gurion [Israel’s first prime minister] and the wars of 1967 and 1973,” he said. “Voters under 40 conjure up Benjamin Netanyahu [Israel’s current prime minister], the intifada and now several bombings in Gaza.”Youth is not the only force moving the Democratic party’s centre of gravity. On Thursday the leftwing senator Bernie Sanders, 79, introduced a resolution blocking a $735m weapons sale to Israel while his colleague Elizabeth Warren, 71, welcomed the ceasefire but urged Biden to press for a two-state agreement “that starts with taking all appropriate steps to end the occupation”.Several pro-Israel members of Congress also raised questions in recent days, a sign that, while backing for Israel’s right to self-defense remains rock solid, skepticism about its government’s treatment of the Palestinians is no longer taboo. The fact that “the Squad’s” scathing comments went unrebuked spoke volumes about how much has changed in a few short years.Logan Bayroff, a spokesperson for J Street, a liberal Jewish American lobby group, said: “There are shifts and you see it on the left side of the spectrum with vocal and unapologetic Palestinian rights advocacy from the likes of AOC [Ocasio-Cortez] and others but you also see it reflected across a large swath of the party.“What is notable is that we’re still not seeing that reflected in terms of policy or rhetoric from the Biden administration. I think this is less one half the party versus the other and it’s more Congress pushing in one direction and the administration not following as of yet.”Activists and analysts suggest that various push and pull factors are at work. Netanyahu’s ostentatious alliance with Trump, whom he praised for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, makes him a singularly unsympathetic figure for Democrats. Netanyahu fiercely opposed Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump scrapped but Biden is seeking to revive.Bayroff added: “When you have an Israeli leader who has identified himself so closely with the ideology, rhetoric and tactics of rightwing ethnonationalism and has explicitly echoed Donald Trump and Trumpism – as well as aligning himself with other illiberal democracies and leaders like Orbán and Bolsonaro and Modi – that’s the antithesis of the pluralistic, diverse liberal democracy that most Democratic voters and an increasing number of Americans are supporting. So that is going to lead to a collision.”Meanwhile a new generation of Americans, including Jewish Americans, have grown up with a heightened consciousness of social justice movements. Sanders and others have compared the Palestinian struggle to Black Lives Matter and want to apply domestic principles to foreign policy.Bayroff added: “We’re seeing an overall push in all aspects of American politics and policy from a rising generation and a lot of voters to centre human rights, dignity and equality and equal treatment and social justice for all people. When they see a 54-year occupation and a system where Palestinians have a different set of rules and don’t get to vote for their own government and face a different legal system than their settler neighbours, that is something that people reject and want to see the US work to end.”But some Democrats who support racial justice causes are nevertheless uneasy with the comparison.Ron Klein, chair of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said: “We made it clear to our friends in Black Lives Matter and various civil rights organisations we’re on the same team. The Palestinian issues are a separate set of issues. Don’t conflate the two, they’re totally different, and that is not part of the formal Black Lives Matter movement.”Klein believes “the Squad’s” recent statements have gone too far. “I think that they’re wrong,” he continued. “They’re entitled to their opinion as elected members of Congress but they’re taking a lot of their information out of context. I’m not here to suggest that Israel always does the right things but Israel is a very strategic ally to the United States.”Still, the political and social upheaval of recent years has shaken many old certainties about crossing lines once perceived as uncrossable. Democrats who may have long harboured doubts about Israeli policy, but bit their lip because of assumed political risks, now feel at liberty to speak out.Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, tweeted: “The reason the American debate over Israel-Palestine could shift dramatically and quickly is that many Democratic politicians don’t need to be convinced that what Israel is doing is wrong. They just need to be convinced that they can say so without hurting their careers.”Biden, who has impressed many young liberals with his bold agenda, finally seems to have run into an issue where old, cautious habits die hard. However, with Democrats holding only narrow majorities in both the House and Senate, “the Squad” might be deterred from causing a serious split over a foreign policy issue when so much is at stake on the home front.Max Berger, editorial director of the liberal group More Perfect Union, said: “I think it’s very unlikely that this portends any kind of significant rupture in the Democratic coalition but it does open up a question: will the White House be as responsive to progressives on foreign policy as they have been on domestic policy? The honest answer is, we’ll see.” More

On Saturday 7 November, the networks finally called the election for Joe Biden. Barack Obama’s vice-president prevailed by more than 7m votes but his margin in the electoral college was too close for comfort. The Democrats lost seats in the House and did not take control of the Senate until January, when Biden took office. America stands divided but the Democrats’ own fissures are also on display.The party of Jackson, FDR and JFK is now an upstairs-down coalition of coastal elites and minorities, hounded by politically self-destructive demands for defunding the police and ever greater wokeness. As Biden acknowledged to Edward-Isaac Dovere, when he won the White House at the third attempt, the former senator from Delaware was the “dog who caught the bus”. Now what?Dovere’s first book is informed and granular, filled with up-close quotes and lacerating observations, a must-read for newsrooms and political junkies. It captures Biden’s post-2016 ascent and the conflicts within his party.Donald Trump weighs on the narrative but is not its focal point. Pride of place goes to Biden and Obama. They are plenty interesting.Obama is portrayed as skeptical of Biden’s chances and doubtful of his ability to energize a crowd. In his eyes, Biden could strut, wear Ray-Bans … and then “stumble”. He did not mesmerize.“Americans liked their presidents to have some swagger,” Obama thought.Likewise, Biden knew he was no Obama, saying: “I’ve never seen a man who’s better at talking to a thousand people than to one.”Still, Biden understood that he could relate on the quotidian level. At 30, he buried a wife and daughter. Decades later he lost his elder son to cancer and watched the other become mired in a hellscape of booze, pills and powder.If Biden seethed with ambition, at least he did reasonable job of avoiding self-delusion. Battle for the Soul depicts Eric Holder, Obama’s friend and former attorney general, as overly optimistic about the 44th president’s powers. And that is being kind.Holder actually believed Obama’s win in 2008 would usher in an Aquarian age. “Everyone thought his election would lead to a post-racial society,” according to Holder, adding that “somehow the normal rules would not apply” and “that all things negative” would be gone.The only thing missing from that tableau was a cotton candy unicorn.Biden saw his own candidacy more prosaically. He could be “what stopped the backlash that Obama had set off”, a modest but important feat. By the numbers, Biden improved on Hillary Clinton’s margins among white voters – with and without college degrees.Over time the GOP traded upward arc for resentment as its central message and ceded the votes of Americans with four-year degrees. The flip side: Battle for the Soul records Biden lamenting the disconnect between his party and their old lunch-bucket base. The descendants of Ellis Island had forgotten their forbears. The New Deal was no longer a memory.On that score, Biden criticizes the Democrats for emphasizing the plight of the poor at the expense of society’s middle rungs.“How many times did you hear us, even in parts of our administration, talking about the middle class?” he asks Dovere.A graduate of the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School, Biden criticized the left for embracing the abstract and Medicare for All over what people actually needed.“Some of the party sort of became a little bit elitist,” Biden conceded. The faculty lounge had replaced the political clubhouse. When it came to defunding the police, Biden refused to buy what the progressives were selling. In his campaign autobiography, Promise Me Dad, he took pride in “close relationship with the police and the civil rights community”.Whether Biden can bridge those two groups in office may determine the outcome of the midterms and his chances of re-election. In the summer of 2020, amid protests against police brutality and racism, Biden feared Trump’s message of law and order would resonate. In the end, it almost did.Murder is up. America’s cities are shooting galleries again. The murder of George Floyd by a police officer continues to reverberate. Unfortunately, the gap between police and policed widens. The urban landscape festers.Dovere aims some of his sharpest slings at Jared Kushner. In 2016, after a post-election tour of the West Wing, Trump’s son-in-law noted the decor and announced to his guides: “Oh Mr Trump is going to love this … It’s going to remind him of one of his golf clubhouses.”In the author’s words, Kushner was a “wannabe wunderkind” whose biggest achievement was “over-leveraging himself into the most expensive real estate deal in New York City history”.Ted Cruz also receives his share of scorn. Dovere labels the Texas senator a “self-styled great moralizer who brought intellectual imperiousness to his labored Elmer Gantry impression”. Unlike Kushner, Cruz fundraises off such turns of phrase. There’s nothing like saying: “I’m persecuted, I’m No 1.”How much more Biden accomplishes remains to be seen. The pandemic appears to have subsided, if it has not been vanquished. The economy grows, albeit unevenly. What additional legislation will be passed is unknown; 4 July is almost here and there is no infrastructure bill.If politics teaches us anything it is that culture counts and crime matters. How Biden and the Democrats navigate these challenges is an open question. Should Nancy Pelosi loses the speaker’s gavel, Biden will be forced to contend with both the Republicans and the Squad, the influential group of progressive House women. For any mortal, that would be a daunting task.Battle for the Soul provides ample warning and plenty of food for thought. More