US Politics

There’s a meme going around concerning Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. It shows a futuristic city of gleaming skyscrapers and flying cars and an accompanying caption that reads something like: “West Virginia after Manchin has used all the leverage he has in the next Congress.”In other words, people expect Manchin, one of the most conservative Democrats in the federal government, to wield power like never before thanks to the 50-50 split in the Senate left by Democrats’ double win in the Georgia runoff races.Manchin, a three-term senator and former governor of West Virginia, is the most well-known of a set of moderate Republicans and Democrats who can decide whether to slow down legislation to a crawl or open a pathway to it becoming law.“There is going to be an important role for him to play as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat regardless of who won control of the Senate,” said Nick Rahall, a former Democratic congressman from West Virginia.Democrats have the slimmest of majorities in the Senate. The divide is Democrats control 50 seats and Republicans control 50 seats, which means when Kamala Harris becomes vice-president and her replacement, Alex Padilla of California, is sworn in as senator, Harris will be the tie-breaking vote.That slim majority can only go so far, though. Lawmakers need 60 votes for all legislation except reconciliation bills, which are annual and meant for tax and spending bills only. But all nominations before the Senate go strictly on a majority vote.There is going to be an important role for him to play as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat regardless of who won control of the SenateStill, Manchin’s reputation as being as right-leaning a Democrat as possible right now means that his support or opposition can provide cover to other lawmakers who also might want to influence Biden’s agenda. Manchin also maintains public friendships across the political spectrum. In an age where bipartisanship is rare, Manchin endorsed Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican, ahead of her re-election campaign. Collins then beat her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, in an upset.Manchin is part of a dying breed of Democrats out of West Virginia. He is the only statewide elected Democrat in the increasingly conservative-leaning red state. A Democratic presidential candidate has not won the state in over two decades and Donald Trump beat Joe Biden there by almost 40% of the vote.Manchin’s roots in West Virginia are deep. He grew up in coal country, one of five children and rose through the state’s politics first through the West Virginia house of delegates, then the state senate, then the secretary of state’s office, then the governor’s mansion, then the Senate.Nick Casey, a former chief of staff to the West Virginia governor, Jim Justice, said Manchin’s political career has been characterized by making decisions based on “what he thought were in the absolute interest of the people of West Virginia or the people of West Virginia and the people of the United States”.“He’s always been responsible, moderate and I don’t think ideologically driven at all,” Casey said.Manchin is the perfect example of a red state politician who styles himself as a different kind of Democrat in a party where the progressive wing can often generate eye-catching headlines.In 2010 Manchin aired a campaign ad in which he literally shot the text of a cap-and-trade bill while vowing to oppose certain parts of then-president Barack Obama’s signature Obamacare bill. In a sign of how important the landmark healthcare bill became to all corners of the Democratic party in 2018, during his second regular Senate re-election campaign, the West Virginia senator this time shot an anti-Obamacare lawsuit.More recently, Manchin has reinforced his trademark conservative Democrat identity by keeping some wiggle room on $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans making $75,000 or less. Manchin’s murkiness has spurred Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the liberal congresswoman from New York, to set up a political action committee to embrace $2,000 checks.“The Pac – No Excuses Pac – is intended to defend the Democratic agenda of Joe Biden, the Build Back Better plan, from the fringes of the Democratic party like Joe Manchin,” said Corbin Trent, the co-founder of the Pac. “Make no mistake, he is the fringes of the Democratic party.”Another potential flashpoint for Manchin in the months ahead concerns the Senate committee on energy and natural resources, where Manchin is the ranking member and poised to become chairman when Democrats regain the Senate majority.Even with a Democratic president prioritizing climate change Manchin is poised to split with other members of his party on the climate crisis and the gas industry. In a headline Inside Climate News wrote of Manchin “The Senate’s New Point Man on Climate Has Been the Democrats’ Most Fossil Fuel-Friendly Senator”.Make no mistake, he is the fringes of the Democratic partyManchin is one of a handful of centrist senators from both parties expected to take center sage during major policy debates over the next few years: Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly of Arizona, the Rev Rafael Warnock of Georgia, Angus King and Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Tester of Montana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.“I think Joe Manchin will be a part of the influence on critical decisions but I think it will be a group of moderates that talk to each other on a regular basis,” said the former senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana. “The fact that Susan Collins is a Republican and Joe Manchin is a Democrat, those are party titles. It doesn’t in any way reflect the relationships that have developed in the Senate over the years. People like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – other people who are fairly moderate in her views – have developed real friendships.” More

In 2019, Jeremy Hunt, who once hid behind a tree to avoid the press on the way to a party, said politicians boycotting Donald Trump’s state visit were exhibiting “virtue signalling of the worst kind”. Was Hunt also virtue signalling last week, then, when he conceded that Trump “shames American democracy”? Or have the goalposts, already too narrow for even the slender Hunt to hide behind convincingly, moved?Trump himself once called our prime minister, Boris Turds Johnson, “Britain Trump”, with characteristically unpunctuated precision. In the light of Trump’s inevitable immolation of American democracy, Turds’s handlers now seek to distance our prime minister from his admirer, every white supremacist’s favourite reality TV host. Last week, the Times ran an article, headlined “Johnson is not Trump’s transatlantic twin”, by the Spectator’s James Forsyth, whose wife, Allegra Stratton, is Downing Street’s press secretary and whose principles are above question. Once the journal of record, it seems the Times is now the journal of whatever Downing Street’s press secretary wants the record to say. And there are efforts afoot to rewrite that record.Celebrities’ photo albums have long been cleansed of pictures of lighthearted moments shared at charity fun runs with Jimmy Savile. And I have destroyed both the Super-8 films and the doodles of the woeful 36 hours I and the Australian standup comedian Greg Fleet spent in the Flinders mountains, north of Adelaide, in 1997, feasting with regret on the flesh of the tragic victims of a light aircraft crash that we alone had survived.But our politicians’ historic fondness for President Exploding Tangerine Hitler will be harder to forget. There’s no need to deploy the deep fake technology or distorting social media of the Tories’ last election campaign to find a photo of America’s self-styled Mr Brexit posing in his Liberace’s lavatory lift with a clearly engorged Nigel Farage and his Ukip, Breitbart and Leave.EU colleagues. It’s there as plain as the nostrils on Michael Gove’s nose. But Farage’s friends weren’t alone in bending Trump’s brain farts to their own agendas and appeasing his own special brand of home-fried fascism.Farage’s friends weren’t alone in bending Trump’s brain farts to their own agendasIn January 2017, a delighted Michael Gove became the first British journalist to visit the “warm and charismatic” new American president. Gove was even accompanied by Rupert Murdoch, a fact he chose to hide in his subsequent BBC interview and newspaper article, where he propagated Trump’s Nato lies unchecked. Gove described ascending the phallocratic Trump Tower in a golden lift, “operated by an immensely dignified African American attendant kitted out in frock coat and white gloves. It was as though the Great Glass Elevator from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had been restyled by Donatella Versace, then staffed by the casting director for Gone With the Wind.” Charlie and the smooth glass surfaces, working as a team!Two-faced Gove’s frivolous tone, suffused nonetheless with a strange strain of snobbery, attempts to socially distance himself from Trump’s lowbrow idea of luxury, while simultaneously revelling in the proximity of such immense wealth, however garish its elevator, however dignified its African American. But Gove emerged from the summit holding in his hand a piece of paper promising Trump would facilitate Brexit by doing “a trade deal with the UK absolutely, very quickly”. Gove is the Neville Chamberlain of nowhere. Where is your chlorinated chicken now, Brexiter? For I have in my hand Joe Biden’s souvenir Irish shillelagh, a confiscated lorry driver’s ham and cheese sandwich and a space where some M&S Percy Pigs should have been.I wonder if Gove recalled the enjoyable afternoon he spent squatting on top of Trump’s enormous golden shaft of power when watching another immensely dignified African American, this time a government security guard, being chased up the stairwell of the Senate by a mob of Confederate-flag-waving Trump supporters wearing T-shirts celebrating the Holocaust with the Nazi death camp motto “Work brings freedom”. As Gove might have written, it was as though the Singin’ in the Rain scene from A Clockwork Orange had been restyled by Charles Manson then staffed by the casting director of The Hills Have Eyes. Oh! The charisma!!!Turds got off to a better start than Gove in his approach to Trump, declaring in 2015 that the pussy-grabbing humanity-tumour was “clearly out of his mind” and a man of “quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States”. Back then, Turds, who has no actual discernible values beyond steamy ambition and refrigerated cowardice, was mayor of London. And Mayor Turds was playing to the focaccia gallery of the Trump-loathing London liberal elite, who fell one by one for his cheeky Have I Got News For You persona like a succession of statues of slavers in a Bristol dock. Once Trump was president, Turds simply tried on a new opinion, discarding the conviction-filled prophylactic of his spaffed beliefs like the condoms he obviously never wears.By January 2017, Turds, who himself compared the EU trading block to the Nazis innumerable times in print, condemned critics of his new “friend and partner” for “trivialising the Holocaust” by comparing Trump to Hitler, subsequently saying that the president deserved the Nobel peace prize. But the trajectory of Trump’s rise to date mirrors that of Hitler’s, albeit a bright-orange Hitler with an undying fondness for disco hits. And Johnson himself has not been above weaponising fabricated culture wars, from the Proms to slavers’ statues while ridiculing “Romanian vampires” and “tank-topped bumboys”, to court the support of the worst people in Britain. Turds’s apparent ignorance of Hitler’s rise is inexcusable, especially as most cable channels are devoted entirely to endless loops of documentaries about him. Maybe Turds needs to brush up on how a populist leader could dehumanise minorities and liberals to gain power. But, worryingly, I suspect Turds already did that a few years ago.King Rocker, a film about the Birmingham post-punk band the Nightingales, by Stewart Lee and Michael Cumming, premiers on free to air Sky Arts on Saturday 6 February at 9pm. Watch the trailer here More

While all eyes are on Donald Trump and his Capitol Hill mob, a would-be heir and successor is running riot all by himself, storming citadels, wagging the flag and breaking china. No, it’s not Donald Jr, or Ivanka, or Ted Cruz, and certainly not poor, conflicted Mike Pence.Mike Pompeo may not strike many people as presidential material. But Trump lowered the bar. Make no mistake. America’s snarly, bully-boy secretary of state is focusing not on Joe Biden’s inauguration this week but on how to beat him or any other Democrat in 2024.Pompeo, the man who would be king, is playing political hunger games – and, looking ahead, he aims to win.In a display of extraordinary chutzpah, Pompeo has spent the time since Trump lost the election setting booby traps and laying diplomatic minefields in global conflict zones. Partly he aims to secure his own and Trump’s “legacy”. Partly it’s to screw Biden. But mostly it’s about winning the White House.Pompeo has upended established policies, adopted ultra-hardline positions, and claimed imaginary successes to advance his personal standing with the Trump rump. In fact, he’s trying to out-Trump Trump. Like him, he’s unscrupulous and aggressive, but here’s the difference: he’s not stupid.That potentially makes the former Kansas Tea party congressman and CIA chief more dangerous to the Biden presidency, and the progressive cause, than a disgraced Trump may ever be. He showed his political savvy by steering clear of the impeachment fracas. Instead, Pompeo is busy setting future agendas.Speaking in Washington last Tuesday, for example, he declared – without new evidence but drawing from a dust-heap of recycled, unproven claims – that “al-Qaida has a new home base: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran”.The American right has been trying to make the Iran connection ever since Dick Cheney falsely fingered Saddam Hussein for 9/11. But Pompeo does not get hung up on facts. He prefers assertions, tweets and slogans. Thus, he claimed, “they [Iran and al-Qaida] are partners in terrorism, partners in hate… This axis poses a grave threat to the security of nations and to the American homeland”.There’s no doubting where Pompeo and his re-purposed axis of evil are headed with this sort of talk. “We ignore this Iran-al-Qaida nexus at our peril,” he said. “We must confront it. Indeed, we must defeat it.” Message to Biden: when dealing with Iran, make war, not peace – or be accused of coddling terrorists.Raw bellicosity plays well on the right, especially with Christian Zionists and evangelical born-againers, of whom Pompeo is ostentatiously proud to be one. Such voters now seek a less toxic Republican standard-bearer. His new designation of Yemen’s Tehran-supported Houthis as terrorists is yet more grist to this mill, regardless of the civilian suffering he admits it will cause.Pompeo also arbitrarily returned Cuba to the US list of terrorist sponsors last week. Cuba accused him, reasonably enough, of “political opportunism” to obstruct improved relations under Biden. Pompeo is notably less vocal about Havana’s ally, Venezuela, where he and John Bolton risked Bay of Pigs II with failed regime change plots.Pompeo loves baiting China, the new “evil empire”, no matter that “Wuhan virus” insults, sanctions, and sabre-rattling are plainly counter-productive. He gratuitously goaded Beijing again last week by strengthening contacts with Taiwan. Decades of delicate east Asian diplomatic balancing flew out the window.This last-gasp diplomatic blitzkrieg does not fatally tie Biden’s hands but coupled with past policy blunders, it makes sensible policymaking more difficult. In truth, the Pompeo-Trump legacy is best defined in negatives: not achieving North Korean disarmament, wrecking the Iran nuclear deal, quitting the Paris climate accord, alienating allies, undermining the UN. In this sense, Biden just needs to act positive.Pompeo’s last big push for a trademark achievement – persuading Saudi Arabia to join Gulf states in cutting highly-questionable “peace deals” with Israel – ran into the sand. The Trump administration leaves office with the Middle East in greater disarray than when it arrived, whether it’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, or the western Sahara.Unabashed, Pompeo is zealously re-writing this record of failure as a fake narrative of success. “If Pompeo’s efforts [to promote his legacy] look comical… if they are a bloated mess of obsequious praise for Trump, empty sloganeering, and half-truths, well, they are also a fair reflection of the man himself,” wrote analyst Jeffrey Lewis.As he not so stealthily lays the groundwork for a 2024 run, Pompeo has controversially exploited his position to deliver partisan speeches, hold exclusive dinners for wealthy backers, woo Christian groups, tour key domestic battlefields such as Iowa, get chummy with authoritarian foreign leaders – and tailor US foreign policy to his hawkishly regressive views.His politicised machinations have not gone unnoticed. Pompeo’s professional conduct has been investigated by his own state department. He was accused of lying about the Ukraine phone call that got Trump impeached the first time. For a while, he abetted Trump’s election denialism with talk of a “second term”.“Selfishness at the expense of the national interest isn’t the mark of an honourable diplomat or a patriot,” a New York Times editorial scathingly remarked on Friday.Many abroad are wary. After Pompeo, anxious to get out of Dodge during last week’s Trump showdown, invited himself to Brussels, he was roundly snubbed. EU politicians who have smarted at past insults, served up one of their own. They did not have time for him. The trip was cancelled.Many in Europe hope finally to have seen the back of him. Fat chance. If he gets his way, Pompeo will be the next Trump. It’s an alarming prospect for America and the world. More

The men sported tuxedos, the women extravagant evening gowns. They crowded into Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, unmasked and without any pretence at social distancing. After cocktails and a luxurious dinner, the partygoers danced in the new year to the live music of rapper Vanilla Ice and Beach Boy veterans.
“We shouldn’t be caged in our homes,” said Amber Gitter, a local estate agent who attended. No government should “tell you that you have to stay in and can’t work”.
Once Trump leaves the White House this week, the two-times impeached president is expected to reside at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. It’s an unhappy prospect for many Palm Beachers who fear Trump’s presence and maskless Mar-a-Lago soirees will undermine the tiny town’s tranquility and its fight against the pandemic. The display of unbridled wealth and partying at Mar-a-Lago highlights the awkward and ugly reality of a rich elite that continues to party while its poor working-class neighbours struggle to survive.
Trump in Florida
Nestled on an island off the coast of Florida, Palm Beach is a fixture for America’s 1%. Tree-lined South Ocean Boulevard, which runs past Mar-a-Lago, is nicknamed billionaire’s row, the site of some of the world’s ritziest beachside mansions. Residents include cosmetic heiress Aerin Lauder, billionaire financier Stephen Schwarzman and, notoriously, the now-deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump is not even the wealthy community’s first experience with presidents – John F Kennedy used his family’s property as a winter White House.
Trump divides his future hometown’s residents, as he does all Americans. While he won the town’s vote in the 2020 presidential election and more than 500 followers paid a reported $1,000 a ticket to attend the Mar-a-Lago new year party, the president has feuded with neighbours and local officials. In 2006, Trump erected a giant flagpole at Mar-a-Lago, which violated local zoning rules. The town began fining him $1,250 a day. Trump sued and kept his flagpole. Mar-a-Lago declined to comment on either the dispute or its maskless parties.
During Trump’s Mar-a-Lago presidential visits, dozens of police and secret service officers protected the property. Barricades blocked off the main road, creating traffic jams. A group of angry neighbours has sought legal advice to block him from living at Mar-a-Lago full-time, the Washington Post first reported. More

In another age, Joe Biden’s promise to heal the nation might have been regarded as the kind of blandishment expected from any new leader taking power after the divisive cut and thrust of an American election.But the next president will repeat the oath of office on Wednesday sealed off from those he governs by a global pandemic and the threat of violence from his predecessor’s supporters. Biden steps into the White House facing the unprecedented challenge not only of healing a country grappling with the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world but a nation so politically, geographically and socially divided that seven in 10 Republicans say the election was stolen from Donald Trump.Surging Covid infections would have discouraged the crowds who usually turn out on the National Mall to welcome a new president. But the storming of Congress by right-wing extremists and white nationalists in support of Trump has prompted an almost total shutdown of the heart of American governance.Even before the assault on Capitol Hill, Biden warned that deepening partisanship was a threat to the stability of the United States.“The country is in a dangerous place,” he said during the election campaign. “Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope is elusive. Instead of treating the other party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy. This must end”.•••The enormity of the challenge was made starkly clear by the sacking of the Capitol. Most Americans recoiled in horror at the sight of their compatriots, some dressed as if ready for war, smashing up congressional offices, beating police officers and threatening to hang the vice-president. Five people died, including a member of the Capitol police.Yet more than 70% of Republicans agree with the protesters’ core claim that November’s election was rigged and say Biden is not the legitimate president. What will it take to even begin to heal the country, as Trump is likely to maintain his role as agitator in chief? The incoming president also faces a moment of racial reckoning in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that have given new urgency of demands for America to reconcile with a bitter past and present.Polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short termCan Bideneven hold together the Democratic party, as its more liberal wing advocates for police reform, a green new deal and public healthcare – not policy positions which all moderates support.“We are so polarised that polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short term,” said Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette opinion poll in swing state Wisconsin.“The question is whether over a little bit longer term, let’s say over the course of the year, whether Biden can win over a segment of the population to create a majority that is both willing to give him a chance and is not unhappy with his performance. That’s up in the air but I don’t think it’s inconceivable.”The clamour for change that elected Barack Obama and then Trump has not gone away, and large numbers of Americans continue to believe the system does not work for them. For many Democrats, the key to addressing that is to think big and deliver while the party controls both houses of Congress, which may be for no more than two years.The incoming president faces the immediate challenge of intertwined health and economic crises caused by a pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000. Trump’s mishandling of coronavirus has left testing and vaccination rates woefully short of his promises, and unemployment claims are rising sharply again as the economy struggles with the latest wave of shutdowns, infections and deaths.Biden is likely to be judged swiftly on his ability to accelerate the pace of inoculations, presenting the opportunity to create early goodwill and momentum.In an early sign that he wants to be seen to act decisively, Biden on Thursday outlined $1.9tn in emergency relief, called the American Rescue Plan, including $400bn to deliver 100m vaccines in his first 100 days. The plan also directs more than $1tn to Americans through individual economic stimulus payments of $1,400 and increased unemployment benefits. It proposes more than doubling the national minimum wage to $15 an hour alongside other measure to alleviate child poverty.Biden has said the plan is only an interim measure and that more money will come. But even the present proposal will be too much for most Republicans in Congress and the bill will provide an early test of how far they are prepared to cooperate or if they will pursue the same obstructionist strategy deployed against Obama.Biden has the advantage of control but only by a slim margin in the House of Representatives and by relying on Vice-President Kamala Harris’s casting vote in the Senate. A lack of votes for the full package may force Biden to scale back his proposals but with them the incoming president put down a marker.David Paul Kuhn, author of The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution, about the Democrats’ loss of their traditional blue collar base, said the incoming president has spoken more clearly about the struggle of working class communities than any since Bill Clinton in the 1990s.“Biden’s done a good job in sounding measured in a hyper-polarised environment, and that’s really important,” he said. “He gave several speeches targeted towards Obama-to-Trump voters. He acknowledged that they were forgotten and that he sees them now. Those were comments that we haven’t heard from any Democrat, like on the dignity of work, since Clinton. It was a significant step in the right direction.”Biden’s ability to deliver across a range of issues is something that preoccupies his supporters. Some Democrats are haunted by what they regard as a central lesson from the Obama years – the failure to seize the opportunities offered by the Great Recession when he took office in 2009, to reform an economic system that has worked against most Americans for at least four decades. To a part of America, Obama lookedto have rescued the banks while abandoning millions of ordinary people who lost their homes to foreclosure – helping drive some of the shift to Trump in 2016.Biden gave several speeches targeted towards Obama-to-Trump voters. He acknowledged that they were forgottenKuhn said Biden would do well to heed the lesson: “Barack Obama was talking about a new New Deal leading into December 2008 but there was no new New Deal. When Joe Biden was vice-president, there are the voters who lost the most jobs during the Great Recession while they saw stimulus payments going to the fat cats on Wall Street.”The pandemic has helped lay the ground for bold policies by once again exposing deep economic inequalities and the precarious financial position of large numbers of Americans. But Biden will have to tread carefully over key legislation pushed by the left of his party, particularly the green new deal which is hugely popular among some Democrats but reviled in parts of the country. Some Democrats think a relatively easy path would be a major spending bill to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, such as dangerously old bridges and dams, as well as new projects like high-speed rail. It would not only offer a vehicle to address some environmental issues but provide jobs and investment in some of the most neglected parts of the country.“An infrastructure bill might include a lot of clean energy but it would not be mistaken for the green new deal. It’s a good compromise that’s actually conceivably possible,” said Franklin.“I think infrastructure, of all the issues we deal with, it’s one that most easily resonates with working people, whether it’s construction work or highways, or water mains or electrical utilities. The irony is Trump talked a lot about infrastructure but never put forward a bill, when his own party probably would have thought it was pretty good.”•••Another challenge for Biden is to develop policies to address a sense of abandonment felt in mostly white rust belt and midwestern rural communities that were once solidly Democratwhile also addressing racial inequality and discrimination.“Biden talked about blue collar workers in his background, the people he grew up with,” said Franklin. “I thought that was an attempt to reach that disaffected blue collar, but not theneo-nazi Klan racist segment of the population. He tried to speak directly to those folks in a way that many see the Democratic party more generally is failing to do.”Kuhn said Biden should go further: “If he’s talking about common cause, he can push back against this fashionable notion in the United States that these families living pay cheque to pay cheque, that their struggle through life is actually a ‘privilege’ because they are white. Clearly, some portion of the American right feel that their frustrations don’t matter, because they happen also be white. ”Lilliana Mason, a professor of politics and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity disagrees. She sees communities that provided bedrock support for Trump’s white nationalism and questions whether Biden will find backing even for programmes that help them.“There’s this increasing inequality which has created this kind of rural white Republican identity that’s based on white rural people feeling condescended to and that no one really listens to their needs,” she said. “But there’s also this resentment that their tax dollars go to the cities and to black people. They don’t want their tax dollars to help other people, meaning black people, even while it helps them.”The structural inequality that is rooted deep within our society must be addressedThose resentments may run even deeper if Biden follows through on promises to confront the challenge of building racial reconciliation in the age of resurgent white nationalism.Any incoming Democratic president faces pressure to address the legacy of centuries of systematic racism. The killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that followed and Trump’s feeding of hate has given an added urgency to demands for action.In his victory speech after beating Trump, Biden said he would “battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country”. His choice of Kamala Harris as vice-president was read as a statement that he will take racial equality seriously and he has nominated the most diverse cabinet in US history.But Biden failed to heed a call from the National Association for the Advancement Colored People to go further and create a new cabinet post “for racial justice, equity and advancement”. The NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, called the move a “bold action” that would demonstrate the incoming president’s commitment to elevating racial justice as a priority.“The structural inequality that is rooted deep within our society must be addressed, and after four years of regression on social, civil, and political matters that profoundly impact the American people, specifically, black people, we must prioritise the transformation of our nation into a more just, equal society in which all Americans can succeed and thrive,” he said.Biden has promised a raft of investments in creating in creating business opportunities, promoting homeownership and giving more education and training opportunities to underserved communities.But the new president remains cautious about how police reform will be read in the rest of the country. He told civil rights leaders that the cry to “defund the police” after Floyd’s death was misunderstood and damaging to the Democratic party, particularly candidates for Congress and in state races. Organisers in the rural midwest said the slogan, and the violence around some protests, was a major reason Trump’s vote went up in November, even in swing counties twice won by Obama.“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police,” Biden said last month according to an audio recording of a meeting published by the Intercept.He promised that there will be significant changes to the police but said how they are framed is important in winning broader public support. Franklin said there is a path that could unite not divide Americans.“When you ask about defund the police, it’s about 20% that favour of that. But when you talk about reform the police and hold police accountable, it’s like 70% or 80% in favour. Policing is very high on everybody’s list.”Biden will remain under pressure from black voters who were instrumental in his defeat of Trump, turning out in large numbers in midwestern cities to offset the white rural vote. They will want to know that their concerns are not just being heard but addressed, and that police reforms run deep as a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to racial reconciliation.Biden will also be under pressure from African American members of Congress, not least the majority whip, James Clyburn, who rescued the new president’s primary campaign a year ago.At the time Clyburn spoke of his own fears a year ago as he urged primary voters in South Carolina to back Biden who was on the back foot after a humiliating defeat in Iowa. “We are at an inflection point. I’m fearful for my daughters and their future and their children and their children’s future,” he saidThat speech helped Biden win South Carolina. A year later, it gives Clyburn leverage and the new president’s ear in ensuring the promise of racial reconciliation is not compromised by the desire to win over discontented whites.Biden’s criminal justice plan includes scrapping disparate sentencing for drug crimes that frequently results in longer sentences for African Americans for similar offences to those committed by whites, and for decriminalising marijuana.Biden also has a political incentive to confront voting rights for minorities given the escalation in Republican-controlled states of voter suppression which disproportionately keeps black people away from the polls.•••There are other policies likely to win support among large numbers of Americans, including some Trump voters, that would benefit underserved communities in particular.Biden has promised to write off up to $10,000 in student debt owed to the federal government. Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the issue was a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to helping the working poor.“There are a lot of people who came out to vote in this election who frankly did it as their last shot at seeing whether the government can really work for them,” she told the New York Times. “If we don’t deliver quick relief, it’s going to be very difficult to get them back.”Biden will be attempting to heal the divide in the face of what is expected to be a drumbeat of hostility from Trump who shows every intention of continuing to whip up anger and hate. At the core will be the claim that Biden stole the election, a powerful mantra among a section of voters that will keep the pressure on Republican legislators not to cooperate with the new president.Mason said whatever Biden does, the divisions in the country will remain stark.“It’s not just that those Trump supporters don’t like it that Biden’s president,” she said, “it’s that they fully believe that the election was stolen and he’s an illegitimate president. And as long as there are Republican leaders who are going to keep telling them that lie, they’re going to keep believing it. So to that extent, I don’t see any way to get away from a whole bunch of domestic terrorism happening during Biden’s term.” More

When the President-elect Joe Biden gives his inaugural address on Wednesday, one former president will tower above all others, and not merely because of his celebrated stovepipe hat.Abraham Lincoln is always famous, but he turns into something more than that when Americans are bitterly divided. In moments of crisis, he becomes a kind of guardian angel, not unlike the phrase he was looking for when he closed out his own inaugural address in 1861. Given “guardian angel” by his adviser, the New York senator William Seward, he improved it to “better angel”.So surely did he find the moment that politicians are still laboring to come up with anything new. After the Capitol putsch of 6 January, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, lamely called on Republicans to find their “better angels”, after they sought to garotte the vice-president.Centuries from now, archeologists may have trouble piecing together the values that drove the US between 2017 and 2021. There may be a few signs – a golf cart here … a My Pillow there … and all of the phones, by the millions, rusting in the shallow waters that cover Washington, with just the statue of Armed Freedom pointing above the waves.But the actual ethics of this complex society may be elusive, as remains the case with other four-year realms.That is why Lincoln still speaks to us, unlike so many presidents. His moral compass worked. He was elected at a time when no one in their right mind would have wanted the job. Despite constant hatred from his enemies, he fought to unite Americans and in doing so he restored a measure of racial justice. He reminded them that their own words were important, and the truth mattered. That helped the country live up to its ideals, as expressed in the declaration of independence. He did all of these things while writing in a kind of prose poetry that still sounds musical.Lincoln delivered two inaugural addresses, each clairvoyant about problems the nation would face. In 1861, he asked Americans not to go to war; in 1865, he asked them to come back together, “with malice toward none; with charity for all.” Those two speeches, standing like bookends at the beginning and end of the civil war, feel especially relevant in the dark winter of 2020-21, when charity is in such short supply.Lincoln appeared briefly on 6 January, the night of the Capitol putsch, as Biden quoted from the 1862 annual message, in an attempt to calm the waters.It would not be surprising if Lincoln returned during the inaugural address at the Capitol on 20 January. In 1861, the Capitol was already a battleground, filled with treasonous southern politicians who had stayed in Washington while their colleagues were leading an effort to launch a new country, founded upon slavery. Lincoln deftly walked through those landmines, delivering an effective speech that pleaded for Americans to remain a single country. It was a lawyer’s speech, rejecting the argument for secession, but it included a poet’s peroration, the final paragraph in which Lincoln asked the south to pause before separating.“We are not enemies, but friends,” he wrote, in language that would sound just as resonant in 2021. “We must not be enemies.”Four years later, Lincoln returned for another inaugural. This time he was more preacher than lawyer, seeking to explain the shocking sacrifice of 750,000, a number we continue to revise upward. Americans badly needed a message of redemption.Lincoln found it, using his gift for language and some stagecraft too. Behind him, the same Capitol that had looked so forlorn four years earlier was now completed, with a sparkling new dome and that curious statue on top – cast by an African American liberated by Lincoln. As the president spoke, he stood next to a table constructed from materials used to complete the dome.But Lincoln was too honest to simply say good had prevailed over evil. With a deceptive simplicity – there were only 703 words, 505 with one-syllable – he delivered a kind of theological self-assessment unlike any other presidential speech. It acknowledged blame for “American slavery” – notably, he did not say “southern slavery”. But it also accused slavery’s defenders of a gaudy and insincere patriotism, fortified by violence rather than truth, as evidenced by their willingness to “make war rather than let the nation survive”. In the end, resorting to violence was a shabby way to promote democracy.Lincoln quoted the Bible liberally, to explore the ways in which Americans might atone for their sins. That was new territory for a president, especially one with unconventional views of his own. But Lincoln’s faith had intensified, perhaps in some measure because of his own severe trauma as the parent of a beloved child who died. After proposing that God might have wanted the civil war to come, to atone for the crime of slavery, Lincoln softened again, as he did at the end of the first inaugural.He concluded by asking Americans to be gentle with each other, to take care of the widows and orphans dotting the landscape, and the amputees attending the ceremony. African American soldiers were out in force as well, as seen in one striking photograph from that day.That was another improvement: African Americans were not allowed on the grounds of the Capitol at previous inaugurations.In 1865, as recounted by a fine book, Edward Achorn’s Every Drop of Blood, many distinguished Americans attended. Among them were a well-known actor, John Wilkes Booth, and a leading African American author, Frederick Douglass, each feeling quite differently as Lincoln summoned a kind of Old Testament anger against the sin of racial injustice. Lincoln and Booth both loved Shakespeare. Booth may have felt he was on another stage, contemplating the murder of a Caesar, likewise killed in a Capitol.That tragedy played out six weeks later. But Booth could not extinguish Lincoln’s words. Instead of giving Americans a simplistic message of self-congratulation, Lincoln had delivered a sterner measure, one that offered the tools for self-salvation. In a country still struggling to live up to its ideals, that remains a potent message. More

Peter Turchin is not the first entomologist to cross over to human behaviour: during a lecture in 1975, famed biologist E O Wilson had a pitcher of water tipped on him for extrapolating the study of ant social structures to our own.It’s a reaction that Turchin, an expert-on-pine-beetles-turned-data-scientist and modeller, has yet to experience. But his studies at the University of Connecticut into how human societies evolve have lately gained wider currency; in particular, an analysis that interprets worsening social unrest in the 2020s as an intra-elite battle for wealth and status.The politically motivated rampage at the US Capitol fits squarely into Turchin’s theory. In a 2010 paper, Dynamics of political instability in the United States, 1780-2010,Turchin wrote that “labour oversupply leads to falling living standards and elite overproduction, and those, in turn, cause a wave of prolonged and intense sociopolitical instability.”Turchin’s Cliodynamics, which he describes as “a more mature version of social science”, rests upon 10,000 years of historical data, as such there is, to establish general explanations for social patterns. He predicts that unrest is likely to get worse through this decade, just as it has in roughly 50-year cycles since 1780.Historians don’t necessarily like the proposal, he acknowledges. “They bring general theories through the back door. Our job is to be explicit.”Explicitly, then, Turchin explains current political warfare as a battle between an overpopulation of elites to some degree exacerbated by a decline in general living standards or immiseration, and financially overextended governments. Initially, Turchin applied the theory to pre-industrial societies, but a decade ago he travelled forward in time, predicting unrest –Ages of Discord– that would intensify in 2020 and endure until reversed.“Societies are systems and they tend to change in a somewhat predictable way,” Turchin told the Observer. “We are on the verge of state breakdown where the centre loses hold of society.”In the US, he points out, there are two political chief executives, each commanding his own elite cadre, with nothing yet being done at a deep structural level to improve circumstances. “We’ve seen growing immiseration for 30 to 40 years: rising levels of state debt, declining median wages and declining life expectancies. But the most important aspect is elite overproduction” – by which he means that not just capital owners but high professionals – lawyers, media professionals and entertainment figures – have become insulated from wider society. It is not just the 1% who are in this privileged sector, but the 5% or 10% or even 20% – the so-called “dream hoarders” – they vie for a fixed number of positions and to translate wealth into political position.“The elites had a great run for a while but their numbers become too great. The situation becomes so extreme they start undermining social norms and [there is] a breakdown of institutions. Who gets ahead is no longer the most capable, but [the one] who is willing to play dirtier.”Turchin’s analysis, of course, is readily applied to Donald Trump who, spurned by mainstream elites, appealed to a radical faction of the elite and to the disaffected masses to forward his political ambition. A similar case could be made for leading Brexiteers.Similar circumstances, says Turchin, can be found with the Populares of first century Rome who played to the masses and used their energy to attain office – “Very similar to Trump, who created a radical elite faction to get ahead.”In the professor’s reading, the incoming administration, notwithstanding the diversity of its appointments, is representative of mainstream elite power. “Think of 2020 as the return of the established elite and separation of dissidents. What’s important is that the incoming administration recognises the root problem.”In recent weeks, Turchin has found himself profiled in the Atlantic (The Historian Who Sees the Future), portrayed as a mad prophet, and name-checked by the Financial Times (The Real Class War is Within the Rich).He has been uplifted by some, but pushed back against by others. “You have this veneer of complicated impressive science. But any analysis like this is only as good as the data upon which it rests,” says Shamus Khan, chair of Columbia University’s sociology department. “It’s easy to imagine that you’re a Cassandra, and forget about the million others who similarly claim that they are.”“I think he’s got a point, because a significant component of the reasonably far left are highly educated but with blocked opportunities,” says Mark Mizruchi, author of The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite. “Where you have disjunctures is where you get political extremism. If Turchin is right, you’re going to get a lot more highly educated people facing limited career prospects. Most of those will turn left rather than right.”Dorian Warren, one of the authors of The Hidden Rules of Race: Barriers to an Inclusive Economy, says elite warfare is only one way to describe the circumstances. “Frustrated elite aspirants gets radicalised when their expectations meet the reality of a rigid hierarchy. They perceive the system as unjust, but the source of injustice is elite overproduction and too much competition.Warren points to Occupy Wall Street, which was not a working-class movement. “It was mostly disaffected, white college graduates. That was a preview of what we’re seeing now.” In the American context, Warren says, “it’s mostly white elite fighting among each other, while the elites of colour are trying to break into the hierarchy.” For the most part, Warren points out, black elites in the US refuse to participate in white elite warfare.”But the hard science of Turchin’s approach cannot explain all things. After the Great Depression in what some might call a negotiated settlement, elites negotiated a unionised settlement with the masses in a moment of enlightened self-interest.“There was an elite consensus to accept the legitimacy of unions. In the last 40 years, we’ve seen a re-fracturing of that consensus with no worry for peasants with pitchforks who might come.”Without Trump as a unifying villain, elite fracturing is likely to enter a period of multi-dimensional refracture. “The left was always fighting among itself, so in some ways, it’s reversion to normal. There’s a reckoning coming in the Republican party, too, as it turns in on itself again over how it lost power. I think we’ll see intra-elite warfare on both sides.”Warren believes we’re at a critical juncture over a new elite settlement. One reason for optimism can be found in the battle for a minimum wage or corporate support for the social justice movement – “seeds of a new settlement”.Turchin says he feels “vindicated as a scientist who proposed a theory, but I have some consternation that we have to live through this. It may not be very pretty. I’m worried about a state breakdown. Mass shootings and urban protests are the warning tremors of an earthquake. Society can survive, but problems are likely to escalate.” More

The inauguration of an American president is a solemn and symbolic occasion marking the peaceful, democratic transfer of power. The ritual is familiar and confidence-inspiring. Yet easy reassurance may be hard to find when Joe Biden takes the oath of office on Wednesday under heavy military guard, overlooking an empty mall, in the midst of Covid-19 and security lockdowns. Rarely has a presidency begun in such inauspicious circumstances. Taken together, the challenges he faces are unprecedented.
That said, all Americans, and a watching world, should be greatly encouraged by the dignified, conciliatory and statesmanlike way the president-elect has conducted himself so far. Few expected his candidacy to succeed a year ago. They said he was too old and out of touch. But it is hard to believe any of the other Democratic presidential hopefuls would have exerted the calm authority displayed by Biden during an extraordinarily difficult transition.
The refusal of Donald Trump to concede the election, and his inexcusable boycott of the inauguration, speaks to the deep national divisions his successor must try to heal. Biden will call on citizens to join together as “America United” to tackle the triple challenge of the pandemic and concurrent political and economic crises. “The very health of our nation is at stake,” he says. Never were truer words spoken.
By many measures, Biden is already acting president. Pathetic, isolated Trump has abdicated responsibility yet is still in the way. His second Senate impeachment trial could obstruct the urgent work at hand. So, too, could mealy-mouthed Republicans, many of whom still cannot admit their disgraced leader deserves punishment. For its survival as a serious party, the GOP must purge Trump and help ban him from public office for life.
Even if Republicans draw a line under the past four years, the inflammatory prospect of a federal prosecutor criminally investigating Trump looms large. So, too, does the lengthy spectacle of a broader commission of inquiry into the 6 January assault on the Capitol. Trump will relish the attention, if not the possible penalties. All this may serve to deepen the country’s schisms.
Biden must not allow himself to be distracted. In making the pandemic his top priority, he may yet discover new pathways to national healing, political and physical. His announcement of a $1.9tn rescue package, if backed by Congress, could go some way to both arresting the virus devastation and restoring faith among disaffected Trump voters that government, when properly led, can and will help alleviate their pain.
In addition to $400bn for an accelerated “vaccine offensive”, the package earmarks $350bn for state and local governments to assist those most in need. Increased direct payments to individuals and improved childcare support, plus a mooted minimum wage rise, could, if delivered, begin to persuade many alienated Americans that Biden means what he says about a fresh start.
Much the same logic applies to next month’s promised, even more costly economic stimulus plan, which will fund job creation, New Deal-style infrastructure projects, clean energy and improved healthcare through higher taxes on business and the rich. Returning prosperity, good jobs and a degree of wealth redistribution may go a long way to exorcising the ghosts of the Trump era. Over time, it could even help salve America’s racial wounds, another big challenge facing Biden.
If only a few of these ambitious ideas come to fruition, they will still confound those on the left who dismissed Biden as an establishment hack lacking the vision to affect real change. And if a mainstream democratic leader like him were to succeed in these critical endeavours, it would undercut the appeal of rightwing populists, nationalists and Trump-like authoritarians everywhere. Much rides on the next few months.
Biden’s battle is thus not only for America’s future. It’s for Europe’s and the world’s, too. Myriad challenges abroad are no less daunting than those at home. Many cling desperately to his promise to recommit America to fighting the global climate crisis. Rejoining the Paris agreement is a welcome step. Setting long-term carbon-neutral targets is another. But the US, like China and other big economies, must go further, faster. Will he make the leap? Does he have the clout? It’s far from clear.
Those looking for rapid fixes to other entrenched international problems – a truce with Beijing, an Iran de-escalation, a halt to the horrors in Yemen and Syria, a UN renaissance – will likewise require patience. So much damage has been done, so much rubble must be cleared. Everything is urgent. It cannot all be done at once.
The US has escaped the Trump nightmare by the skin of its teeth. Biden’s restoration project starts with the right ideas: make America healthy again, get the economy firing, restore faith in democratic governance, rehabilitate America’s global image. Given the powerful, illiberal challenges the world faces from China, Russia and others, it cannot happen too soon.
Joe Biden, the unexpected president, is no FDR. He’s no miracle worker. But he is the hope on whom all this rests. We wish him well. More