Joe Biden

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US diplomats brace as Trump plans foreign policy shake-up in wider purge of government

      by

      The US foreign policy establishment is set for one of the biggest shake-ups in years as Donald Trump has vowed to both revamp US policy abroad and to root out the so-called “deep state” by firing thousands of government workers – including those among the ranks of America’s diplomatic corps.Trump’s electoral victory is also likely to push the Biden administration to speed up efforts to support Ukraine before Trump can cut off military aid, hamper the already-modest efforts to restrain Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza and Lebanon and lead to a fresh effort to slash and burn through major parts of US bureaucracy including the state department.Trump backers have said he will be more organised during his second term, often dubbed “Trump 2.0”, and on the day after election day US media reported that Trump had already chosen Brian Hook, a hawkish State Department official during the first Trump administration, to lead the transition for America’s diplomats.And yet analysts, serving and former US diplomats and foreign officials said that it remained difficult to separate Trump’s bluster from his actual plans when he takes power in January. What is clear is that his priority is to bin many of the policies put in place by his predecessor.“I’m skeptical that the transition process will be super-impactful since the natural instinct of the new team will be to toss all of Biden’s foreign policy in the dumpster,” one former senior diplomat said.“If you go back to 2016, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall. And, you know, it doesn’t look like there was a secret plan to defeat Isis,” said Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security thinktank. “Some of these things didn’t turn out the way that they were talked about on that campaign trail and we go into this without really knowing what the president’s proposal will be for all of this – and what he will do.”One clear priority, however, is to target many of those involved in crafting US foreign policy as part of a broader purge of the US government.Trump has vowed to revive Schedule F, a designation that would strip tens of thousands of federal employees of their protections as civil servants and define them instead as political appointees, giving Trump immense powers to fire “rogue bureaucrats”, as he called them in a campaign statement.Within the State Department, there are concerns that Trump could target the bureaus that focus specifically on issues that he has attacked during his reelection campaign such as immigration. In particular, he could slash entire bureaus of the State Department, including the bureau of population, refugees and migration (PRM, which resettled 125,000 refugees to the US in 2022 alone), as well as the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, which has focused on the violation of the rights of Palestinians by Israel.Project 2025, a policy memo released by the conservative Heritage Foundation, suggested that Trump would merely reassign PRM to shift resources to “challenges stemming from the current immigration situation until the crisis can be contained” and said it would demand “indefinite curtailment of the number of USRAP [United States refugee admissions program] refugee admissions”.But the blueprint, authored by Kiron Skinner, a former director of policy planning at the State Department during the first Trump administration, went further, suggesting that Trump could simply freeze the agency’s work for a complete reevaluation of its earlier policy.“Before inauguration, the president-elect’s department transition team should assess every aspect of State Department negotiations and funding commitments,” a section of the memo said. After inauguration, Skinner wrote, the secretary of state should “order an immediate freeze on all efforts to implement unratified treaties and international agreements, allocation of resources, foreign assistance disbursements, domestic and international contracts and payments, hiring and recruiting decisions, etc” pending a review by a political appointee.“Everyone is bracing [themselves],” said one diplomat stationed abroad. “Some [diplomats] may choose to leave before he even arrives.”Trump has also vowed to “overhaul federal departments and agencies, firing all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus”.As Joe Biden enters his lame duck period, the administration will focus on trying to push through $6bn in aid that has already been approved for Ukraine, as well as exerting whatever leverage remains in his administration to find an unlikely ceasefire in Gaza.At the same time, they will have to calm a nervous world waiting to see what Trump has planned for his second term.“I think they’re going to do everything they can to make the case that the United States needs to continue to aid Ukraine, and they’ll have to spend a lot of time, I’m sure, dealing with nervous Ukrainians and nervous Europeans,” said Fontaine. At an upcoming G20 summit in Rio, the current administration was “going to try to reassure the rest of the world that a lot of the things that they have done over the past four years are going to stick into the future rather than just be kind of undone”.“And,” he added, “we’ll see what the reaction to that is.” More

    • 225 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US election live: Kamala Harris concedes to Donald Trump but vows to keep fighting for freedom and democracy

      by

      Kamala Harris made her concession to Donald Trump official, but vowed to keep fighting for the issues that she campaigned on.“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” the vice-president said.“The fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up.”Harkening back to some of the promises of her failed campaign, Harris said:
      I will never give up the fight for a future where Americans can pursue their dreams, ambitions and aspirations, where the women of America have the freedom to make decisions about their own body and not have their government telling them what to do.
      We will never give up the fight to protect our schools and our streets from gun violence and, America, we will never give up the fight for our democracy, for the rule of law, for equal justice and for the sacred idea that every one of us, no matter who we are or where we start out, has certain fundamental rights and freedoms. That must be respected and upheld.
      Harris just wrapped up her speech by saying that even if the country struggles in the years to come, it will emerge stronger:
      There’s an adage an historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is: only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.
      The light, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service … and may that work guide us, even in the face of setbacks, toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America.
      Her husband, Doug Emhoff, then appeared at her side, and the couple waved at the crowd before heading offstage to the sound of Beyoncé’s Freedom, a staple at events in her unsuccessful campaign for president.With a nod to future elections that could help Democrats regain political power, Kamala Harris urged her supporters to stay engaged in the democratic process.“The fight for our freedom will take hard work, but like I always say, we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work can be joyful work. And the fight for our country is always worth it,” Harris said.She also made a point of addressing young people, who broke for Donald Trump in surprisingly large numbers in yesterday’s election.
      To the young people who are watching, it is OK to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s going to be OK. On the campaign, I would often say, ‘When we fight, we win.’ But here’s the thing, here’s the thing, sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is, don’t ever give up.
      Many Democrats dread Trump returning to office, but Harris encouraged them not to be overcome by grief:
      So, to everyone who is watching, do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.
      Kamala Harris made her concession to Donald Trump official, but vowed to keep fighting for the issues that she campaigned on.“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” the vice-president said.“The fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up.”Harkening back to some of the promises of her failed campaign, Harris said:
      I will never give up the fight for a future where Americans can pursue their dreams, ambitions and aspirations, where the women of America have the freedom to make decisions about their own body and not have their government telling them what to do.
      We will never give up the fight to protect our schools and our streets from gun violence and, America, we will never give up the fight for our democracy, for the rule of law, for equal justice and for the sacred idea that every one of us, no matter who we are or where we start out, has certain fundamental rights and freedoms. That must be respected and upheld.
      Kamala Harris said she had spoken to president-elect Donald Trump, and would work with him to peacefully transfer power.“Now, I know folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now. I get it, but we must accept the results of this election,” the vice-president said.“Earlier today, I spoke with president-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”That would be a shift from when Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, and tried for weeks to block the Democrat from taking office, culminating in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.Harris then thanked everyone who worked for her campaign, which lasted just over three months.“To my beloved Doug and our family, I love you so very much. To President Biden and Dr Biden, thank you for your faith and support. To Governor Walz and the Walz family, I know your service to our nation will continue, and to my extraordinary team, to the volunteers who gave so much of themselves to the poll workers and the local election officials. I thank you. I thank you all,” Harris said.Kamala Harris acknowledged the disappointment of her election loss to Donald Trump yesterday, but called on her supporters to “keep fighting”.“My heart is full today. Full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country and full of resolve,” the vice-president said.“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for, but hear me when I say, hear me when I say, the light of America’s promise will always burn bright, as long as we never give up, and as long as we keep fighting.”Kamala Harris has just walked on stage to make her concession speech before a crowd of supporters in Washington DC.She is speaking at her alma mater, Howard University. Her campaign had its election night party there yesterday, but as it became clear that Donald Trump was winning, Harris canceled a planned address that evening.She conceded to Trump in a phone call earlier in the day, an aide said.Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, were just spotted in the crowd at Howard University.The Minnesota governor was Harris’s running mate in her unsuccessful bid for president.Bernie Sanders, the independent senator and leading progressive voice in Congress, says Democrats’ failure to embrace policies that would help the average American led to the party’s terrible performance in yesterday’s election.“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right,” said Sanders, who was re-elected to a fourth term representing Vermont yesterday.Sanders caucuses with Democrats in the Senate and campaigned for Kamala Harris, but has broken with Joe Biden over his support for Israel, and encouraged him to adopt progressive economic policies.In his statement, Sanders encouraged Democrats to learn lessons from a debacle that saw Donald Trump defeat Harris, and the GOP regain control of the Senate:
      Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children. Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions.
      There’s a large crowd gathered at Howard University to see Kamala Harris speak, and among the group is former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.She won re-election last night to her heavily Democratic district centered on San Francisco, but has handed leadership of the House Democratic caucus to Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who also won another term yesterday.Kamala Harris is due to acknowledge Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in a speech to supporters at Howard University in Washington DC.The vice-president should be taking the stage at her alma mater in a few minutes. She has already conceded the election to Trump in a phone call earlier in the day, according to an aide.Republicans currently control the House, and appear favored to continue holding the majority, Cook Political Report finds.But it doesn’t look likely that the GOP will expand their already tiny majority by much, and with counting ongoing, there’s still a chance that Democrats claw their way back to control:If there is any good news to be had in an election that saw stinging defeats for Democrats at the presidential level and in the Senate, it may be found in the House of Representatives, and specifically the races that have yet to be called in California.Just moments after the polls closed in the Golden state, the Democratic stronghold was called for Kamala Harris and the party’s candidate for Senate, Adam Schiff, was declared the winner.But despite a clear majority of blue votes at the top of the ticket, zooming in on the state’s sprawling list of local races showcased deeper divisions, with many contests remaining too close to call.Among them are important seats that could help determine which party controls the House:

      As of Wednesday morning, incumbent Republican Mike Garcia was up just two points over Democratic challenger George Whitesides with 67% of votes reported in the district north of Los Angeles.

      In the seat left open by Democratic representative Katie Porter after her run for Senate – an area considered “Reagan country” that includes conservative-leaning Huntington Beach – Republican Scott Baugh and Democrat Dave Min are neck and neck with 71% of the vote reporting.

      Representative Ken Calvert, the longest-serving House Republican from California, is up one point over Democrat Will Rollins with 69% reporting.

      Incumbent Republican David Valadao has a stronger grip on his seat with 55% to Democrat Rudy Salas’s 45%, with just over half of the votes recorded.

      The rematch between Republican representative John Duarte and Democrat Adam Gray – whom he narrowly beat in 2022 – is close again with Duarte at 51.4% to Gray’s 48.6% with about half of the Central valley district votes tallied.

      Republican representative Michelle Steel leads over her challenger, Democrat Derek Tran, with 52.5% to his 47.5%, but the AP hasn’t yet called the race.
      There are also a slew of initiatives put to voters in the state that are still being decided. The “no” votes are leading on Prop 6, which prohibits involuntary servitude as forced prison labor, Prop 32, which increases the minimum wage to $18 an hour, and Prop 5, which lowers vote thresholds required to approve bonds for affordable housing and public infrastructure.The count can take weeks in California, where there’s a strong reliance on mail-in ballots, which are sent out to all registered voters.Among those who gathered at Howard for the vice-president’s concession speech was Joanne Howes, a founding member of Emily’s List, an influential fundraising group that supports Democratic female candidates who back abortion rights.“Terrible,” she said when asked how she was doing. “I’ve been at this a long time and this time I really thought we were going to do it.” At 80, Howes said she was less hopeful now than she had ever been that she would see a female president.“I am so angry at white women. I thought they were going to get it this time,” said Howes, who is white. “And those white women who voted for those ballot measures and then went to vote for Trump – figure that out.”After appointing the justices who overturned Roe v Wade, Donald Trump was found liable for sexually abusing E Jean Carroll. Despite a campaign to remind women that their vote was a private matter that did not need to be shared with their husbands, national exit polls showed white women chose Trump by a sizable margin.“We’re going to feel sad and sorrowful, but then we have to get up again,” she said. “We can’t just accept that our democracy is over.”When he was first elected president in 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by less than one percentage point of the vote in the three “blue wall” states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.It was a frustrating result for Democrats, leaving many with the feeling that, if only Clinton had handled her campaign slightly differently, she would have been president.Democrats are still digesting Kamala Harris’s defeat last night, but it has become clear that voters were decisive in choosing Trump over the vice-president. As the below chart shows, he improved his margins in the blue wall states, and turned back Harris’s efforts to win Georgia, as Joe Biden had in 2020, and North Carolina. We still don’t have the results for Nevada and Arizona yet, but he’s leading the count in those states, too.The chart is also a good reminder of how strong Democrats once were in the blue wall, and in Nevada. Have a look:Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin will be Michigan’s next senator, the Associated Press reports.It’s yet another sigh of relief for Democrats in a battleground state that gave its electoral votes to Donald Trump yesterday. Though they have already lost their majority in the Senate, Slotkin’s victory for the open seat being vacated by Democrat Debbie Stabenow means they have fewer seats to retake to gain the majority in future elections. More

    • 238 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the return of President Trump: a bleak day for America and the world | Editorial

      by

      This is an exceptionally bleak and frightening moment for the United States and the world. Donald Trump swept the electoral college and is on course to take the popular vote – giving him not merely a victory, but a mandate. If many voters gambled on him in 2016, they doubled down this time. Presented with a choice between electing the first black, female president on a promise of a sunnier future, and a racist, misogynist, twice-impeached convicted felon hawking hatred and retribution, they picked Mr Trump.The stark divide between two Americas persists. But polls did not predict the scale of this victory. Only one president has previously won two non-consecutive terms. In 2021, Mr Trump seemed briefly to have lost his own party. Now he has increased his vote share across the country and multiple groups of voters. This – even more than the two assassination attempts en route – will convince him of his invincibility.No party has kept the White House when so many voters have felt the US is going in the wrong direction. As vice-president, Kamala Harris was shadowed by incumbency when electors wanted change. Under Joe Biden, the US economy had a remarkable recovery. But it didn’t feel that way, and people voted accordingly. Mr Trump positioned himself as the change candidate.Ms Harris ran a polished but truncated campaign: Mr Biden’s refusal to pass the torch sooner looks all the worse today. Yet the Democrats need to look deeper. Despite the stakes, many Democratic voters failed to turn out. There is a gender gap, but 52% of white women still voted for Mr Trump. Latino men, in particular, moved towards him: the racial divide remains stark, but may be closing somewhat while the educational gap expands. Many voters relish Mr Trump’s willingness to break the system, because they feel it is already broken for them.Prejudice encouraged voters to see Mr Trump as a more effective leader than Ms Harris, along with a wrongful conflation of authoritarianism and strength. Many of his voters prioritised the economy. But they still knew they were picking a would-be autocrat who has vowed mass deportations and retribution against political opponents and journalists; who was described by his former top military commander as “fascist to the core”; who tried to overturn the will of the people in 2020 and sparked an armed insurrection.We are not going back. But what lies ahead looks worse. His fact-light, erratic, nakedly transactional approach won’t change. This time he has control of the Senate and very possibly the House of Representatives; a blank cheque from the supreme court; and a renewed faith in his supremacy and in pandering to voters’ basest instincts. There will be few “adults” to restrain him. His victory address offered a vision of a court rather than a cabinet, with Elon Musk as a new American oligarch. He tactically repudiated the Project 2025 roadmap, but expect his supporters to pursue their programme.Expect, too, the rollback of LGBTQ+ rights and the pardoning of the January 6 rioters. He does not need to fulfil every promise to do more than enough. Easily avoidable diseases could run rampant without an actual ban on vaccines. He does not have to deport millions to destroy families and foment racial hatred. Tariffs threaten trade war and higher prices at home.Ukraine faces being strong-armed into a bad deal with Vladimir Putin. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who just sacked his defence minister and rival, Yoav Gallant, will be celebrating. Across the world, the far right is emboldened; US allies are rightly anxious. Mr Trump’s pledge to withdraw from climate accords and bolster fossil fuels would end all hope of keeping global heating to below 1.5C, experts believe.An already treacherous world is becoming more so. For many in the US and beyond, the overwhelming emotion today will be despair. But the decision must be to recommit to defending democracy and all of those imperilled by Mr Trump’s return.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Why did Trump win, and what comes next? Our panel reacts | Panelists

      by

      Moustafa Bayoumi: ‘Between hate and nothing, hate won’So, it will be Trump, after all. The very idea of another Trump presidency is devastating. His entire campaign consisted of unbridled race-baiting, woman-hating and fascist-in-waiting messaging, yet still he prevails. This is what succeeds in this country?The answer, it’s now clear, is a resounding yes. Should I be surprised? There are long and painful histories of racism, misogyny and fascism in this country (the Nazis even studied the US when crafting their regime). But, unlike any other nation’s election, this American tragedy will reverberate around the world. We must do all that we can to prevent a Trump presidency turning into even more of a death sentence not just for American women seeking abortions, but also for Ukrainians, Lebanese people and especially Palestinians.Hindsight is easy, of course, but some of us have been warning the Democrats for months about the limitations of the Harris campaign. The Democrats appeared more interested in courting disaffected Republicans, including war criminals such as Dick Cheney, than even merely dialoguing with their progressive flank. They refused to allow a Palestinian American to take the stage at their convention. Meanwhile, American bombs are dropped daily on Palestinians in what is widely considered a genocide, and Harris has had little to say.In fact, Harris probably had little to say about a lot of issues, so much so that the news site Axios labeled her the “‘no comment’ candidate”. The Republicans ran their campaign as a party of hate; the Democrats ran as a party that stood for almost nothing. Between hate and nothing, hate won.This must be the most profound wake-up call the Democratic party has ever heard. They must stop trying to be moderate Republicans and instead stand for equal justice, working people and human rights for everyone. Saying that they do just isn’t enough.The Democrats thought all the hate emanating from the Trump campaign was simply an emotion that they could neutralize by their expressions of “joy”. But what if hate isn’t an emotion? What if it’s an ideology? The answer to that question is what we, and the rest of the world, are about to find out. Pray for us.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist
      Ben Davis: ‘Harris was brought into a terrible situation’American democracy has fallen apart. That an authoritarian rightwinger will take power is the symptom rather than the cause. What brought us to this point, is the cataclysmic, decades-long breakdown of working-class institutions and civil society. The only path forward is to rebuild somehow.Trump gained or held steady with every demographic, even left-trending groups like white college-educated voters and women. He gained most with young, less politicized voters and voters of color of all stripes. How has this happened?Working-class organization, civil society and the basic institutions that have held the country together have disintegrated. There are very few places where people talk to anyone outside their co-workers – during work – and a small number of friends. We don’t know our neighbors. We don’t have unions. This is a society where trust erodes to an extreme degree, and politics is practiced at the level of the individual rather than the community.Kamala Harris did not run a terrible campaign. She was brought into a terrible situation. Joe Biden’s hubris cost her deeply. But she failed in two directions. She shed young voters, Arab and Muslim voters, and Latino voters who had previously favored the left by running an aggressively bipartisan, centrist campaign, ignoring the active genocide in Palestine supported by the United States.But this didn’t work either. The median voter, the bipartisan moderate voter, rejected her.Americans don’t have organization. And with that, they don’t have active solidarity or a structured worldview. They believe a man who played a businessman on TV can press a button and stop inflation. The voting patterns we have seen with young voters, voters of color and all sorts of voters left behind by our country are striking. Their grievances are real. And Democrats have been unable to offer a solution.

      Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC
      Lloyd Green: ‘Biden racked up decades-high levels of inflation’Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to internalize their limited mandate. On election day the US punished them, returning Donald Trump, a convicted felon, to the White House. And before the Democrats cast half the country as benighted, they ought to look closely in the mirror.In office, Biden racked up decades-high levels of inflation at the same time as openly musing about being more consequential than Barack Obama – not the metric Americans were looking for. As much as Biden-Harris saw Dobbs and democracy as silver electoral bullets, voters without four-year degrees were unimpressed.But it doesn’t end there. Despite Biden’s growing deterioration, he pursued re-election – until it was too late. Meanwhile, his team openly trashed Harris to anyone who would listen. All heard that bell’s peal.On the campaign trail, Harris exhibited joy but failed to show sure-footedness. She clobbered Trump in debate but bobbed and weaved when confronted by interviewers. Her inability to separate herself from her boss coupled with her selection of Tim Walz as her running-mate probably doomed her bid. Think incredible lightness of being.Culture remained a battleground. In 2020 and 2022, Democrats nearly destroyed themselves over “defund the police”. Fast forward to 2024: Harris declined to say where she stood on a Proposition 36, a California ballot measure supported by small businesses that sought to impose felony charges and stiffer sentences for certain theft and drug crimes. The proposition prevailed overwhelmingly; Harris did not.

      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      Arwa Mahdawi: ‘Harris did not sufficiently break from Biden’Joy will come in the morning, fired-up Democrats enthused at the Democratic national convention back in August. It did not. The unthinkable happened in the middle of the night. Trump is back and he’s back with a vengeance.A Trump revenge tour will bring carnage at home and abroad. Netanyahu was already doing whatever he liked under the Biden administration – but we also know he was angling for a Trump victory. For over a year now Palestinians have been grieving; now it seems likely that the West Bank will be annexed and the misery in Gaza, already unbearable, will intensify.And I don’t need to tell you what will happen with women’s rights at home. Overturning Roe v Wade was just the beginning. The right’s war on women is entering a terrifying new phase.How did we get here? How did the US elect an adjudicated and alleged sexual predator over a woman again? This will be dissected for weeks but the bottom line is this: the US was desperate for change and the Harris campaign squandered their chance to meaningfully represent a new path for the country. Harris did not sufficiently break from Biden and Americans did not want a repeat of the last four years.The Harris campaign tried to find a path to victory by moving to the right, ignoring progressives and courting Republicans by parading around Liz Cheney. It didn’t work. And yet the lesson one imagines the Democratic party will draw from this loss is that they must move even further to the right.Things are bleak. But political change isn’t something that only happens every four years at the ballot box. The amount of organizational energy I’ve seen in the last couple of months has been astounding. We must keep this energy up. The fight isn’t over.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      Bhaskar Sunkara: ‘The Democrats must return to their populist New Deal roots’Unlike in 2016, many of us were bracing ourselves for this outcome. But how exactly did Donald Trump manage to win the White House a second time?It certainly wasn’t on the merits of his campaign. Trump was less coherent than in 2016, didn’t deliver the same potent appeals to workers, and embraced unpopular billionaires like Elon Musk.But he seemed to have this election handed to him. To start with, there was Joe Biden. The headline features of “Biden’s economy” were strong as far as GDP growth and jobs went, but Biden was unable to effectively communicate his domestic successes and take advantage of his bully pulpit as president. As a result, 45% of voters, the highest number in decades, said they were financially worse off than they were four years ago.Good policies don’t translate to good politics without an effective voice behind them and the president was unable to head off worries about inflation and immigration. The failures caused by his declining ability manifested itself most dramatically at the first presidential debate and Harris was forced to run from behind when she became the presumptive nominee.Harris herself ran a competent campaign, but was limited by the very nature of today’s Democratic coalition: it’s increasingly the party (in both style and substance) of professional-class people. Even though Harris herself shied away from it, the Democrats as a whole are still associated with identitarian rhetoric and relied on cross-class issues like abortion – which turned out to be less salient than the economy – to drive turnout.The type of majorities that can actually transform American politics won’t be found until Democrats return to their economic populist, New Deal roots. That means naming elites as enemies and avoiding cultural radicalism that appeals to very few and alienates working-class minority communities.This isn’t Harris’s loss; it belongs to her whole party. And the whole country will pay the consequences.

      Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden’s home town says farewell to ‘Scranton Joe’: ‘We were very proud of him’

      by

      There’s the President Joseph R Biden Jr Expressway that winds off the interstate into the center of Scranton. Then there’s Biden Street, tucked along one side of the square that houses the towering stone courthouse and the sparkling electric city sign downtown. Then there’s Biden Way, an honorary thoroughfare at the intersection of North Washington Avenue and Fisk Street, where the 46th president was born and lived until he was 10.At Hank’s Hoagies, just down the street from Biden’s childhood home in the Green Ridge section of Scranton, there is a life-size cutout of Biden and shelves of presidential memorabilia. The 46th president is also a member of the restaurant’s hall of fame.Yet for all the deep connection between Joe Biden and this scrappy Pennsylvania city, the president’s visit here on the final weekend of the campaign was relatively muted. He visited two union halls to stump for Kamala Harris, bringing his granddaughter Natalie on stage at one and singing Happy Birthday to a union worker at another.View image in fullscreenBiden may have represented Delaware in the US Senate for more than three decades, but he has always made it clear that he is a son of Scranton. For a president who has staked his presidency on defending the soul of the nation, Scranton, the small city nestled in the mountains of the Wyoming valley in what might be the most important swing state in the nation, has served as his moral compass. His adopted nickname, after all, is “Scranton Joe”.“He has represented our area, our city, and our county in a way that really, to me, is indescribable with such grace and such honor and such dignity,” said Bill Gaughan, a Lackawanna county commissioner who led the effort to rename a street in the city in honor of Biden. Asked what he thought Biden meant when he talked about “Scranton values”, Gaughan said: “I would describe it as similar to how the president describes it. When you get knocked down, people in Scranton pick you back up.”The first time Biden visited as president and drove on the expressway that bears his name, the president turned to Gaughan and told him how proud Biden’s mother would have been to see the sign.View image in fullscreen“We love him. He’s a good man,” said Rosalie Mesko, 85, who lives in Biden’s old neighborhood and said she remembered him and some of his friends from when they were kids. “We were very proud of him. I think he did a good job. He remembered Scranton.”Mary Hazzouri, who has lived in Biden’s old neighborhood for 20 years, said she would get excited every time she would hear him reference a landmark in Scranton. Asked what she thought Biden meant when he talked about Scranton values, she said: “I just feel like we’re middle class. Small town. Everybody knows everybody. Church and little things like that. It’s just a family-oriented town.”Every Friday, a small group meets at a local church to pray for the office of the presidency, said Marie Jordan, a photographer who grew up a few houses down from where Biden did. Jordan showed a reporter a photograph collage she had made of thousands of people who had visited Scranton.A woman walking her dog in front of Biden’s old house, a modest three-story colonial, said she didn’t remember Biden, but that they were the same age and went to St Paul school around the same time.“His family sounds like our family growing up,” she said. “It’s nice to see a kid from Scranton, St Paul’s, go to the White House.”This election, Scranton wasn’t just a symbol; it was a political battleground.View image in fullscreenBarack Obama carried Lackawanna county in 2012 by nearly 28 points. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried it by 3.4 points, underscoring how much Democrats had been slipping with white working-class voters. In 2020, Biden carried it by a little more than eight points – a performance Harris would have needed to match or improve to carry Pennsylvania. She wound up carrying it by about three points.Downtown on Biden Street, a storefront window has signs for Republican candidates, including Trump. The block where Biden grew up is sprinkled with lawn signs mostly for Democrats, but there are a few for Trump.A man out for an afternoon walk wearing a black “Make America great again” hat said he did not think Biden lived by the hardworking Scranton values he was said to stand for. But asked whether he was proud to have a son of Scranton in the White House, the man, who declined to give his name, said: “Of course.” Then he walked off.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

      Trump wins the presidency – how did it happen?

      Full presidential election results and map

      Abortion ballot measure results by state

      Republicans retake control of the Senate

      Senate, House and governor results More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trials, drop-outs and assassination attempts: 15 moments that defined the US election campaign

      by

      It has been called the most critical election in US history, and it has certainly been one of the wildest races, with an incumbent president stepping down late in the campaign, a criminal guilty verdict for one of the candidates and a couple of assassination attempts. We revisit the key moments, played out against the backdrop of two seismic global conflicts, of a political struggle that holds American democracy itself in the balance.1. The challengersThe hard-right Florida governor Ron DeSantis was widely seen as the Republican most likely to prevent former president Donald Trump from becoming the party’s nominee for a third consecutive election. However, in January, despite being backed by the tycoon Rupert Murdoch, DeSantis ends his flailing campaign – and eventually endorses Trump, whose team had smeared him as “Pudding Fingers” due to his alleged eating habits. Running almost as an incumbent, Trump’s last serious challenger ends up being the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who, against all expectations, takes on the mantle of the anti-Trump vote. Casting doubt on Trump’s mental fitness and his loyalty to the US constitution, the former UN ambassador garners significant support – and perseveres until Super Tuesday in March, when she finally stands aside, leaving Trump the last major candidate standing for the 2024 Republican nomination.View image in fullscreen2. The presidentIn the annals of American politics, incumbent presidents seeking re-election typically enjoy a significant edge over their challengers. However, Joe Biden – the country’s oldest president – bucks the trend as his meandering remarks, frequent misspeaking of names and halting speech raise concerns that he might just be too old to take on Trump again. Nevertheless, essentially unopposed, the 46th president of the United States runs the board in the Democratic primaries and is named the party’s candidate for 2024, while vowing that, despite his advancing years, he remains the most capable contender to defeat Trump once again.View image in fullscreen3. The trialThe first real jolt of the election campaign arrives on 30 May, when a jury of 12 New Yorkers makes Trump the first ex-president in American history to become a convicted felon. They find him guilty of committing a crime – 34 of them, in fact – when he falsified business records to disguise $130,000 in hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, to hide the scandal from American voters on the eve of the 2016 election. It is far from Trump’s only legal woe: at various times he has faced more than 90 criminal counts, including racketeering charges in Georgia for a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results, where he marked another milestone: the first mugshot of an American president. (That case itself later takes a dramatic turn when the district attorney, Fani Willis, is revealed to have had an affair with a prosecutor she hired, and the case remains on hold while a judge considers whether to disqualify her.) Separately, in February, a federal judge orders Trump to pay $83.3m to the writer E Jean Carroll, who had sued for defamation after Trump publicly disputed that he had sexually assaulted her – an accusation the judge ruled was “substantially true”. Many of the other cases remain in limbo while Trump pursues his well-worn legal tactic: delay, delay, delay.View image in fullscreen4. The debateBiden’s performance in the opening presidential debate against Trump on 27 June in Atlanta is perhaps one of the worst in American history. Shaky, raspy-voiced and slack-jawed, his disastrous showing is punctuated by repeated stumbles over words, uncomfortable pauses and at least one point where he trails off before claiming: “We finally beat Medicare.” Top Democratic figures and donors panic, while recriminations swirl about the role of his campaign and of the media in failing to adequately account for his apparently declining mental fitness. The drumbeat for Biden, 81, to step aside becomes increasingly relentless, as Democratic strategists finally join average voters in questioning whether the party might yet swap him out for a younger standard bearer to face off against Trump.View image in fullscreen5. The immunity rulingOn 1 July, the supreme court drops a bombshell of its own: it rules Trump at least partly immune from criminal prosecution for anything he did in his “official capacity” as president. The decision, a major victory for Trump, destroys the likelihood of a criminal trial for Trump over trying to subvert the 2020 election occurring before the new election in November 2024. It is also the latest example of what most observers agree is the rightwing capture of the supreme court that Trump himself made possible by appointing three arch-conservative judges. Having already overturned Roe v Wade – a monumental victory for the anti-abortion movement, for which Trump proudly claims credit, that made abortion a huge issue in the 2022 midterms and now the 2024 election – the conservatives had caused even more furore in May when photos proved an upside down flag flew outside the home of Justice Samuel Alito, a symbol of support for Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement that was prominent at the January 6 riot. Since the immunity ruling, the special counsel Jack Smith has hit back, filing a new indictment with more streamlined allegations; Trump in return has promised to fire Smith “within two seconds” if he wins re-election.6. The shootingOn 13 July, during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump is shot and wounded in his upper right ear by Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who fires eight bullets with an AR-15-style rifle from the rooftop of a nearby building. As security agents cover the president, he stands with a raised fist and shouts: “Fight, fight, fight”, in what becomes an instantly iconic photograph and moment. The shooting claims the life of one attendee, and two others are left in critical condition; Crooks is killed by security agents. Just nine weeks later, on 15 September, Trump is allegedly the target of a second aspiring assassin at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where Secret Service agents find Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, hiding in the bushes with a rifle. As well as setting off a crisis in the Secret Service, the events give Trump a rallying cry for his re-election effort: he appears at the Republican national convention days after the Butler shooting wearing an ear bandage, to a rapturous welcome.7. The withdrawalAt 1.46pm on 21 July, Biden announces he will no longer seek re-election – ending weeks of fevered speculation and mounting pressure from lawmakers, donors, activists and voters terrified of his inability to beat Trump. A key intervention comes from the actor and Democratic fundraiser George Clooney: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” he writes. Biden’s longtime political ally and ex-House speaker Nancy Pelosi also plays a crucial role in limiting the president’s legacy to one term in what she says is a “cold calculation” for the sake of the country – and later tells the Guardian she has not spoken to her old friend since.8. The coronationTaking the stage in Chicago on 23 August to a thunderous standing ovation, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, with the full-throated support of Biden, officially accepts the Democratic presidential nomination, making her the first Black woman to lead a major party ticket. Harris declares the upcoming election an opportunity for the country to “chart a new way forward” and encourages voters to write the “next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told”. The impact is immediate and dramatic: she goes on to raise more than $1bn in less than three months, a record, and draws boisterous crowds to energetic rallies where she focuses on reproductive rights, economic help for the middle class and safeguarding US democracy.9. The wildcardRobert F Kennedy Jr, the scion of the most famous Democratic family whose independent campaign for president had at times reached as high as 10% in national polling, drops out. Kennedy had faced a string of scandals, including accusations he had assaulted a former babysitter. He also admitted that, yes, it was him who dumped a bear carcass in Central Park in a case that had mystified New Yorkers a decade earlier. After dropping out, the environmental campaigner turned vaccine skeptic then plays both sides – reportedly making overtures to Harris in August to discuss endorsing her in exchange for a job, then opting to back Trump, who has allegedly offered Kennedy control over the health agencies. Among third-party candidates still running are the environmentalist Jill Stein, who also stood as the Green party’s candidate in 2012 and 2016, the progressive activist Cornel West, and Chase Oliver of the Libertarian party.10. The running matesIn July, the Ohio senator JD Vance formally accepts Trump’s offer to run as his vice-presidential nominee – a dramatic change of position for Vance, the author of the hit memoir Hillbilly Elegy who once described himself as a “never Trumper” and called his new boss “America’s Hitler”. But if there is one quote for which JD Vance will be remembered in history, it is his controversial definition of leading Democrats: “A bunch of childless cat ladies,” he told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2021. On the other side of the aisle, Harris chooses the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a native of rural Nebraska who was a teacher and high school football coach and served in the National Guard for 24 years before entering politics. Walz captures national attention with a surprisingly effective takedown of Republicans: “These guys are just weird.”View image in fullscreen11. The billionaireThe wealthiest man on the planet formally declares what most people had suspected after he bought Twitter and turned it into the more extreme X: he is a full-fledged cheerleader for Trump. First endorsing Trump after the assassination attempt, and then dancing and leaping on stage at a Trump rally, the boss of Tesla, Space X and several other companies takes to the newest of his many jobs with a gusto that shames even the most politically active billionaires. Musk becomes everything from a Trump policy adviser to a mega-donor and (through his America Pac campaign group) a leading figure in the Republican “ground game”, its effort to get voters to the polls. In October, he also begins giving away $1m a day to Pennsylvanians who are registered voters – causing a judge to demand his presence in court for running an “illegal lottery”. To those who ask what’s in it for Musk, observers point to billions in federal contracts and Trump promising him a role in helping gut regulators.View image in fullscreen12. The debate 2.0On 11 September, Harris outperforms Trump in their first debate, appearing to vindicate Biden’s decision to gracefully bow out and marking a dramatic change in fortune as she takes a slight polling lead over Trump – though the polls essentially remain tied for the remainder of the race. However, it isn’t Harris’s victory that most attracts headlines from the debate, but the former president’s claim about immigrants from Haiti: “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs,” Trump said. “They are eating the cats. They are eating the pets of the people that live there.” Quickly immortalized in a viral song, the statement – an obvious and quickly debunked lie – appears at first to hurt the Republicans, but far from repudiating it Trump and Vance begin repeating it as part of an anti-immigrant focus that the campaign embraces as its driving principle, including a promise to carry out the largest mass deportation in US history.13. The celebsIf Trump can rely on the support of the world’s richest man, Harris can count on that of its biggest-selling recording artist. In a post on Instagram minutes after the debate, Taylor Swift endorses Harris, encouraging her fans to register to vote and signing it “Childless Cat Lady”, a reference to Vance’s slur. She is hardly alone: Charli XCX had already set off a series of pro-Harris internet memes by tweeting “kamala IS brat” – referring to a lifestyle inspired by noughties excess and rave culture, as well as the name of her hit album Brat – and eventually Beyoncé, Eminem (whose hit Lose Yourself was rapped by Barack Obama at a Detroit rally where the superstar told his home city to “use your voice” for Harris) and dozens more pop stars back Harris. From actors such as Robert De Niro – who clashes with Trump supporters outside the ex-president’s hush money trial in New York – and the cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies, or athletes such as LeBron James (“When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me”), most of the highest-profile celebrity endorsements have gone to Harris – though Trump can boast Hulk Hogan, Dr Phil and Kid Rock in his camp.14. The rallyAnger and vitriol take center stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden as Trump and a cabal of acolytes hold a rally marked by racist comments, coarse insults and threats about immigrants. The rally features nearly 30 speakers, with some of them making a series of racist remarks about Latinos, Black Americans and Jewish citizens. “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Tony Hinchcliffe says, among other controversial remarks including singling out a Black man in a remark about watermelons. In the hours following, Democrats, celebrities and Hispanic groups on both sides of the political aisle condemn the comments as “offensive” and “derogatory”, with many voters of Puerto Rican heritage saying they will change their votes to Harris – potentially a key voting bloc in the swing state of Pennsylvania. The event had already drawn comparisons to an infamous Nazi rally held at the arena in 1939, with the Democratic National Committee projecting images on the outside of the building repeating claims from Trump’s former chief of staff that he had “praised Hitler” – and although Vance dismisses the comparison, many note it was only in 2016 that Vance himself had suggested Trump could become “America’s Hitler”.15. The final pitchesThe days leading up to election day are always the most frenzied, and the 2024 race is no exception, with the candidates trading insults and billions of people around the world glued to the latest polls, which do not show a clear lead for either Trump or Harris. With the White House illuminated behind her, Harris draws a crowd of more than 75,000 people in Washington DC, referring to Trump as “another petty tyrant” who had stood in the same spot nearly four years ago and, in a last-gasp effort to cling to power, helped incite the mob that stormed the US Capitol. Meanwhile, Trump continues to smear immigrants and arrives at a rally in a garbage truck, a stunt to attack Democrats. Police chiefs and sheriffs across the country brace for potential violence targeting election workers, disruptions at polling locations and harassment of voters, while unfounded allegations of voter fraud prompt fears that Trump could, once more, refuse to accept the results if he loses – and this time get millions of Americans to do the same. More