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      Joe Biden has only one shot to stop Trumpism returning in 2024 | Jonathan Freedland

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      If this were a horror flick – and, Lord knows, these past four years have felt like one – we know what would come next. We’d be at that stage of the movie where the monster has apparently been slain, when the hero stands amid the rubble and the ruin consoling those who have survived, calm seemingly restored – only for the audience to gasp as the demon stirs back to life, rising from the dead to inflict one last blow.Joe Biden is certainly well cast as the steadying presence come to clean up the mess. But the fear persists that the villain who created it will return. Donald Trump threatened as much in his last public statement as president, uttering the chilling words: “We will be back in some form.”Given that Trump left the White House with his support among Republicans still at 82%, there is only one surefire way to ensure that never happens. Sixty-seven US senators – including 17 Republicans – will have to vote to convict Trump in his upcoming impeachment trial for inciting an insurrection on Capitol Hill on 6 January. If they do that, then Senate Democrats can vote by simple majority to ban Trump from ever holding public office again. (Think of it as Anne Archer shooting a resurrected Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction.)That remains a possible denouement of the Trump saga, especially given the hints from Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, that he might vote to rid his party once and for all of Trump: this week he said that the former president – and what a pleasure it is to use those words – “provoked” the Capitol Hill mob. And yet, you wouldn’t bank on it. McConnell is now calling for the trial to be delayed, to allow Trump time to prepare. Given McConnell’s willingness to bend the Senate rulebook to his purposes, it’d be wise to start counting the spoons.Still, this might be to take the threat too narrowly, too literally even. What were Trump’s words? “In some form.” The monster might resurface in a new guise in 2024. In traditional Hollywood style, that would mean a sequel starring Son of Trump – or even Daughter – or it could mean someone from outside that desperate clan. This is, surely, the greater fear. That US nativist populism will find a new messenger, one free of the personal defects and grossness of Trump, one who has the quality that Trump lacked: the self-discipline to be a competent authoritarian. So often Trump’s autocratic impulses were thwarted not by the system but by his own ineptitude and the ineffectiveness of his fifth-rate team. What if next time the US – and the world – is not so lucky?To repel that as-yet-faceless threat will require deeper work than a simple vote in the Senate. And it will demand more than a mere return to the relative tranquillity of the Obama era. It will mean turning over the soil in which Trumpism grew, making it inhospitable to a new variety of that same, poisonous plant. This is the central challenge that now confronts President Biden.A first task is to dispel the question of legitimacy that hangs over his presidency in the minds of the one in three Americans who believe Trump’s big lie that he, not Biden, won the 2020 election. After the deadlocked election of 2000, a quarter of Americans did not accept George W Bush as the legitimate president, but that question mark faded in the smoke and dust of 9/11. In the absence of external attack, how can Biden persuade at least some of those recalcitrant voters to accept him as the country’s leader?Happily, the answer coincides with what is the most urgent problem facing him and the US. If Biden can make good on his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans in 100 days, that in itself will be transformative. People’s lives will have changed in a direct and profound way, thanks in part to having Biden at the helm. In the process, he would have gone a long way to restoring Americans’ faith in the ability of government to do good. That is critical given that Trumpism was predicated on an insistence that democratic government is always feeble and useless, that it takes a strongman to get things done.The debate has been long and acrimonious over whether Trump supporters were drawn to him by “economic anxiety” or plain old racism, spiced with misogyny. But what if the answer contains elements of both? What if bigotry flourishes in unwatered earth? Biden’s $1.9tn rescue plan and an agenda of economic renewal may not win back the left-behind and eradicate Trumpism at a stroke – but it can’t hurt.Time, though, is desperately short. There is a curious cycle in US politics. In 1992, 2008 and 2020, Democratic presidents were elected alongside Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, granting them the muscle to implement their programmes. But for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama landslide reverses came within two years, depriving them of either one or both chambers of Congress thereafter. In other words, over a 12- or 16-year period Democrats usually get a squeezed two years to get things done. Biden’s majorities are much thinner than his predecessors’, and the clock is already ticking.The new president cannot allow himself to get bogged down in delay, tripped up by McConnell’s familiar tricks in the Senate. But that will take more than guile. The system that gives a rural, white Republican minority de facto veto power over the rest of the country – and note that the Democrats’ 50 senators represent a total of 41 million more voters than the Republican 50 – itself has to change. The wish list is long, from tackling voter suppression and gerrymandered districts to campaign-finance reform and abolition of a filibuster rule that demands 60 votes to get something through a 100-member body.Tackling all that will go against Joe Biden’s instincts. He is a creature of the Senate, faithful to its traditions. But as the columnist Ezra Klein puts it, for too long Democrats have “preferred the false peace of decorum to the true progress of democracy”. History suggests Biden will only get one shot. He must not throw it away – lest he revive the very spectre that gave him his chance. More

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      Jill Biden encourages teachers in opening address as first lady – video

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      In her first solo address as first lady, Jill Biden hosted her first solo event by praising the work of teachers and promising them support during the coronavirus pandemic.
      Biden hailed their ‘heroic commitment’ and explained that she was teaching a class on the morning of the inauguration of her husband, Joe Biden
      Joe Biden to focus on economic recovery – US politics live More

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      How Amanda Gorman became the voice of a new American era

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      On Wednesday in Washington DC, a striking young woman stood at a podium on the steps of the US Capitol, surrounded by the country’s leaders, who were masked against the pandemic. She was unmasked, at a safe distance, so she could speak with resonance and force, spreading her enthusiastic vision without danger. She radiated joy, conviction and purpose as she declaimed the poem she had written to mark the inauguration of Joe Biden as 46th president of the US: The Hill We Climb. Tears sprang from the eyes of many listeners, those weary and wary from four years of domestic discord, whether they sat on folding chairs at the Capitol, or on easy chairs in their homes. Hearing her words, they felt hope for the future.That woman’s name is Amanda Gorman. She is America’s first national youth poet laureate and, at 22, she also is the youngest poet accorded the honour of delivering the presidential inaugural poem. But despite her youth, Gorman’s assurance and bearing made her seem to stand outside time. Erect as a statue, her skin gleaming as if burnished, her hair cornrowed, banded with gold and drawn tightly back into a red satin Prada headband, worn high like a tiara, she evoked what poet Kae Tempest calls the “Brand New Ancients”: the divinity that walks among us in the present day. According to Greek mythology, nine muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, inspire creative endeavour, with five devoted to different kinds of poetry – epic, romantic, lyric, comic or pastoral and sacred. Gorman suggested a new poetic muse – one to inspire the poetry of democracy.Gorman told the New York Times that she had not wanted to dwell on the rancour, racism and division of America’s four years under the Trump administration: she wanted to “use my words to envision a way in which our country can still come together and can still heal”. That way would require action, her poem declares: “We lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another, we seek harm to none and harmony for all.”Gorman knows the importance of taking action to make the change you want to see. Raised in Los Angeles by a single mother, Joan Wicks, a middle-school English teacher, Gorman overcame daunting obstacles to forge her path. Amanda and her twin sister Gabrielle, an activist and filmmaker, were born prematurely. In kindergarten, the future poet was diagnosed with an auditory disorder that gave her a speech impediment. When she was in third grade, a teacher introduced her to poetry, and it was through writing and reciting poetry that she found her voice. She found a role model in the poet Maya Angelou, whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings reminded her of her own life, she remarked in one interview: “[Angelou] overcame years of not speaking up for herself, all for the love of poetry.”Gorman has presidential plans. ‘I am working on hashtags,’ she told the Harvard Gazette. ‘Save the 2036 date on your iPhone calendar’As Gorman struggled to improve her spoken fluency, she also strove for social justice. For her, it was clear from the start that expression was to be both poetic and political. In 2014, at the age of 16, she founded a non-profit organisation to support poetry workshops and youth advocacy leadership skills, called One Pen One Page. The following year, she published her first poetry book, The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough, and went to Harvard to study sociology. (She graduated in 2020.) Her clarity of expression received a turbo boost from musical theatre while she was in college, with the arrival of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton, whose lyrics she memorised and recited (the song Aaron Burr, Sir helped her pronounce her “R”s, she has said).In the spring of her sophomore year in 2017, she was named America’s first national youth poet laureate, an honour that took her and her poetry to public events across the country. At one of these, held at the Library of Congress, Dr Jill Biden heard her read a poem she had written in the wake of the white supremacist “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, titled In This Place (An American Lyric). Three years later, Biden, as first lady-elect, suggested the young poet for the inaugural honour.In the first week of January, Gorman was halfway through writing The Hill We Climb when a mob of angry Trump supporters invaded the US Capitol in an attempt to violently overturn the election result. She finished the poem in the hours after the melee, undeterred, with that jarring tumult as backdrop.On inauguration day, Gorman wore a ring depicting a caged bird, a gift from Oprah Winfrey that attests to the link the young poet represents between the past and the future. It not only summoned thoughts of the poet’s first inspiration, Angelou; it reminded anyone looking for portents that Angelou, as the US poet laureate, had also recited a poem to a new president on the Capitol steps: Bill Clinton, in 1993. One day, Gorman may be the audience, not the author, of such a poem: she has presidential plans. “I am working on hashtags,” she told the Harvard Gazette. “Save the 2036 date on your iPhone calendar.” The last lines of The Hill We Climb, containing an intended echo of Miranda’s Hamilton, constitute a poetic battle cry: “We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover in every known nook of our nation in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful, when the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”Her words not only electrified Washington, they have prompted a surge of admiration in the public at large. That same day, her two forthcoming books were Amazon’s top two bestsellers. Instagram feeds flash continuously with images of her triumphal stand at the Capitol; op-eds across the country have called for poetry education programmes in schools, and television news broadcast highlights of her performance hour after hour – lyric adrenaline bursts to reanimate democracy.Gorman has appeared on many of these news programmes. On one, Good Morning America on ABC, Miranda made a surprise appearance to congratulate her. “The right words in the right order can change the world; and you proved that yesterday,” he told her. “Keep changing the world, one word at a time.”As if anyone could stop her. As she writes in her forthcoming book, Change Sings:
      I can hear change hummingIn its loudest, proudest song.I don’t fear change coming,And so I sing along. More

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      in US Politics

      The last four years of Trump were hell. What a relief it's finally over | Francine Prose

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      Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, the singer and actor Randy Rainbow has been posting ingenious, funny videos on YouTube, satirical versions of familiar songs featuring elaborate costumes and snappy electronic effects, on political subjects including Trump’s retreat during the Black Lives Matter protests (Bunker Boy) and the possibility of his eventual incarceration (The Trump Cell Block Tango.)On the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, a friend texted me Randy Rainbow’s newest, Seasons of Trump. In a chorus line, wearing a range of bright comical outfits, Randy and his video avatars count the 2,102,400 minutes that Donald Trump was in office, the 1,460 days, the 11, 780 votes he said he needed. Randy rhymes the nonstop offenses: the lies, the tweets, the fake news, the Hollywood Access tape, the porn stars, the racism, Covid, the Russians. The insurrection. “In Muellers, in red hats, in words he can’t spell?/ How will you remember four years stuck in hell?”I’ve always enjoyed these little films. But this was the first time that Randy Rainbow made me burst into tears. Hearing him, I was painfully aware of all those minutes, those days, of how frightening it had been, how long it had lasted, how much I had steeled myself to endure, to accept – and how relieved I was that it was over.I’m not someone who cries easily, nor am I a big fan of waving flags and patriotic ceremonies. But tears welled again during the twilight memorial service honoring the 400,00 Americans who have died of Covid-19, and again the next day when I watched Joe Biden’s grandkids walk down the same steps that the rioters swarmed up, intent on murder, two weeks before. The last time I felt this way was right after 9/11, wandering around my downtown Manhattan neighborhood, weeping. But the 9/11 attack took a few terrifying hours, the story emerged over the next few days. Donald Trump’s presidency lasted four years, or as Randy Rainbow notes, for more than two million unrecoverable minutes.Whatever one thinks of Joe Biden, there’s no doubt that the mood, the tone, and the content of the January 20 ceremony was very unlike the 2016 Inauguration. Our new president isn’t obsessed with the size of his adoring crowd; there was no crowd. The faces on the podium were notably more diverse than in years before. It would have been impossible not to be moved by Kamala Harris’s choice, for her security escort, of Eugene Goodman, the brave, quick-thinking Capitol policeman who essentially saved the US Senate. That fact we have a half-Black, half-Asian woman vice president made me hope that our country might become a more welcoming place for my biracial grandchildren. The vibrant, regal young poet Amanda Gorman and the eloquent Rev Silvester Beaman reminded us of the beauty of oratory, and Lady Gaga achieved the impossible, making us listen closely to (and appreciate the relevance of) an anthem we’d mostly stopped hearing.The speeches stressing unity, conciliation, community and compassion were heartfelt and reassuring, but they wouldn’t have seemed so startling if it hadn’t been so long since we’d heard anything like that from our leaders. And the ceremony might have been less powerful if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic, if we hadn’t spent months knowing that we were suffering and dying and no one was taking charge or even admitting what was happening.For now, just for now, it feels great. It feels like someone is in charge, someone in touch with realityI remember the night Obama was elected; it was like a huge party blowing through the streets of New York City. The fact that his term was followed by Donald Trump’s has made me wary of long-term optimism. I know there were people watching the Inauguration who won’t readily trade their rage for open-heartedness just because Joe Biden think it’s a good idea, and others who weren’t as thrilled as I was when J-Lo broke into Spanish, acknowledging a simple truth: we live in a multilingual country. I’m still worried about the things that alarmed me before: the environment, racism, health care, misogyny, gender discrimination, income inequality, mass incarceration, the likelihood that the pandemic will get worse before it gets better … the list goes on.But for now, just for now, it feels great. It feels like someone is in charge, someone in touch with reality. Someone who cares about the rest of the world, who wants things to get better, who thinks of something – anything – other than himself. Someone who speaks, as Joe Biden did, about leading “not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” Someone who hugs his wife. Someone who isn’t heartless: I would have settled for that.That might seem like setting the bar awfully low, but it’s the difference between life and death, between the survival of our nation and the death spiral into which our democracy was headed. During the inauguration, I kept recalling the comforting jingle that Spanish-speaking families say when children hurt themselves: sana, sana, colita de rana/ Si no sanas hoy, sanaras manana. Heal, heal little frog’s tail/If you don’t heal today, you’ll heal tomorrow. It’s meant to be reassuring, and it is: if our country doesn’t get better today, let’s hope it will tomorrow.It’s almost as if the last four years have been a mad science experiment to see if we could still function as our supply of oxygen was steadily reduced. And now it’s as if a clean wind is blowing through our nation. We can’t take off our masks yet, but now, just for now, we can breathe. More

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      Biden team in race against time as new strain threatens to intensify Covid wave

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      Joe Biden’s new administration is faced with a monumental task in curbing the deadliest wave of the Covid-19 pandemic so far in a race against time before a new, more contagious coronavirus variant threatens already strained US health resources.The Biden administration has mere weeks to speed vaccine deployment, and convince more Americans to wear masks, wash hands and social distance. And it must be done amid a rocky transition, critical supply shortfalls, widespread new infections, shaky public trust and a vaccine rollout that “has been a dismal failure so far”.“Let me be very clear, things are going to continue to get worse before they get better,” said Biden, at a Covid-19 briefing on Thursday afternoon. “The memorial we held last night,” to mark 400,000 American deaths, “will not be our last one. The death toll will likely top 500,000 next month.”More than 408,000 Americans have so far died from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, and more than 24 million infected: by far the worst numbers in the world.To date, 16.5 million people in the US have been vaccinated, according to federal health authorities.At the same time, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has now issued stark warnings about a more infectious new variant of Covid-19, called B117. The variant has already forced England into a weeks-long lockdown.Various scenarios could play out. In one model, Covid-19 infections decline in March, only to crest again in late April and early May driven by B117 infections. This model assumed there was no widespread community vaccination. In another model, B117 still overtakes current strains, but it declines alongside current dominant strains. The decline would take place in an environment of overall reduced transmission, because people maintain social distance and vaccines are distributed to about 1 million a day.This endpoint can be reached, CDC modelers said, but only if people curb the spread of Covid-19 and vaccine uptake is high. Biden has repeatedly pledged to vaccinate 100 million Americans in 100 days, which would roughly match modeling by the CDC.“We need to ask average Americans to do their part,” said Jeff Zients, the White House Covid-19 response director. “Defeating the virus requires a coordinated nationwide effort.”In the worst-case scenario, already strained hospitals would be under more pressure, social distancing would need to be more stringent and extended, and more people would need to be vaccinated to make a difference. That scenario more closely matches England’s lockdown, undertaken when cases peaked in early January.Further, while B117 is the only variant known to be more contagious currently circulating, it is not the only variant to be worried about. Strains identified in South Africa and Brazil also hold the potential to be more transmissible, CDC researchers said.In the face of these new variants, Biden and his administration spent its first evening and full day in office building infrastructure to respond to the crisis.“The issue he wakes up everyday focused on is getting the pandemic under control,” said Jen Psaki, White House press secretary at the first press briefing on Wednesday evening. “The issue he goes to bed every night focused on is getting the pandemic under control.”Biden has signed a flurry of executive orders to try to control the situation, including setting up new federal vaccination sites, using the Defense Production Act to boost much-needed supplies, requiring masks to be worn on federal property and numerous other actions. Zients acknowledged on Thursday that the Trump administration’s vaccine rollout planning was, “so much worse than we could have imagined”, the New York Times reported.Buy-in by America’s state governments is also important for distributing vaccines quickly and equitably. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who was closely aligned with Donald Trump, held a press conference on Wednesday to tell Biden not to bother coming to his state.“I saw some of this stuff Biden’s putting out, that he’s going to create these Fema camps. I can tell you, that’s not necessary in Florida,” DeSantis said, the Tampa Bay Times reported. “All we need is more vaccine. Just get us more vaccine.”Further, the urgency to vaccinate people has led some public health officials to shy away from documenting that vaccine recipients are members of priority groups, such as the elderly or essential workers.In Mississippi, the state’s top health official, Dr Thomas Dobbs, said requiring documentation is not something the state is “going to do” because he did not want to erect roadblocks to vaccination. He added: “We will get [the] vaccine out where we can as much as we can,” he said on Thursday. “It’s going to be a little bit lumpy, and that’s just the way it is.” More

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      in Elections

      Insurrection and inauguration: Joe Biden's new political era – video

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      Following the US Capitol riot, Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone travel to Washington DC for the week of Joe Biden’s inauguration to find a downtown area under what is essentially military occupation and a city coming to terms with the trauma of Donald Trump’s final days in office. 
      They speak to lifelong residents in the outer suburbs as well the US congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who tells of her harrowing experience of the 6 January riot. Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton rails against criticisms of the Republican administration’s handling of the domestic terrorism threat
      ‘I didn’t know if I would make it out that day’: Ilhan Omar on the terror of the Capitol attack More

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      in World Politics

      Is US Democracy Still Exportable?

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      On Inauguration Day 2021, the nation’s capital looked like it has just experienced a coup, not successfully survived one. Streets were blocked off, barricades were up, and armed police and National Guard were everywhere. The inauguration itself took place in front of a deliberately minimal crowd as if the authorities are somehow pulling off an inside job. These precautions were eminently sensible, given the threat of right-wing violence. And the last thing the new administration wants on its first day in office is to hold a very visible super-spreader event in the nation’s capital.

      A Perspective on America’s Imperfect Democracy

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      But it’s not a good look for American democracy when the peaceful handover of power has the appearance of a banana republic installing a tinpot dictator — or resembles the America of 1861, for that matter, when a huge security presence at Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration presaged the outbreak of civil war. The brain turns the images it receives from the eyes upside down so that we can ultimately perceive the world right side up. Our brains must now perform the task when looking at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

      Cracked Vessel

      Washington, DC, might look like a city besieged, but this day is in fact the culmination of a vigorous and successful defense of democracy. Voters have removed an autocrat from office by way of an election. The courts and state officials have prevented his attempt to perpetrate electoral fraud. Those who broke into the Capitol on January 6 are belatedly being subjected to the rule of law. And the dictator wannabe is slinking out of town with the smallest and least triumphant farewell parties imaginable. Not only did a coup not happen on January 6 to keep Trump in power, but a coup wasn’t necessary to remove Trump from power. Two cheers for democracy!

      The Biden administration has promised to repair the political damage that Trump has caused. The proposals on the domestic side, such as undoing some of the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts, are no-brainers from a progressive standpoint. But the foreign policy recommendations around democracy promotion are not so contention-free. A promise to bring together a global Summit of Democracies, for instance, has met with considerable skepticism.

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      There is no question that American democracy has been tarnished, not only by the events of January 6 but by the entire four years of the Trump administration. As I wrote right after the 2020 election, “The democracy that Donald Trump dropped on the floor suffered a great deal from the experience. It’s going to take more than an election to put it right.”

      The events of January 6 have prompted many observers, in the United States and abroad, to declare an end to US pretensions to democracy promotion. As Emma Ashford writes in Foreign Policy: “How can anyone expect — as Joe Biden’s campaign promised — to ‘restore responsible American leadership on the world stage’ if Americans cannot even govern themselves at home? How can the United States spread democracy or act as an example for others if it barely has a functioning democracy at home? Washington’s foreign-policy elites remain committed to the preservation of a three-decade foreign policy aimed at reshaping the world in America’s image. They are far too blasé about what that image has become in 2020.”

      Of course, US democracy has always been a cracked vessel, from the limitations on the franchise that accompanied the country’s birth and the near-constant eruptions of mob violence to the deformations of executive power by practically every president. So, when Roger Cohen writes in The New York Times that the “images of the overrun Capitol will be there, for those who want to use them, to make the point that America would be best advised to avoid giving lessons in the exercise of freedom,” the natural retort would be: There have always been such images.

      From its inception, the United States has continually needed to put its own house in order. When it comes to democracy, America has always been a work in progress. Actually, over the last four years, it was a work in regress, but the point still holds. Democracy in America is not perfect. But does that mean that America’s recent slide away from democracy has disqualified it from engaging in democracy promotion?

      Exports and Brands

      Countries are always promoting something. The French want you to buy their wines. Russia hawks its oil and natural gas. South Korea lobbies on behalf of its boy bands, Saudi Arabia its Wahhabist version of Islam, India its Bollywood movies, Israel its security forces, and so on.

      Democracy might seem like just another export. And, indeed, some American promoters treat their work as if it were an extension of the US brand. They are promoting not democracy in general but American-style democracy. Consultants in Europe, for instance, have evangelized about increasing the role of private fundraising in elections, an American innovation that hitherto has not been so prominent on the continent. In other cases, the promotion of democracy has been just a cover for the projection of US power and influence, as in Iraq after the 2003 invasion or Ukraine after the Maidan revolution of 2014.

      In other words, “democracy promotion” either boils down to the promotion of the US version of democracy or the promotion of US interests, actual democracy be damned. Either way, the phrase and the program have acquired a poor reputation, particularly in their linkage to the political agenda of neoconservatives throughout the Reagan years and again under George W. Bush in the 2000s.

      As with the support of other exports like soybeans and soda pop, there’s a lot of money in democracy promotion. USAID, for instance, has a budget of a couple of billion dollars for “democracy, human rights, and governance,” which includes Elections and Political Processes, the Human Rights Grants Program, the Global Labor Program, the Disability Rights and Inclusive Development Program, and so on. Various foundations and civil society organizations also put a lot of money into the global promotion of democracy and human rights. All of this has been put at acute risk by what Trump and his followers have unleashed upon the United States, much as a sour batch of wine can send an entire wine industry down the drain.

      “Repairing the substantial damage to U.S. image in the world and regaining credibility on democracy issues will be tough and take a long time, even under the best scenario,” Michael Shifter, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based study group, told the Los Angeles Times. “The problem is not so much Trump himself, but rather his enablers and those who have remained silent and been complicit in his patently antidemocratic rhetoric and behavior.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Progressives have long pressed the United States to support labor rights overseas. If another country is throwing labor leaders into jail merely for organizing strikes, the United States should protest. If corporations are employing slave labor or child workers, the United States should sanction them. If a country is abusing its migrant laborers, Washington should say something.

      And the United States should do that even though its own record on labor rights is inconsistent at best. Sometimes US failings are connected to a lack of enforcement of rules on the books. Sometimes the rules on the books are lousy. And sometimes, as was the case in particular during the Trump years, administrations have gone out of their way to depress wages, ignore or actively worsen miserable working conditions and otherwise engage in a veritable war on labor.

      But none of that means that progressives should urge the incoming Biden administration to keep quiet about labor rights abuses overseas until it compiles a perfect record at home. Foreign and domestic policy ideally should go hand in hand. In this way, the United States can demonstrate how to repair an imperfect labor record even as it urges other countries to do the same. The same applies to other elements of the progressive agenda: access to reproductive health care, LGBTQ rights, environmental regulations. The United States has an imperfect record on every issue on the progressive agenda.

      Promoting Progressive Values Overseas

      The way out of the apparent contradiction between what the United States says for export and what it does domestically is relatively simple. Don’t do as we say; do as the world says. Focus, in other words, on international standards. All countries, including the United States, should adhere to these standards on labor, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, environmental regulations and the like.

      So, does democracy fall into the same category as these other planks in the progressive platform? To the extent that democracy consists of protections for human rights and political rights such as freedom of speech and a free media, progressives can comfortably insist that all countries, including the United States, adhere to international standards. Let’s call this embrace of the component parts of democracy the “let a thousand trees bloom” approach, with each tree a different human right.

      The challenge comes with the “let’s plant a forest” approach. Democracy as a category can be tricky because of widely varying definitions of what the forest is exactly. Viktor Orbán insists that Hungary is a democracy, albeit an illiberal one, and so far the European Union reluctantly agrees. Brussels might grumble about certain Hungarian actions, but it hasn’t expelled the country from the EU. Plenty of Hungarian activists, however, argue that Orbán has undermined the country’s democratic institutions by compromising the independence of the judiciary and the freedom of the media, to name just two violations. So, does Hungary qualify to participate in Biden’s planned Summit of Democracies?

      Although there might be an international consensus around certain aspects of democracy as enshrined in various UN human rights conventions, there is no such agreement over democracy as a whole. Plenty of non-democratic countries have signed UN human rights agreements, for instance, but they would never presume to be invited to a Summit of Democracies. It’s not so much that we can’t see the forest for the trees. Many progressives have reservations about the forest and prefer to focus on the trees.

      One of those reservations concerns regime change. Neoconservatives, in particular, used “democracy promotion” as a cover for pursuing the collapse of governments they didn’t like. In the case of North Korea, for instance, they viewed US pressure on Pyongyang as necessary to eliminate not simply the country’s nuclear weapons but its entire political system. Ditto Iraq, Iran, Libya, Venezuela and Cuba. Such a version of democracy promotion should be off the table. It is up to the people of a country to determine their own political future. And they should be protected in their efforts to do so by international pressure to ensure that the country abides by global human rights standards.

      Over the next four years, let’s by all means work to protect all of those fragile trees at home and abroad. But let’s also take some time to define what we mean by the forest, and let’s make sure to include Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, the Occupy struggles and all the other powerful examples of grassroots democracy. The trees, after all, are part of a larger ecosystem, and they can’t prosper if the overall environment deteriorates.

      Once we have defined what we mean by democracy, American progressives should absolutely support its promotion, even as we work to improve our own political ecosystem. After all, at some point in the future, we may need to call upon the international community to help us save our democracy as well.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      'California is America, only sooner': how the progressive state could shape Biden's policies

      by

      Following Joe Biden’s presidential win in November, the governor of California quickly learned he had some big job vacancies to fill. With so many top officials in the state being recruited to help Biden build his new administration, Gavin Newsom joked that he might have to start trying to convince staff members to stick around.It was already a given that Californian interests would be well represented in Congress, with Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco serving as speaker of the House and Vice-President Kamala Harris, born and raised in the Bay Area, holding the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. But Biden has also tapped several Californians for key cabinet positions.Biden called on the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to run the US health department. He nominated the former Federal Reserve chair and University of California, Berkeley, professor Janet Yellen to serve as treasury secretary. Yellen’s colleague Jennifer Granholm was nominated as the next energy secretary.Six others slated for top spots in the new government either teach at or graduated from Berkeley. Alejandro Mayorkas of Los Angeles is expected to become the first Latino to head the Department of Homeland Security and Isabel Guzman, current director of California’s office of the small business advocate, is likely to run the US Small Business Administration – to name a few.Now, instead of having to fight a federal government to enact policy priorities, California will have friendly faces in top spots. “It goes from headwinds to tailwinds, and that’s pretty obvious,” Newsom said at a press conference in November. “On early childcare … health and education, issues related to the environment and environmental stewardship and low-carbon, green growth,” he added, ”broadly, that’s a California agenda.”The Biden administration’s agenda is also expected to be modeled on some policies enacted or planned in California, and the new administration is likely to use the state’s successes and failures as a guide.“There is a wealth of ideas on the policy side that can come out of California,” said Manuel Pastor, a professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Pastor pointed at the state’s stances on immigrants’ rights and the minimum wage and its investments in climate mitigation.California has served as a living laboratory for progressive ideas, Pastor said, and there’s enough evidence that will help the federal government embrace the California approach. “California is America, only sooner,” Pastor added. “It’s no surprise that now we have an administration trying to reach into a place that’s always been on the edge of the future.”On his first day alone, Biden signed 17 new executive orders to undo some of the measures of the Trump administration, and the new president has promised to swiftly shift direction in the country.The new administration is looking into some of California’s signature policies – and even taking some a step further. Biden has proposed raising the national minimum wage to $15 an hour (almost double what it is now), promised to bring “peaceful protesters, police chiefs, police unions, as well as civil rights groups” to the table to talk police reform, and made moves on new legislation for immigration reform.Biden is especially likely to follow California’s lead on the environment. “Where California will have its most influence is on climate change-related policies,” said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at Stanford University and the director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. “While Trump was shutting down a lot of the climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, California continued to chug along.”Even after Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, California remained committed to keeping pace and brought 23 states on board with it. Now that Biden is preparing to re-enter the accord, the Democratic party’s environmental taskforce, co-chaired by the former secretary of state John Kerry, has told Biden to look to California for help, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Immediately convene California, due to its unique authority, and other states with labor, auto industry, and environmental leaders to inform ambitious actions,” the taskforce’s report read.While California officials are happy to help, it’s clear they hope the offer goes both ways. Calling their new partnership a “game-changer for Californians” in a letter to Biden, Newsom championed the new administration’s goals and acknowledged the role he expects his state will play shaping national policy.“Congratulations on your historic victory and for setting America on a path to build back better,” Newsom wrote. “California is eager to support your bold agenda by sharing our experiences implementing progressive policy on everything from workers’ rights to climate change.”Newsom included several requests, including reinstated funding for the high-speed rail that’s far behind schedule and badly over budget, help with financing programs to house the homeless, and additional emergency aid beyond what was already promised to the state in the December stimulus.Newsom also hopes the federal government will push back to 2023 the date when California’s unemployment debts – expected to reach close to $50bn this year – come due.Eric Schickler, a political scientist and co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, said he didn’t expect Californians to get everything they want out of the new administration. After all, even among Democrats, residents of the state – and their representatives – are highly diverse. “In terms of shaping the Democratic agenda, California Democrats are certainly in an advantageous place,” he said. Still, with the state facing significant challenges, including on housing, inequality, and the devastating impact from the Covid crisis, it will be helpful to have more allies than adversaries controlling the purse strings. “The state is facing some daunting challenges and will be looking to the federal government for help,” Schickler said. “The Biden administration is much more likely to be sympathetic to that.”At the very least, California won’t have to continue big battles against the federal government. Pastor sees this as the biggest opportunity for the state to push forward. “Not being in a war of resistance with the Trump administration will give California a chance – a needed chance – to reflect on its own shortcomings,” Pastor said. “The weight of hate has been lifted. And once it is lifted, you can look around and ask, well, how are we screwing up? California still has a lot of things it needs to fix.” More