Joe Biden

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden campaign boasts its voter outreach beat Obama's 'by a mile'

      by

      Although the dust is still settling on the 2020 US presidential election it is clear this cycle was one of significant breakthroughs for Democrats. With historic voter turnout for recent times, Joe Biden’s team secured a Democratic win in Georgia, something that hadn’t happened since 1992, and there was record turnout among young people and Black Americans.Ashley Allison, Biden and Kamala Harris’s national coalitions director, said the campaign put a greater effort into building a broad coalition of voters than ever before.“This campaign made a larger investment in coalition work than any other presidential campaign by a mile,” said Allison, who worked on African American outreach for Obama’s 2012 campaign in Ohio, which swung for Obama that year almost entirely due to the Black vote.She may well be right: the Biden camp had close to 500 employees working on outreach this year. It had a virtual headquarters and people on the ground in key battleground states. Biden’s organizing team reached more than 37 million by phone – and in the final weeks of volunteering, they called, texted and knocked on more than double the number of doors the Obama team did in 2012 even as Obama’s campaign is frequently referred to as ground zero for the technological revolution in political campaigning.But with the coronavirus pandemic largely preventing the team from physically knocking on doors, they needed to find a way to safely create an in-person presence. That consisted of dropping literature at people’s doors with handwritten notes and following up with phone calls. Phone-banking teams would call in to video chats, trying to recreate the energy of a traditional phone-banking room, to overcome the ennui of calling alone during a global shutdown.In Arizona, which the Democrats flipped for the first time in 24 years, Biden’s coalitions team did extensive outreach in the Navajo Nation, with indigenous people playing the ceremonial drum to engage voters as they were coming in so they would see themselves as part of the voting experience. In Nevada, horse parades marched down the streets.“We wanted to engage voters in a time where people were feeling so distant due to the pandemic,” said Allison. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden gains votes in Wisconsin county after Trump-ordered recount

      by

      A recount in Wisconsin’s largest county demanded by President Donald Trump’s election campaign ended on Friday with the president-elect, Joe Biden, gaining votes.After the recount in Milwaukee county, Biden made a net gain of 132 votes, out of nearly 460,000 cast. Overall, the Democrat gained 257 votes to Trump’s 125.Trump’s campaign had demanded recounts in two of Wisconsin’s most populous and Democratic-leaning counties, after he lost Wisconsin to Biden by more than 20,000 votes. The two recounts will cost the Trump campaign $3m. Dane county is expected to finish its recount on Sunday.Overall, Biden won November’s US presidential election with 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. Biden also leads by more than 6m in the popular vote tally.After the recount ended, the Milwaukee county clerk, George Christenson, said: “The recount demonstrates what we already know: that elections in Milwaukee county are fair, transparent, accurate and secure.”The Trump campaign is still expected to mount a legal challenge to the overall result in Wisconsin, but time is running out. The state is due to certify its presidential result on Tuesday.On Friday, Trump’s legal team suffered yet another defeat when a federal appeals court in Philadelphia rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s election results.Trump’s lawyers said they would take the case to the supreme court despite the Philadelphia judges’ assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit”.Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the three-judge panel: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”Trump continued to maintain without evidence that there was election fraud in the state, tweeting early on Saturday: “The 1,126,940 votes were created out of thin air. I won Pennsylvania by a lot, perhaps more than anyone will ever know.”Meanwhile, Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud in Georgia are increasingly worrying his own party. Republicans are concerned that the chaos caused by Trump’s stance and his false comments on the conduct of the election in the key swing state, which Biden won for the Democrats, could hinder his party’s efforts to retain control of the Senate.A runoff for the state’s two Senate seats is scheduled for early January and if the Democrats clinch both seats, it will give them control of the upper house as well as the House of Representatives.When asked about his previous baseless claims of fraud in Georgia during a Thanksgiving Day press conference, Trump said he was “very worried” about them, saying: “You have a fraudulent system.” He then called the state’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who has defended the state’s election process, an “enemy of the people”.Such attacks have Republicans worried as they seek to motivate Georgia voters to come to the polls in January, volunteer for their Senate campaigns and – perhaps most importantly of all – dig deep into their pockets to pay for the unexpected runoff races.In particular Trump’s comments have spurred conspiracy theories that the state’s electoral system is rigged and prompted some of his supporters to make calls for a boycott of the coming vote – something that local Georgia Republicans desperately do not want. “His demonization of Georgia’s entire electoral system is hurting his party’s chances at keeping the Senate,” warned an article published by Politico.With Reuters and Associated Press More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      How Trump is destroying the presidential transition process

      by

      Having lost the election, as well as dozens of post-election challenges, Donald Trump’s ongoing refusal to admit defeat is still doing damage Joe Biden’s transition to power.
      The formal process has finally begun, but it is weeks late and spent a long time starved of funds as Republican officials stonewalled usual procedures.
      But beyond the inconvenience and cost of a deferred start to his administration, what does the president-elect lose from the president’s refusal to acknowledge the inevitable?
      The answer goes far beyond Trump’s hurt feelings, or the desire among Biden supporters for some form of concession. Even the smoothest of transitions can be painfully slow for the world’s largest economy and most powerful military.
      Presidential transitions are, at the best of times, impossibly unwieldy and inefficient. The federal government has more than 2 million full-time civil servants, but in fact employs another 9 million active duty military, postal workers, contractors and grantees.
      That workforce of more than 11 million is about to lose as many as 800 executives, among the more than 4,100 presidential appointments that need to be filled as soon as possible.
      In 2008, the incoming Obama administration enjoyed the full cooperation of the outgoing Bush presidency as well as control of both sides of Congress. It took Barack Obama one month to fill half of the 60 priority positions that require Senate confirmation. But it took another year to fill the other half.
      That pace is already unimaginable given Trump’s obstruction of the transition and the promise by some Republican senators to block Biden’s nominees.
      Since the Bush-Obama handover, Congress has passed two laws to improve the 1963 law that governs presidential transitions: in each case, to start the massive switch in management earlier than the election.
      The most recent update in 2015, led by Ted Kaufman – Biden’s former chief of staff who now runs the Biden transition – pushed the start of the handover to six months before the election.
      In practice, campaigns are reluctant to begin the detailed work of planning for power because they fear that it will look like they are arrogantly assuming victory and taking the voters for granted.
      Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a non-partisan government reform group, says Trump has exposed new flaws in an already flawed system.
      “This is a massive undertaking in an ordinary time. It’s an extraordinarily hard task, and this makes it that much harder,” Stier says.
      “What’s been exposed here is a real problem and the challenge of the existing system. I think a lot of people have been appalled that cooperation isn’t occurring and I do think that there needs to be a specific legislative fix to ensure that the ascertainment decision is made with much more dispatch.”
      Delays in transitions can lead to serious national security challenges. The 9/11 Commission found that the delayed transition, following the extended recount of the 2000 election, prevented the incoming Bush administration from being fully prepared for the threat to American security.
      “The risks are those right in front of our faces: the need to respond to the pandemic and the economic crisis and racial equity issues,” says Stier. “And then there’s what Rumsfeld called the known unknowns. We live in an uncertain world and there are curveballs thrown at the country. We need to have a government that is ready for that as soon as they are in charge.”
      In the last Democratic transition, speed was critical. Melody Barnes was part of the Obama transition in 2008 before leading the White House domestic policy council. “We probably had people going into departments and agencies within two or three days of the election,” Barnes says.
      “As I remember it, there was election day and the very next day by noon I had to be in meetings that would allow for the kick-off process that would allow teams to go in. When you walk in the door, you have to hit the ground running.”
      In the early days, agency review teams seek critical information about policy, personnel, litigation and new regulations. That intelligence is relayed back to transition headquarters and may influence the new appointments under consideration.

      “When you walk in the door and you are the Biden administration versus the Trump administration, you are still also the government of the United States,” says Barnes. “And the government is in court in lots of different places and there’s regulation that was started in September, October, November, and it’s moving through the process that continues in January and February. You’ve got to know what’s going on and where it stands.”
      For the Obama team, that included seeking the advice of career officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget to help shape the urgent need for stimulus spending after the financial crisis of 2008. Today, for the Biden team, that advice would focus on both stimulus spending and vaccine distribution.
      However, even when the transition begins in full, the early Republican roadblock suggests a long and fraught path to confirmation for Biden’s nominees.
      “You have Lindsey Graham saying that the Georgia election wasn’t legitimate and ballots need to be thrown out,” says Barnes. “He’s also holding the hearings in the Senate potentially, managing the confirmation hearing for the attorney general.
      “Janet Napolitano talks about inauguration day in 2008 and sitting in the viewing stand with the other nominees. They were getting tapped on the shoulder as they were getting confirmed by the Senate. You know there won’t be a lot of shoulder tapping happening this time.”
      That points to the far bigger problem with American political appointments: the “spoils system” that last underwent reform in 1883, after James Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled and deranged supporter who believed he was owed a high-profile job.
      The alternative – a larger civil service – would lead to less political patronage and more policy professionalism. But at a time when Trump supporters claim they are opposed by something called “the deep state”, it may be hard to win broad backing for reforms.
      “My hope is that you see more senior career leaders like Tony Fauci responsible for things, and fewer political appointees who are chosen on the basis of their political affiliation,” says Stier.
      “There’s a big distance between where the US stands and pretty much any other democracy. The spoils system in the US isn’t represented at the scale it is in Britain or any other major democracy.” More

    • 213 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden wants to extend an olive branch to Republicans. He shouldn't | Joshua Craze and Ainsley LeSure

      by

      Shortly after Biden was declared president-elect, he announced that he would reach a hand across the aisle. “We must stop,” he said, “treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies. We are Americans.” This is the Biden playbook at work, honed through years of compromises made with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell: appealing to the Republican elite in office, while trying to appeal to moderate Republicans on the ground.Having stretched out its hand to the Republicans, the center of the Democratic party then turned to its real enemy – the left that it blames for its poor showing in the election. Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger led the charge, contending that “no one should ever say ‘defund the police’ ever again”. Despite the fact that progressive candidates did well across the ticket, and Biden ran a campaign modelled on Hilary Clinton’s neoliberal program, centrist Democrats blamed the core demand of the Black Lives Matter movement for alienating moderates. In centrist Democrats’ telling, the problem is the left – and the answer is to reach out to that poor soul, the moderate Republican.The moderate Republican is a myth. For all the Lincoln Project’s assertions that it would peel away Republican voters, the president actually secured a larger share of the Republican vote than he did in 2016. Some 94% of Republicans looked back on the debacles and racism of the last four years and concluded that they wanted more. This is not a delusion; it is the core of the Republican party. Biden would like to frame his presidency as a return to normality after the Trumpian exception. The reality, however, is that Trump doesn’t represent something new; it emerges from the long shadow that white supremacy cast over American history.We need to acknowledge that the core white Republican voter knows exactly why they vote for Trump. Propelled by Fox News and talk radio, the Republican voter chooses their party because the Republicans guarantee the continuity of white supremacy both economically and culturally. When Trump campaigned to save the suburban (white) woman from the urban poor, he was mocked as hopelessly out of touch. Despite the promises of the pollsters, however, his strategy worked: Trump’s share of the white female vote increased to 55%.While white supremacy is not novel in America, it is likely to become increasingly vitriolic. The US is projected to become minority white by 2045, and the Republican party has decided to resist this demographic shift by rallying its base and using the tools of American politics to hang on to minority white government for as long as it can.If the Democratic party is not going to squander the opening that the people have made, it must change how it orients itself to the American peopleFor instance, as Biden was fervently appealing to moderate Republicans, two white Republican canvassers refused to certify electoral results from Michigan’s overwhelmingly black Wayne county. Trump’s post-election strategy is indicative of that of the Republican party more generally: disenfranchise voters of color by any means possible, and use gerrymandering and the unrepresentative alchemy of the electoral college system to produce Republican political power.When Biden reaches across the aisle, it is likely his hand will be met by turned backs; most Republicans haven’t even acknowledged the election result yet. There is little for the Republican establishment to gain from working with Biden. With the Senate liable to remain in Republican hands, and the Democrats seemingly more worried about appealing to Republicans that taking substantive action over the economic crisis brought about by Covid-19, Mitch McConnell can rub his hands together at the thought of the 2022 mid-terms.For the Republican party to actually want to work in a bipartisan way would require the Democrats gaining support for the kind of systematic political reform – of the electoral college system, for instance – that the very gesture of reaching across the aisle is likely to prevent.We have been down this road before. While Biden spent the 2020 election campaign insisting he wasn’t a socialist, in 2008, Obama came to power having distanced himself from the “radical” agenda of Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Obama also faced an economic crisis, and took a bipartisan approach, shoring up the banks and creating only a modest stimulus package. The result? After a two-year campaign of determined obstruction by Mitch McConnell, the Republicans rode a Tea party wave all the way to a midterm majority in the House of Representatives in 2010.It doesn’t have to be this way. In the 2020 election, voter turnout was the highest it has been since 1908. Black voters were crucial in delivering a Democratic victory, and preventing a continuation of white minority rule. If the Democratic party is not going to squander the opening that the people have made, it must change how it orients itself to the American people. Rather than exploiting black support while marginalizing the black voices that push against a neoliberal political agenda, the Democratic party should give black voters the respect that it has thus far reserved only for that fantasy: the moderate Republican.The Democratic party cannot have it both ways. There are red and blue states. There are Americans who want to defend white supremacy, and Americans who are struggling over what the refusal of white supremacy looks like on American soil. Biden can commit the Democratic party to building a genuinely post-white America, or he can try and placate the white supremacist project of the Republican party. But he must choose.Joshua Craze is a writer-in-residence at the Embassy of Foreign Artists, Geneva
      Ainsley LeSure is an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Brown University specializing in post-civil rights racism and democracy More

    • 213 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      The toxic polarisation of our politics can be reversed, but it will take humility | Martin Kettle

      by

      After Dwight Eisenhower had been sworn in as United States president on Capitol Hill in January 1953, he recited a prayer to the watching crowd that he had written himself that same morning. The words embodied how Eisenhower hoped to govern. “Especially we pray,” he told them, “that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of station, race or calling. May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who … hold to differing political beliefs.”To a 2020s audience those words may now seem anodyne and pious, the usual politician’s guff that we barely listen to. Race, in particular, would remain an unhealed wound through Eisenhower’s eight years in the White House. Nevertheless, the prayer truthfully embodies an approach to politics that actually worked for much of 1950s America.Those years are widely seen – the unignorable exception of race apart – as marking, amid a certain mom-and-pop dullness, a high tide of shared national values, prosperity and political depolarisation. As Robert D Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett have put it in their recent book The Upswing, the 1950s are at the swelling summit in the middle of the “I-we-I” bell curve of American life between the economic free-for-all of the 1890s, the era of greater cooperation in the mid-20th century, and the turbocharged renewal of individualism, inequality and hyperpartisanship of the 2020s.Donald Trump and Eisenhower are both Republican presidents. Yet as leaders, and in the lives they have led, they could hardly be more different in every way. It is completely impossible to imagine Trump uttering the kind of words Eisenhower used in 1953. It is, though, possible to imagine Joe Biden speaking them. Indeed, it would be a surprise if Biden does not make a commitment to cooperation of this kind when he himself swears the oath, in less than two months’ time.Yet is there the slightest possibility that such an approach would have any effect today, or that it would endure? The question of whether governments in advanced capitalist democracies can bring entrenched and bitterly divided polities together is now the single most important issue facing our politics. America is by far the most urgent and important example of this. But it is true of countries beyond the US too – Britain undoubtedly included.The odds on Biden – or other consensual leaders in other countries – achieving this are long. Today we are not at the summit of The Upswing’s 130-year-long “I-we-I” curve of economic equality, political cooperation, social cohesion and public altruism, as Eisenhower was in the 1950s. We are instead heading rapidly down the curve to new depths of inequality, partisan intransigence, individualism and selfishness. We may even have passed a point of no return.Many therefore assert that those more unified and civil days are simply over. Some on all sides actually welcome this, thinking that the downward descent of the old, unified, liberal capitalist state in the early 21st century presents a cathartic opportunity to clear the debris and failures of the past and create a ground zero for a different kind of brave new future.My answer to those zealots is to be very careful indeed about what they wish for. Putnam’s book speaks for the many millions who don’t think the way the zealots do. It speaks for those who want the tide of the last decade to be slowed, stopped and turned – and who want to believe the restoration of a “we” society, based on liberal democratic managed capitalism, can happen, although in a less unequal and less rancorous way.One good reason for saying this is that something like it has happened before. The upward trajectory of the “I-we-I” curve in the early years of the 20th century did not descend from out of a clear blue sky, in the US or anywhere else. Instead, it was built on, among other things, economic innovation and greater equality (including for women), laws that broke up monopolies, political leadership that was not afraid of taxing the super-rich, the creation of effective nation state and private-sector institutions, high-quality education, a boom in charity and philanthropy and a media that people broadly trusted to tell them the truth.Another reason for confidence is that the destroyers have not yet triumphed. Much of what sustained the earlier, more cooperative era endures. What the EU might call the acquis of liberal democracy and internationalism – the body of principles, institutions and civic habits that the present day has inherited from the not-so-distant past – is actually more resilient than the shocks inflicted on it may suggest.The transition from Trump to Biden illustrates this. Trump’s assault on the electoral process and its credibility has been epochal and terrible, but in the end the transition seems to be happening. The electoral process was tested to the limits, but it proved robust and decisive. Its institutions and principles have survived. Something a little similar may now be happening in Britain over Brexit’s disregard of laws and treaties too.And yet the divides remain. How can these embittered certainties be eased and eventually bridged? Changing people’s minds may seem to be the answer, but changing a mind is a very long-term process. Opening one’s own mind is more important. And this needs to apply on all sides. Denunciation, lecturing, labelling, and obsessing over language all make things worse, not better.The key is to prioritise listening and then talking to others. Michael Sandel’s recent book The Tyranny of Merit argues that humility must be central to the reconstruction of the notion of the common good, without which no “we” society can prosper. People don’t need to be humiliated or denied a voice by being told they are bad, stupid, bigoted or unsuccessful. The aim should be to find things we can all agree about, perhaps including such things as fairness, patriotism, helping one another and trying to agree about facts.Respect for the truth is indispensable. Social media are the chief accelerator in this area of catastrophic decline. Much stronger control over online untruth will be a precondition for rebuilding the common good. This is as true of politics in general as of ensuring a full take-up of any Covid vaccine. But there is material to work with. Public trust has survived in many places. Ipsos Mori reported this week that more than 80% of us trust what nurses, doctors, engineers, teachers, judges, professors and scientists tell us. By contrast, around 80% mistrust journalists, government ministers, politicians generally and advertising executives. The problem lies with politics and media.Perhaps the Bidens of the world have it in them to change this. Let us hope so. But they need the help of thousands of local citizens if so, meeting at local level to rebuild confidence in the common good. Government matters very much indeed. But the way we treat each other matters just as much. We don’t just need to build up herd immunity to viruses. We need to build up herd immunity to untruth, and to glib easy answers too, and to all those who purvey them, in whatever form. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths rise amid Thanksgiving rush

      by

      The US reported 181,490 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a third daily rise in a row, as hospitalisations hit a record for a 16th day in succession, at 89,959.
      There were 2,297 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, the largest single-day rise since May, bringing the pandemic toll to 262,065 out of nearly 12.8m cases. The death rate is still lower than in the spring.
      The alarming numbers were reported as millions of Americans defied official advice against travel and gatherings for Thanksgiving.
      In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Joe Biden appealed for resilience and sympathised with those contemplating a holiday without loved ones.
      “I know this time of year can be especially difficult,” said the president-elect, whose wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in December 1972. “Believe me, I know. I remember that first Thanksgiving. The empty chair, silence that takes your breath away. It’s really hard to care. It’s hard to give thanks … It’s so hard to hope, to understand.
      “I’ll be thinking and praying for each and every one of you this Thanksgiving.”
      Biden’s transition team were unable to coordinate with federal authorities for two weeks after the election was called, as Donald Trump refused to concede. The president still has not taken that step, but has allowed transition funds to be released.
      Biden heralded the approach of apparently effective vaccines. The US was “on track for the first immunisations to begin by late December, early January”, he said.
      “We’ll need to put in place a distribution plan to get the entire country immunised as soon as possible, which we will do. It’s going to take time. And hopefully the news of the vaccine will serve as incentive to every American to take simple steps to get control of the virus.”
      Biden listed such steps, including wearing a mask, social distancing and more, which the Trump administration has been loath to seek to enforce, even at its own events. Trump, members of his family, aides and senior Republicans have fallen sick.
      “There’s real hope,” Biden insisted. “Tangible hope.”
      Later, in Washington, the newly 6-3 conservative supreme court sided with religious communities who sued to block New York state Covid restrictions on attendance at houses of worship. Amy Coney Barrett, the devout Catholic justice who replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month, sided with other conservatives on the ruling.
      Avi Schick, an attorney for Agudath Israel of America, told the Associated Press: “This is an historic victory. This landmark decision will ensure that religious practices and religious institutions will be protected from government edicts that do not treat religion with the respect demanded by the constitution.”
      On Wednesday, New York saw more than 6,000 daily Covid cases for the first time since late April. Pennsylvania recorded more than 7,000 cases, its second-highest total since the pandemic began. Massachusetts and Nevada saw record case numbers.
      In Wyoming, the Republican governor, Mark Gordon, has opposed a mask mandate. On Wednesday, it was announced that he had tested positive.
      US airports saw around 900,000 to 1 million people a day pass through checkpoints from Friday to Tuesday, down around 60% from last year but some of the biggest crowds seen since the pandemic took hold. Typically, more Americans drive for Thanksgiving than fly.
      Officials – among them New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo – have been forced to cancel their own Thanksgiving plans in order to set an example. One who did not, Denver’s mayor, Michael Hancock, issued an apology on Wednesday.
      Having asked city staff and residents to avoid holiday travel, Hancock flew to Mississippi to spend the holiday with his wife and youngest daughter.
      “I made my decision as a husband and father,” he said, “and for those who are angry and disappointed, I humbly ask you to forgive decisions that are born of my heart and not my head.” More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      International Monitors Found No Fraud in US Election

      by

      This month’s election was no doubt the most dramatic in recent US history. Given the highly bipartisan political atmosphere, at 67%, voter turnout was the highest since 1900. Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there were 20% fewer polling stations open across the country. An unprecedented 65 million voters opted for mail-in ballots, raising fears that the US Postal Service may not be able to handle the amount of traffic in a timely manner. President Donald Trump had already laid the groundwork in the preceding months to claim that the election will be stolen from him and, true to his brand, his team promptly filed 36 legal challenges to contest the results; to date, 29 of these have been unsuccessful.

      Donald Trump’s Treason Against the American People

      READ MORE

      More than three weeks after the election, Trump has not officially conceded. The president and his supporters are vociferously and aggressively claiming voter fraud. President-elect Joe Biden and his camp, alongside US election and security officials, are unequivocal that there is no evidence of foul play. At this time of bitter impasse, it would be invaluable to refer to a truly objective, unbiased third party. Fortunately, there is one.

      Election Monitoring

      The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was founded in 1975. It consists of 57 member countries, and the United States is one of them. A key raison d’être of the OSCE is election monitoring. It assesses whether elections are “characterized by equality, universality, political pluralism, confidence, transparency and accountability.” The OSCE has observed over 300 elections globally, both in established democracies like Canada and the UK as well as in countries like Croatia and Ukraine, where the democratic tradition is still tenuous. A multinational team of experts is on hand before, during and after the vote. The methodology is thorough and transparent.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The organization has been observing every general and midterm election in the US since the 2000 disputed contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Its presence is particularly relevant at this moment in US history. The OSCE planned to deploy some 500 observers in the 2020 election, but the number was reduced due to the pandemic. By early October, the International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) to the US had some 130 international election monitors from 39 member nations on the ground. While some states did not allow international observers full access, most did. And even in states where the observers were not allowed in the polling stations, they at least examined the mail-in process. On the night of November 3, the OSCE delivered a detailed, 23-page report, the entirety of which is openly available on the internet. 

      The report covers a lot of ground: the political context and the legal framework of the electoral system; election administration and observation; voter rights, registration and identification; candidate registration (no room for birther controversy here); campaign environment and finance; the role of the media; legal complaints and appeals; as well as new voting technologies and the conduct of the election itself. It also explains IEOM’s process, observations, analysis, conclusions and recommendations.

      Anyone with any doubt about possible voter fraud and whether the election was legal will be assuaged by the report’s conclusion that “The 3 November general elections were competitive and well managed” and that, “In general, IEOM interlocutors expressed a high level of confidence in the work of the election administration at all levels.”

      The report also offers two chilling warnings. First, it states that “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions.” Second, it surmises that “Numerous ODIHR interlocutors noted that the judiciary has become highly politicized and indicated that this would have an impact on the rules governing the holding of these elections and possibly the outcome.” This report is preliminary. The IEOM remains on the task and will release a final report in early January.

      Virtually Ignored

      Interestingly, the presence of international election monitors in this United States has been virtually ignored by the media, the public and the politicians themselves. On the one hand, it’s understandable. Given the US-centric focus of many Americans, they may not even be aware of the role international observers play in US elections. Those who claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump are certainly not going to point out that there is an objective assessment of the validity of the voting process. In fact, President Trump fired the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, for stating that this election was “the most secure in American history.”

      But why are the Democrats, the left-wing media and indeed anyone interested in proving beyond doubt that the election was fair ignoring the OSCE findings? Perhaps they don’t want to rely on any outside institutions to determine the validity of their election. Or maybe they feel that international monitors are only for banana republics, not for established democracies — and certainly not for the world’s oldest democracy. Pride goes before the fall.

      Susan Hyde, a professor of political science at the University of Berkeley, California, and an experienced international election monitor, says that “In countries that are very divided, it can be hard for citizens to know which sources of information are objective because it seems like every domestic audience has a dog in the fight.” She explains that international observers can “act as an external but credible resource for voters and for political parties.” International monitoring missions do not stand for Democrats or for Republicans — they stand for democracy.

      On the one hand, it may be ironic that the United States should be in need of the services of international election monitors. But it would be even more tragic if the US did not use their essential, objective and readily available expertise and their vital findings at this critical juncture in its democracy.

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

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in World Politics

      The Low Expectations of Biden’s High-Mindedness

      by

      As Donald Trump’s war of attrition has wound down to the point at which only an organized revolt could provide the final glimmer of hope the president is hoping for to extend his lease on the White House past January 20, the American people and US media are left wondering how the president-elect will fill the role of an absent reality TV host. It may, in the end, require the talents of a Samuel Coleridge to tell the full story of President-elect Joe Biden, the ancient mariner of the Washington marshes, who, having cast the albatross of Trump from the country’s neck, will seek to govern a nation reeling from the tsunami of COVID-19 and the economic woes that have come in its wake.

      To help us understand at least one dimension of the transformation awaiting us, Ben Smith — President Emmanuel Macron’s newest phone buddy at The New York Times — has authored a fascinating article examining what is likely to stand as the most visible change in the coming transition. It has little to do with policy. Instead, it concerns the two presidents’ relations with the media.

      Can Joe Biden Rewrite the Rules of the Road?

      READ MORE

      The sudden switch next January from the tweet-wielding, unmasked Republican slayer of Mexican and Muslim dragons, a man equipped his desk with a live hotline to Fox News host Sean Hannity and who manages an extended family ready to spread his improvised policies across the globe, to the 78-year-old Democratic DC seadog who, after 36 years in the Senate, spent half of this year sequestered in his basement, the change is likely to be monumental.

      The world has grown accustomed to Trump’s slogans, insults, claims of greatness and outrageous lies that are automatically echoed by his minions in the media, including those who oppose him. That has become an attribute of the White House itself. Trump is always on stage and always looking to land a zinger. As Smith points out, the contrast provided by the president-elect couldn’t be greater. Where Trump was constantly inventing counterfactual boasts to market his brand, “Mr. Biden liked nothing more than a wide-ranging, high-minded conversation about world affairs after he had returned from a trip to China or India.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      High-minded conversation:

      A dialogue between two people who have mastered the art of sounding not only serious but responsible, regardless of whether the substance of what they have to say is either serious or responsible.

      Contextual Note

      Ben Smith recounts that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, showed himself “particularly attentive to the wise men of Washington, especially the foreign policy columnists David Ignatius of The Washington Post and Thomas L. Friedman of The Times.” The journalist was almost certainly using the term “wise men” ironically, since the wisdom of both of those writers has too often been questioned by truly wise analysts for Smith’s readers to suppose that Ignatius and Friedman seriously live up to that label.

      .custom-post-from {float:left; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
      .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
      .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
      -webkit-user-select: none;
      -moz-user-select: none;
      -ms-user-select: none;
      user-select: none;
      order: 1;
      color: #ffffff;
      font-weight: normal;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
      right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
      .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

      According to the laws of the liberal marketplace — laws with which The New York Times generally complies — opinion writers treating serious subjects in a serious style, and who are read and quoted routinely by educated people, define a journalistic commodity that can be labeled “wise men.” These voices are a form of the merchandise The Times puts on sale every day of the week.

      Ever since Hillary Clinton’s famous characterization of Donald Trump’s voters as “a basket of deplorables,” it has been clear that “high-mindedness” is a feature of the Democratic brand. Democrats like to talk about serious, complex problems, although, even when in a position of power, they appear to be far less adamant about solving them. Above all, they aim to convince a reasonably educated public that they are serious people, in contrast with Republicans who like to reduce complex issues to slogans that turn around a binary choice. That is the kind of thing deplorables voters reflexively respond to.

      Michelle Obama is admired for the dictum she taught her children, which ultimately became a slogan: “When they go low, we go high.” The problem with this as a mobilizing sentiment is that it tends to communicate an attitude of superiority and condescension. When it comes from people who have achieved a high position, it implicitly expresses their indifference to the concerns of those who, for whatever reason, feel impelled to go low. Appearing to be the product of complex thought, it expresses a simple idea: that “we” (the wise ones) refuse to listen to those who fail to admire our accomplishments and respect our rules.

      Smith points out how patently unskilled Biden has been throughout his career at leveraging the power of the media, a force now available to any prominent figure in today’s celebrity culture to impose their brand. Whatever light a public personality has to shed outward can be refracted through the commercial media into thousands of colors and amplified by social media to create an impact that will generate enthusiasm among the populace. That is what Donald Trump consummately knows how to do, and Joe Biden clearly doesn’t. Smith sees Biden as clinging to “an older set of values.” In a word, Biden is an old school politician called to reign over a world that is more likely to resonate with Jack Black’s “School of Rock.”

      As Smith observes, “it misreads Mr. Biden to see him as either a true insider or a media operator with anything like President Trump’s grasp of individual reporters’ needs, his instinct for when to call journalists or their bosses and his shrewd shaping of his own image.” A good segment of the US population and a clear majority of people overseas will be reassured. But can this old school approach make an impact in the US today, where celebrity and influencer culture drives every social and even political trend?

      Historical Note

      In his latest book, “Capital and Ideology,” Thomas Piketty pours out and analyzes in considerable demographic and economic detail the history of voting patterns in the elections of three democracies: the US, France and the UK. The statistics reveal an inversion of the scale of education between the parties labeled left and right in all three countries. 

      Whereas the conservative parties in these countries have traditionally drawn a clear majority of the educated class, today, it is the parties on the left that have won over the college-educated crowd, producing what he calls the establishment’s “Brahmin left.” It may or may not overlap with the progressive left, who tend not only to be educated but, unlike their establishment peers, intellectual. Increasingly the parties on the right continue to appeal to the wealthiest segment of the population — their traditional constituency — but, paradoxically, they have managed to attract the less educated classes into voting for what Piketty calls their culture of the “merchant right.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      In a fascinating frank and personal discussion between former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and author Anand Giridharadas, the writer explains his view of how the Democratic Party has evolved. After provocatively observing that “Democrats don’t know how to talk,” he tells Yang that “the Democratic Party as a constellation is a victim of its own high-mindedness, its own sense of moral purpose, its own very high level of educational attainment.” He quite rightly emphasizes that high-mindedness may be a bit overrated in the world of contemporary politics.

      Joe Biden of course managed to squeeze past Donald Trump in five battleground states by having what Hillary Clinton lacked, a tenuous connection with the working class and an education that was definitely not Ivy League. He wasn’t exclusively high-minded. But Biden never acquired or even sought to understand the populist swagger that now seems to be obligatory. When Giridharadas says that Democrats don’t know how to talk, what he means is that they don’t know how to present and sell their vision or their ideas. That, of course, supposes they have a vision and really do want to sell it, a proposition that has become somewhat debatable.

      If Giridharadas seems skeptical about any Democrat’s ability to promote necessary ideas, Ben Smith ends on a complementary melancholy note, wondering almost fatalistically “whether the electorate and we in the media can break our addiction to the Trump news cycle.”

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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