Re: <nettime> A question in earnest (Max Herman)

[d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk]

Hi Max et al,

In terms of how things look from here, Biden as a candidate cuts a 
distinctly unimpressive figure. Not only is he the ultimate compromise 
candidate (a political 'weather vane' as Brian Holmes put it) but also 
his age and frailty stands in stark contrast to Trump’s remarkable 
vigour for a 74 year old. Whenever Biden appears, I find myself holding 
my breath hoping he won’t stumble verbally or literally.

But the speech he gave in Pennsylvania on Tuesday was (to my European 
ears) an uncharacteristically
strong performance. It laid out with genuine force and clarity what was 
at stake. And the sad fact is that his strongest card is that; *whatever 
you think of him he is not the worst that can happen to American 
democracy.*

The core of his pitch was to an insistence that this MUST be the moment 
of reckoning on racism in the US (as it must for us in Europe) combined 
with making the horror of Charlottesville the centrepiece of his speech 
by declaring that it was the Charlottesville that made him decide to 
run..

He made clear without equivocation who the enemy are, by painting a 
powerful picture of the very worst "Neo Nazis, white supremacists, and 
the KK coming out of the fields with torches alight, veins bulging. 
Chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the 30s. It 
was hate on the march. In the open. In America.”

So responding to the question that prompted this thread, from this side 
of the pond this election cannot  achieve the best but it can and MUST 
avoid the worst in the form of another 4 years of Trump.

Those who live in the US should be in no doubt that though diminished 
the US still retains an enormous grip on the global political imaginary. 
And Trump's malign presence squats like a huge toad blocking progress. 
When he goes the relief though short lived will be deep and palpable.


PS

I suspect that 2 things that we tend to miss on this side of the pond is 
1.importance of control of the supreme court in US political life.. and 
2. The power of incumbency for a 1st term president.

1. Agreement over the importance of supreme court appointments is 
perhaps the one remaining thing that unites the warring tribes within 
the main parties. And though Trump's real support in the Republican 
party is thin his perceived success in appointing conservative justices 
to the supreme court could help him hold some of his fraying alliances 
within the party..

2. Those of us not following US politics closely forget just how rare it 
is for a challenger to successfully defeat an incumbent. Trump is the 
45th president and in the 20th century there have been just 4 first term 
presidents ejected from office at the hands of the electorate (William 
Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, George. H. W. Bush.)
The incumbent has enormous resources at their disposal to dominate the 
news cycle, make eye catching foreign policy interventions and generally 
exploit the optics of the White House and the Rose Garden as backdrop. 
Trump has not been shy of exploiting these advantages to the full and 
beyond! But there are signs that he has overplayed his hand. And that 
Biden’s low key start may have inadvertently been a bit of a 
‘rope-a-dope’ tactic tempting a desperate Trump (with creditors waiting 
their moment) to punch himself out too early.
Moreover occasionally incumbency is a disadvantage. Hoover and Carter 
respectively faced the great depression of the 30s and the great 
recession of the 1970s and it is very likely that Trump would have been 
in a strong position to roundly defeat Biden were it not for Covid. The 
very darkest of dark clouds can have a silver haired lining.

David Garcia


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