Despite Joe Biden’s withdrawal in favor of Kamala Harris, it will be difficult for the Democratic camp to catch up, in the analysis of geopolitical scientist Sébastien Boussois. In the eyes of the voters, Donald Trump is the only one who can save the West from “humanitarianism.”
Ultimately, it only took a few days for incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden to bow to pressure to withdraw his candidacy not only from the American people but also from the Democratic Party bigwigs led by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. In the face of multiple stumbles over the past few months, it would have been a fundamental error of judgment for a party struggling to compete with Donald Trump in the presidential election next November to continue on this path to Golgotha.
Running again would have been a gamble at best, and suicide at worst; a case of a man bearing the stigma of losing support from a political organization which has traditionally stood behind the incumbent leader until the very end. But Biden’s COVID-19 got the better of his stubbornness, just like his failure for weeks on the international stage, where he ended up making a fool of himself. The party is now fully behind the unassuming vice president, Kamala Harris.
But be warned: Biden was a great American statesman in action for decades, but at some point you have to know how to turn the page and hang up your gloves. Moreover, Biden’s record, particularly with respect to the economy, is far from a disgrace for the current administration, especially since the end of the pandemic.
On the contrary, the American economy is doing rather well in a gloomy global context, more so to the detriment of its partners, particularly in Europe. But on the international level, the record is much less glorious: multiple failures in terms of public relations during the latest international circuses, a failure of global leadership linked to Biden’s frailty, which has emboldened many leaders, including Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, procrastination with respect to Ukraine and the future of Western support, accusations since Oct. 7 that he has not been pro-Israeli enough but pro-keffiyeh, and finally accusations of clumsily and inefficiently focusing attention on the whole world instead of on America itself. It is here, faced with the end of the Obama era embodied by the Biden administration, that Trump has already achieved everything. Just look at his latest rallies. They are no longer an American-style production; it’s a real epic with mystical overtones!
Elected president in 2016 against the expectations of everyone, the media and the establishment, the renewed Republican candidate has risen from the ashes with every effort to put an end to him. Whether it is political, the media, legal or even human, nothing works. Trump is a warrior, a Marvel superhero, who, like Harry Potter, wears an invisibility cloak, making him super-human. Americans dream about this and here it is in person: Trump, who has survived a presidency, endless legal cases from which he has only just emerged, and finally, like a good Hollywood script, an assassination attempt.
Yet there he is, bandage on his ear like his millions of fans, with his record, the protectionism he loves so much, MAOGA, the new candy pink version of “Make America Great Again” that brought him success in 2016, and his foreign policy pretensions that should not just make us snicker.* Whether we like him or not, Trump represents a shift in Western democracies. Half-democratic, half-authoritarian, half-man, half-robot, Trump understood that we had to speak man-to-man with the regimes that threaten us, or indeed reach an arrangement with them.
Trump is a threat to Europe, which expects a strengthening of measures protecting the American market, but he is a threat also because he promises peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. He is constantly selling dreams and Americans are jubilant. Is it utopian? Not so sure. Transactionalism, a Trumpian trademark, seeks above all to secure the economy and business by easing global tensions. Tomorrow he could push the Ukrainians and Russians to the negotiating table, like in Israel and Palestine. In any case, he has always ignored international law, the thorn in the side of Western democracies, who today unfortunately are unable to resolve any conflict. Trump is the solution to everything and everyone: to his fanatics in the United States, as well as to radical pro-Israel fanatics, as well as to all those who think that America must represent a major diplomatic and geopolitical counterweight to the Global South, rather embodied by order and authority.
In short, Trump is the only one who allows us to talk man-to-man and save the West in the face of “humanitarianism,” which is approaching decline and walks all over us day after day.
From this point forward, Biden will become the grandfather we all dream of: affection but zero power. He will rise in the polls for his wisdom and for immediately supporting his vice president, Harris, but in fact, nothing will change. Trump is a bulldozer who has braved many storms, is several points ahead of the Democratic camp in the polls and has always surfed on lies and revenge to achieve his ends.
He is the best for that end. Americans on both coasts are no longer popular and are now a minority in the United States. Americans who live in the deep interior of the country are touched by the grace of the former president, now surrounded by an almost Christ-like aura since he survived the bullets. And who is moving closer every day to the Oval Office next November by a landslide.
*Editor’s note: Regarding the acronym MAOGA, the author may be referring to “Make America Only Great Again.”
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