Biden, Not by a Landslide

Hardly an inspiring politician, the new president-elect nonetheless gave a visionary speech Saturday night in Wilmington, Delaware, at the same time, one so full of promises about pacification and social progress that it was difficult to believe he will succeed. A speech that Joe Biden has been preparing, as it happens, for easily 30 years, having so often been a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination.* Biden won the election by narrowly reconquering the “blue wall” of the Midwest, a clear sign of the voters’ ambivalence, and a demonstration that, pardon the cliché, the worst is yet to come: ousting the monument that Donald Trump built to his glory, tearing down the catastrophe that took place over the last four years, reestablishing Americans’ faith in the life of democracy.

Hope, if there is any, is wavering, as a significant proportion of Trump’s admirers believe the sore loser when he tells them, against all reason, that the election fell victim to massive fraud. It was as if the United States had the electoral system of a developing world country. It is hard to imagine something more worrying than the people’s mistrust of institutions. Now it is Biden and his running mate’s job to prove that the joke that is Trump and the bitterness he embodies are not antidotes to the democratic crisis, but rather just an outlet for it.

That’s a big feat. A feat even bigger than a new government taking office during a pandemic. Biden promises to dismantle Trumpist politics in immigration, taxation, the environment, workers’ rights, etc. A large part of his election rests on his promise to tackle the historic problem of systemic racism against Black people, which many white people deny. Biden repeated loud and clear Saturday evening – in front of an audience of honking SUVs, which was not without irony – that he would rejoin the Paris climate agreement and resume the fight against climate change.

The Senate, if it remains majority Republican – and we’ll know in January after the runoff in Georgia − will naturally act as an obstacle to progress. That is without taking into account that Trump will retain, as a leader of his party and with his loyal voters, a powerful capacity for creating difficulty and for mobilizing support even outside of the White House.

Biden will want to immediately erase the Trumpist influence through executive orders. So be it. But that will not suffice. Although it is difficult to imagine, Trump will have gradually succeeded in dismantling the state. Where protecting the environment is concerned, the Republican administration repealed 163 laws and regulations; in immigration, some 400; decimating, with an efficient nativist policy, the system for the reception of refugees, among others. This will all be very difficult to undo, especially as the courts, filled with more than 200 Trumpist nominees, will be standing guard.

Furthermore, if Trumpism is here for good, it is also because the Republican Party serves as its breeding ground. Deregulation, increases in military spending, tax reductions for the rich: Trump’s populist and anti-establishment fervor did not hinder Trump from being seen as an upstanding Republican, to the satisfaction of the party’s loyal voters.

Someone better than Trump is coming into office, which is certainly not displeasing. At least, the extreme right will no longer have its claws in the White House. And the presidential discourse will no longer involve the instrumentalization of racial prejudice. An apparatchik, Biden still deserves credit for choosing Kamala Harris as his vice president – and potentially the next president – thus keeping up with the times. It is inevitable that he’ll govern as a centrist, but let us hope that he does so with a certain boldness, in order to break away from the ultraliberalism characterizing the Democratic Party for the last 30 years, as it is true that the reestablishment of American confidence in their democracy will depend on the fight against inequality. The 18-29-year-old vote carried a lot of weight in Biden’s victory. He shouldn’t let them down.

Such a challenge is commensurate with this year’s record-breaking voter participation. It is a challenge for Americans and for the whole world, as this election is also a response, fragile but resounding, to the authoritarian populists that are filling the space in the four corners of the earth.

*Editor’s note: Although he has been a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination before, this election was the first time Joe Biden was selected as the party’s presidential nominee.