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(Curated by Lorenzo Castellani and Giovanni Orsina)
The impact of Joe Biden’s victory cannot be underestimated: it is obviously far from irrelevant, for the United States, but also for Europe and Italy, whether he will live in the White House in the next four years. Trump or will host a Democratic president. But it is also far from irrelevant that the “blue wave” predicted by polls and observers, Biden’s “landslide victory”, did not materialize. In a highly controversial and participatory election, marked by the pandemic emergency, an extremely controversial outgoing president, hated by the government and the business establishment, more than despised by the intellectual class and by the majority of the media, accused of nothing less than a danger. for democracy, he managed to keep the electoral bloc that had brought him to the presidency almost intact four years ago. Obviously, this minority but scarce block has deep roots. And with the same evidence, the left can only scratch it to a marginal extent, even if it has displayed all its considerable political, media and cultural power.
A deeply divided America
The first data on the distribution of the vote show an America deeply divided along social, ethnic and geographical lines. The first gap is gender: according to data compiled by the Wall Street Journal, Biden was voted in by 55% of women and only 47% of men, and Trump was obviously the other way around. 64% of the white working class voted instead for the outgoing president, while the challenger won 60% among female graduates. Trump has won votes during 2016 among Hispanics and African Americans, but he remains a large minority, especially among people of color, who remain a democratic bastion. Another recurring gap, as happened in 2016, is that between rural areas and metropolitan areas: Republicans clearly prevail in the former and Democrats in the latter. A rift between the center and the periphery, as well as between the coastal states and the internal states, which now seems hopeless in American (and not just American) politics in recent years. Lastly, there are “blue states” that are becoming increasingly blue and “red states” that are becoming increasingly red: where a party was winning broadly today, it tends to win by an even larger gap. A sign of the growing political polarization between different geographic areas, with areas totally dominated by Democrats and others strictly controlled by Republicans. There is also a clearer separation on the horizon than in the recent past between the traditionalist states of the South and the progressive states of the North.
Different concerns
The gap seems equally clear when we consider the priorities of the two constituencies. Health concerns are clearly prevalent among Democrats, while for Republicans the economy predominates. Racism is an issue of great relevance to Biden voters, while Trump’s electorate is beset by security. Minorities and diversity are considered a force for the United States by Democratic voters, but they arouse dislike and unease among Republicans. Democrats would like a quick transition to the green economy, while Trump supporters remain firmly anchored in the oil economy.
Competition society vs pragmatism society
Finally, the contrast between the “competition society”, formed by individuals with university education and destined to exercise intellectual professions in large urban centers, in research, in high technology, and the “pragmatic society”, formed by people. less educated and linked to the more traditional productive sectors. The electoral divide between Democrats and Republicans is clear and growing on this front: the populist electorate rejects the pedagogical demands of those who have attended college, increasingly perceived as a bulwark of cosmopolitan thought. The concentration of skills and the growing importance of university status at the salary and social level have made a deep furrow with those who have chosen other paths. Meritocracy has opened opportunities for many, but it has also uprooted people from their home communities. And those who have stayed in small towns no longer want to be told how to think, behave or vote. In this case, therefore, a rebellion against the competent, the experts, the professionalized and their institutions has been launched.
So many open questions, all unsolved
In short, the elections do not appear to have resolved any of the many open questions in American politics and public debate. The hard core Trumpian, traditionalist, territorialized and anti-globalist has not been convinced by the progressive message of openness and integration of social groups and continues to be persuaded by the anti-system and nationalist rhetoric of the outgoing president. Rural areas, the working class, and territorialized producers (manufacturing, oil, weapons) fiercely defend their economic spaces, show no desire to accept a cosmopolitan and multicultural value system, and continue to oppose the expansion of federal welfare. Paradoxically, only in foreign policy, a fundamental element of US imperial power, will we be able to see some points of convergence and mediation efforts between the two parties, at least in the short term.
The effects of individualistic and cosmopolitan culture
The inability of the individualistic and cosmopolitan culture that has marked the last thirty years of our history with its hegemony to crumble and at least partially reabsorb the Trumpian “social bloc” is perhaps one of the most interesting messages of these elections. A message that the American Democrats seem to suffer a lot, at least judging by the discomfort they express in the face of the electoral resistance of the outgoing president, despite having won. The individualistic and cosmopolitan culture is extremely flexible and powerful, and in general it has shown itself capable of yielding to its adversaries, adapting to them, swallowing them and finally digesting them. Both the traditional right of the 20th century, God, the country and the family, as well as the traditional left of the 20th century, the working class and the welfare state, have been destroyed. The protest movements that arise periodically are blessed, exalted and finally normalized. Even in the face of Islam, unless it produces sensational acts of violence, that culture has proven capable of turning concave.
Populism is not an ephemeral phenomenon
Faced with the populist uprising, however, initiated or at least accelerated in 2016 precisely by the election of Trump, as well as by Brexit, the “enveloping” strategy favored by individualistic and cosmopolitan culture has turned into the opposite: a harsh reaction , wall to wall, demonization of the opponent. This contrasting choice was based on one premise: that the populist wave was an ephemeral and contingent phenomenon and that, if it stayed out of the door and delegitimized itself, it would rapidly diminish at the not-too-distant moment when everyone, including voters , he realized the evident lack of alternatives to cosmopolitan and individualistic society. The US elections show (for now at least) the fallacy of this premise.
The populist rebellion remains weak at the institutional level and in many cases a minority also at the electoral level, but it has a hard core that is anything but easy to digest. This raises at least two problems. First, it testifies to the partial failure of individualistic and cosmopolitan culture, of its inability to keep everyone inside. A particularly dangerous testimony for that culture, which finds its criterion of truth and legitimacy in success, not being able to have other criteria of truth and legitimacy, due to its relativism. Second, it leaves alive a substantial heritage of anger and rebellion that for the moment remains a minority, albeit substantial, but in the future, perhaps fueled by other crises, it could grow even further and assume even more extreme and violent political forms. If there is a big challenge for Biden and the Democrats in the coming years, it is certainly preventing this from happening.
READ ALL PIECES OF GIOVANNI ORSINA
READ ALL THE PIECES OF LORENZO CASTELLANI
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