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WRegardless of what emerges from the 2020 U.S. election, one thing is clear: it has not sparked a comprehensive repudiation of Donald Trump. The impact of 2016 has not been reversed. There is nothing in the result to atone for the humiliation of the last four years, the shameful vulgarity and illegality. Even if Joe Biden finally takes office as president, the fact that Trump was not booed on the larger stage of disgraced world politics will be hard for Biden’s supporters to accept. This is an uncomfortable truth not only for the United States, it also has implications for the rest of the world.
More than a rejection of Trump, the election results reorganize the finely balanced and deeply polarized configuration that has prevailed in American politics since the days of Bill Clinton in the 1990s. As in 2016, Trump lost the general vote, but it continues to dominate an overwhelming majority in small towns and rural America. Despite his vituperative hostility toward immigrants, Trump made notable strides among the rather diverse group crudely grouped under the Latino label. Confusingly, he did well not only with the anti-socialist communities of Cubans and Venezuelans in Miami, but also with Mexican-Americans in Texas. And it continues to get the most votes from white women and white men of all backgrounds.
Meanwhile, no one, either inside or outside the country, should have any illusions about the scale of the nationalist and xenophobic electoral bloc. The Republican Party has pounced on the territory of Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and yet it has solid support. Indeed, for a sizable minority of the electorate, it is precisely the stridency of Trump and the Republican Party that is appealing. They love Trump’s aggression and his merry slaughter of liberal holy cows. Now that you have modeled the style, there will be many others who will want to follow it.
In a divided country, virtually every facet of reality is viewed through a partisan lens. Not without reason, Democrats tried to turn the election into a referendum on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. But that didn’t turn out to be a winning card. Almost half of Americans disagreed that Trump’s disastrous and irresponsible performance disqualified him from the presidency. This does not bode well for the effort to control the disease, which would be the first task of the Biden administration.
If there is no collective will to take preventive measures, then everything continues to ride on a magic bullet: a vaccine. But even that won’t guarantee success. Opinion polls suggest that no more than a mere majority will agree to get vaccinated, and Republican-leaning Americans are particularly resistant. The implication is that the US will continue to limp, not effectively controlling the outbreak and going through repeated lockdowns. The impact on communities and small businesses is likely to be devastating.
Even assuming the virus can be tamed, a Biden administration would face an uphill political battle. His formidable enemies are the Republican Party in Congress, led by Mitch McConnell, the sulphurous head of the Senate Republicans. Before the election, riding on a wave of over-optimism about the likely outcome, Nancy Pelosi played a dangerous game. The Speaker of the House of Representatives defended a gigantic second stimulus package of more than 2 trillion dollars, but no “blue wave” dragged the Democrats to control of Congress.
Now, with a diminished majority, Pelosi will have to return to the negotiating table to negotiate with McConnell. To the delight of Wall Street, it has announced that it is willing to make a deal, but this is a sinister sign. Any package McConnell accepts is more or less guaranteed not to face the social crisis faced by tens of millions of unemployed Americans and struggling cities and states across the country. And yet, to save the economy from catastrophe, Democrats may be forced to agree to McConnell’s terms.
As necessary as it may be, any deal with McConnell must be considered a poison pill. Every element of Biden’s progressive agenda – health, child care and education – would be on the block. The world at large would be pleased to see a Biden administration reverse Trump’s decision to exit the Paris climate agreement. But any conversation about a Green New Deal would likely be interrupted on his knees. Republicans like to talk about infrastructure, but in four years in office, Trump never delivered an investment program. If Senate Republicans won out for a Biden green energy plan, you can count on it being tailor-made for the business lobby. There is no chance that the Senate will grant Biden formal ratification of the Paris agreement, a legal victory denied to Barack Obama as it was to Bill Clinton over the Kyoto protocol.
This would leave the United States unable to credibly commit to carbon neutrality. The progress of technology and the falling cost of renewable energy may be the trump card, but a technical solution can only take you so far. Deep decarbonisation may, in turn, open the door to a new green growth model. But, in the medium term, it requires a painful structural change that must be started from the top down.
Any progress in the next four years will depend on a makeshift administrative arrangement and painful compromise. The Obama administration offered a masterclass on both the potential and the limits of such government. To be sure, a Biden administration would benefit from this experience, but it would face what may be Trump’s most formidable legacy: a court system packed at all levels with judges who favor business and who oppose regulation. In a single term, Trump managed to appoint a quarter of federal judges, who will be implementing his agenda for decades to come.
Faced with obstacles from all directions, it should come as no surprise that the de facto leadership in economic policy continues to lie not with the elected executive branch, but with the Federal Reserve. Fed Chairman Jay (Jerome) Powell has been nothing but complacent. And, from the point of view of the rest of the world, the Fed’s leadership may not be a bad thing. Cheap dollars ease pressure on the world economy. But there are different limits to what any central bank can do to respond to the economic shock caused by the virus. And there are seriously toxic side effects of an infinitely expansionary monetary policy, especially in the inflation of speculative bubbles that benefit the lucky minority who own stocks.
What the Fed cannot deliver is what America desperately needs, a major improvement in public services, beginning with the electoral machinery, childcare, healthcare, and infrastructure of the 21st century. Without that, the impasse of a divided American society and dysfunctional politics will continue. That is the prospect that should most concern the rest of the world. Far from closing the book on the last four years, even if there is a change of head in the White House, this election threatens to confirm and strengthen the poisonous status quo.
