What if Joe Biden became the new president of the United States?
We should prepare for the revenge of the experience on populism, but also for a certain continuity with Trump: how Obama's former deputy prepares for the battle of battles, in a country never so in crisis
For two months he did not come out of the basement of his home, spending a fraction of what he would have spent going around shaking hands in foundries and poultry shops like his former opponent Bernie Sanders did. Send messages with the snorting webcam. Speak half sleepy, forgetting names and things. The image of a stunned uncle, securitarian (and ahilui, according to some a bit slimy), who live caresses or insults the public depending on the mood, and is eleven points ahead of Donald Trump in the surveys.
Given the unpredictable human epic of this 2020 and the peculiarities of the American electoral system, it cannot be ruled out that the current president could win back in November while losing the popular vote by several million, but the possibility that Joe Biden - the former vice president by Barack Obama and today the anti-charismatic candidate of the Dems in the White House - become number 46 is more real than ever. And yet, little is known in Italy about his public positions. Perhaps for the very fact that he didn't do much to expose himself.
The unlikely winner
At the eventual inauguration Joe Biden would have played 78 years, which would make him the oldest president in American history. After all, even Donald Trump, who is 73 at the moment, if he were to win a second term would become the oldest tenant of the White House ever. Biden, born in Pennsylvania and raised in Delaware, with a public career spanning nearly half a century, has never made his belonging to the boom generation an embarrassment, but rather his central strength. This seasoned man, who now only lacks the official presidential candidacy in the name of the Democratic Party, will use his institutional experience as an alternative to a dangerous and unstable world in the coming months.
During the coronavirus crisis, Biden tried to portray himself as everything Trump did not seem: a judicious and respectable commander-in-chief, who from the tranquility of his home made well-established recommendations in medical science and common sense. For example, the idea that tampons should be accessible to everyone and free, and that the future should not weigh on the weakest. That said, Biden has maintained a line not too dissimilar to Trump's on China, indeed accusing the incumbent president of being too soft with the Asian giant about responsibility for the epidemic.
As far as foreign policy is concerned, it is better for the more cosmopolitan left to be under no illusions: Biden would represent, from this point of view, a certain continuity with those who are currently fomenting a new commercial Cold War. Perhaps there will be greater multilateralism towards the Middle East question and greater diplomatic gallantry with current adversaries. But sanctions against Iran will likely continue; no winds of war will blow against North Korea, and the toughness towards Venezuela and Russia will remain so.
Trump's decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem? "The transfer was not supposed to take place in the context in which it took place," explained Biden, who called it a "short-sighted and frivolous move ... But now that it's done, I wouldn't go back". However, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, has lobbied the GOP to give the green light to annexation of the West Bank before the Democrat can win, in fear of a changed attitude from Washington. There will be no revolution, but they are not all the same.
What the program will focus on
The spirit of Democratic voters, for now, is anyone as long as it's not Trump. Biden is considered weak by the left, but also very adept at letting his opponent wear himself out, as happened during the primaries with Sanders and then, in recent days, with Trump, who is at an all-time low in popularity. Supporters of the socialist senator from Vermont are already hard at work for Biden to avert another four years with the populist billionaire and friend of the supremacists. But Biden is also a seasoned politician, and he knows he has to take former domestic opponents into consideration.
Starting with the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, which Sanders promoted both in the 2016 campaign and in this current one, and which was stolen by Biden a few weeks ago. But Obama's former vice president is also known for being in favor of upgrading high-speed rail lines in the United States, so as to reduce dependence on cars and therefore on oil. Without forgetting an announced green plan worth 5 trillion dollars, with the aim of ending subsidies for fossil fuels, to be financed in part with a carbon tax to discourage the extraction of natural gas. Of course, all this was promised in the pre-Covid era, a lifetime ago, and we need to understand how much free hand will be left to the oil companies already sunk by the collapse of crude oil.
While Biden's hostility towards the National Rifle Association and gun fanatics is known, his support for public health is more complicated. Biden was alongside Obama during the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which laid the foundation for public health in the United States. The subject is dear to him and he has often spoken in public about his personal tragedies: his first wife and little daughter who died in a car accident in 1972, the death of his son Beau from brain tumor in 2015. Biden has the ambition to start from 'Obamacare, the largest health care reform in the United States that took place in 2010, and then add some pieces: to give every citizen the possibility to choose a public as well as private assistance option, and not just for certain categories. But he is not talking about the social democratic utopia of public health for all, or almost all, on the European model for now.
The weight of the past
In the campaign and in the possible Biden presidency, Obama will play a fundamental role, or rather the memory of Obama. The former president did not support Biden until the primary was decided, but the two have established a much celebrated relationship over the years. Biden often talks about friendship, or even bromance with Obama, knowing full well that the black electorate, according to polls, associates support for his candidacy with nostalgia for the past administration, as well as with the well-known adversity represented by Trump. Now that the race for the nomination is over, however, Biden also aims to win over independent voters, as well as the most disaffected and disengaged and the most moderate Republicans, diluting the contribution given by the radical and identity left of the liberal universities. This may help alienate some fans of Sanders and Warren, but the violent events of these days and Trumpian extremism could make the pill to swallow much less bitter than a few months ago.
One thing that can be relied upon for the upcoming election campaign - barring sensational twists - as well as an imaginary presidency is that Joe Biden has far fewer outspoken words than Obama or Clinton, and is likely to maintain a certain frankness. in utterances, not too dissimilar to Trump's. We saw this from some pre-coronavirus gaffes, like when he insulted a woman in the audience who had asked him a difficult question; or when, confronted by a Michigan metalworker who accused him of expropriating his weapons, he replied you are talking a lot of nonsense, but using a more colorful expression.
Overall Biden, who has worked for decades in the Senate, believes in the virtues of the bipartisan consensus on key issues, and in openness to Republicans not yet subjugated by Trump, at a time when no other Democrat could negotiate as he knows. do it himself, and where the incumbent president is in great trouble. Much will depend on the Americans' desire to rely on a safe used vehicle compared to another four years of adventure (and what an adventure). But at the same time Biden will embrace some of Trump's trade and protectionist battles, keep the most extreme obsessions of the metropolitan left at bay, and make it clear that there is no longer any scope for a complete overthrow of the populist era, or for a return. of the ancien régime as if nothing had happened so far.
