Written in June:
The candidate who emerged from this jumble of discontent was the man who promised to do the least. His party is now preparing to give us a national election that will be little more than a referendum on the hated Donald Trump. Finally we have a climate in which the American public would unquestionably choose dramatic change were it offered to them, and the party of change has contrived to ensure that it will not be offered. Instead our choice is between two elderly and conservative white men, both with a history of stretching the truth, both with sexual harassment accusations hanging over them, and neither representing any possibility of energetic democratic reform. The old order has been miraculously rescued once again.
Such is the climate of opinion in America that, with the right leader, remarkable things would be possible. Instead we are presented with Joe Biden, an affable DC veteran with a hand in many of the defining disasters of the last 30 years: worker-crushing trade agreements, the Iraq war, cruel bankruptcy legislation, mass incarceration, the infamous attack on civil liberties known as the Patriot Act. The man even boasts of having been chummy with segregationists back in the day.
There’s a good chance he will win. Despite his views, Biden is a familiar and well-liked politician in the classical tradition, while Donald Trump, in his pathological narcissism, oozes resentment and always finds new ways to make himself despicable. Plus, it’s hard to see how someone can bungle an economic and public health crisis as badly as Trump has with Covid-19 and be asked by voters to repeat the performance.
‘Nothing would fundamentally change’ if Biden becomes president, he told his wealthy donors (5). It’s a hell of a slogan for a moment like this.
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