December 13, 2024
Far from being an alien invader, the next president draws on homegrown authoritarianism.
In March 2019, Joe Biden summoned his longtime confidant Ron Klain to his mansion in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden is concentrating on his presidential bid and wanted to set out the ideas behind his candidacy. Biden, 76, was widely dismissed as a political figure of the past, a figure whose time has passed. He understandably did not accept such views, and in fact felt buoyed by President Donald Trump’s inhumanity, especially President Trump’s comments openly accepting racism (as evidenced by the infamous “fine people” comments on both sides about supremacist rallies). Charlottesville, Virginia) and contempt for internationalism in foreign policy.
According to Bob Woodward’s new book,warBiden told Klain that “Trump represents something fundamentally different and wrong about politics.” Biden added, “This man is not the real president of the United States.” Those words “will forever remain in Klain’s mind,” Woodward said, as Biden’s final political challenge to defeat Trump in the presidential election and defeat Trumpism’s existential threat to American democracy. It summarizes the mission.
If Biden’s political mission was to defeat Trump and Trumpism, we would have to say that Joe Biden has failed. It is true that Biden’s victory in the 2020 election temporarily averted the rise of Trumpism. It should also be acknowledged that Biden was an impressive president domestically (particularly in the early years of his presidency when Klain was an adviser), pushing through the most significant social policy expansion since the 1960s.
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But all this was in vain, considering the victory of President Trump in 2024, a return to power made possible by Joe Biden more than anyone else. Biden’s arrogance is what led him to rebel and run again. public opinion poll This shows that the majority of the public, including those who voted for him in 2020, thought he was too old. The contrast between an aging and ravaged Mr. Biden and a still-vigorous Mr. Trump was especially stark during the first presidential debate on June 27, which culminated in weeks of Democratic anxiety. , Biden has decided to end his presidential bid. The emotionally draining drama has undermined his successor, Kamala Harris, and severely damaged Biden’s reputation.
Biden’s failures were not only personal, but also political and ideological. Biden has defined himself as anti-Trump, but he has largely misunderstood the nature of Trump and Trumpism. His mistake is seen in the statement, “This man is not the real President of the United States,” which left a very strong impression on Crane.
The big mistake Biden and other moderate liberals have made is viewing Trump as an alien import to a healthy America. That’s the underlying logic behind Hillary Clinton explanation About Trump as Vladimir Putin’s “puppet” and about the irrational energy and hope invested in the Russiagate investigation, uncovering evidence that Trump obstructs justice and has sleazy political associates. But it did not support the foolish illusion that a Republican president would be president for many years. Russian “assets” (possibility) Raised by centrist columnist Jonathan Chaitamong others).
There is a small element of truth in President Trump’s connections to foreign intelligence sources. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the world’s democracies have been engulfed by recession. anti-establishment politicsan abusive outsider challenges long-standing consensus politics. Anti-establishment politics has both left-wing and right-wing offshoots. Leftists can be seen in Bernie Sanders in the United States, Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. Trump shares many similarities with fellow right-wing opposition politicians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Javier Mileis, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and France’s Marine Le Pen.
But the similarity lies in the fact that these politicians are reacting to the same political moment and transmitting ideas across borders. This is quite different from being a puppet or asset of a foreign power.
Trump is a right-wing anti-establishment politician with an American face. my nation My colleague Elie Mystal recently wrote with characteristic eloquence about President Trump’s essential Americanness:
We are not “better” than Trump. Rather, the idea that there is a “silent majority” who think they are better than Trump and who oppose this man’s disgraceful and grotesque actions is the core of what led to such complete ruin for the Democratic Party. That’s hubris. America wanted President Trump. God created us out of our greed, insecurities, and selfishness. Out of the depths of our bile and need we called upon him, and he answered.
Democrats will never be able to defeat Trumpism unless they realize that Biden is wrong and Mystal is right. Trump is as American as baseball or apple pie, but far less wholesome than either. He is the dark side of American individualism and iniquity, a manifestation of what Philip Roth once called (in his 1997 novel). american pastoral) “Native American savages.”
To understand Trump, we need to look to the long and hidden history of right-wing anti-establishment politics in America, currently being explored by historians such as John Gantz, David Austin Walsh, Nancy McClain, and Nicole Hemmer. It is being revealed. These authors have shown that right-wing anti-establishment politics only gained national power with President Trump, but it has long permeated the fringes of national life and often influences mainstream conservatives. That’s what it means.
The tradition that produced Trump goes back to racist reactions to Reconstruction, various manifestations of the Ku Klux Klan, and the demagoguery of Huey Long and Joseph McCarthy. Trump himself was drawn into this dark tradition by McCarthy follower and mentor Roy Cohn.
As Trump returns to power, we can no longer afford the illusions of Joe Biden, who pursued the politics of restoring the Ancien Regime, which was doomed to failure. As a lifelong centrist, Biden has been unable to come to terms with the true power of right-wing anti-establishment politics. Although he considered it fringe and anti-American, it was a deep-rooted trend that was prevalent throughout modern American history. To combat right-wing anti-establishment politics, we will have to abandon centrist illusions about the essential purity of American history.
Biden staked his political fate on a mistaken understanding of Trump. Mr. Biden, who viewed President Trump as alien to the United States, never understood the appeal of President Trump’s message to his country. Biden also failed to understand that, at a time when anti-establishment sentiment was on the rise, appealing to bipartisan traditions of civility as a bulwark against this supposedly alien threat was counterproductive. Biden’s frequent invocations of bipartisan bombast (made possible by Kamala Harris’ embrace of Liz Cheney) strengthens Trump’s claim to be an outsider fighting a corrupt bipartisan elite. It was just that.
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The overwhelming majority of Americans are Opinion polls show it hovering between 65 and 70 percent.Given this reality, the only path left for the Democratic Party to victory was to adopt left-wing anti-establishment politics. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has followed Biden’s wishes and positioned itself as a pro-establishment party. This strategy failed spectacularly. In the wake of that failure, we must now return to the anti-establishment politics of the right and to the political tradition of the left, which has never had any illusions about American innocence.
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