President Joe Biden
It’s official. Joe Biden is the President of the United States of America. That makes Biden, a former vice president, the oldest man ever to rise to this highest office in the US, at the age of 78. Also elected is Kamala Harris as the first woman to be the US vice president. The half-Jamaican, half-Indian, and 100% California girl makes history on many counts, and her rise to the second-highest elected office in the US has been welcomed with celebrations in the streets. Both candidates bring with them rich experience from the US Senate and are expected to hit the ground running to fix what Donald Trump broke. Considering that Trump broke much of the US government and its reputation among the democratic world, it will take some doing.
But the election has exposed severe cracks within the American society – a society that stands bitterly polarised. A lot is being made of how Biden has gotten more votes than anyone, breaking Barack Obama’s record of 69.5 million from his first campaign in 2008. More significant is that the loser — Trump — also broke Obama’s record. With tallying still ongoing, Trump is approaching 71 million votes. That is 71 million people who saw Trump fail on Covid-19 front on America; who saw the president throw little children into cages as he cosied up with brutal dictators while alienating America’s closest allies; who saw him ravage the environment of the US and the world; and who saw him run a regime rife with nepotism and corruption; still thought that he deserved four more years.
Even now, as Trump refuses to accept the result and files lawsuits against it, his supporters are in the streets demanding of election officials to stop counting votes. These are Americans literally demanding that democracy be suspended. Even if we exclude fanatical Trump supporters, exit polls and TV interviews showed a worrying number of people with outlandish reasons for not voting for Biden. One of the more hilarious ones was the claim that Biden was a communist. The same Biden who was criticised by progressives for being too centrist, and by most non-American standards, would be closer to a centre-right politician. Unfortunately, America does not have a centre-right anymore. There are a handful of true progressives such as Bernie Sanders — who is technically an independent — and a few centrists such as Biden and Harris.
But there is also an entire party which has more in common with Golden Dawn or the Taliban than it does with traditional conservative or right-leaning parties. If we sound harsh, let us remind you that the Republican Party did not even have a platform for 2020. Their entire 2020 ‘platform’ consisted of pledging fealty to Trump, rejecting the Obama Administration’s policies, and readopting their 2016 platform. That may not have been a mistake though, since the 2016 platform contains language such as, “Our standing in world affairs has declined significantly — our enemies no longer fear us and our friends no longer trust us.” Another section said the incumbent president “defies the laws of the United States by refusing to enforce those with which he does not agree. And he appoints judges who legislate from the bench rather than apply the law.”
Trump’s campaign slogan in 2016 was “Make America Great Again”. That is the job that Biden now inherits. As for Pakistan, Biden has a long history of foreign affairs experience and familiarity with the country. While we can’t be sure if the next president will be a friend or foe to Pakistan, we can acknowledge that his policies will be well thought-out and based on facts, rather than whims.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 9th, 2020.
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