With over 75.2 million (50.6%) votes, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr — a Pennsylvania native — will be the 46th US president after winning one of the most divisive elections in the US history in a nail-biting contest with over 72% voter turn-out. He will be 78 in January 2021, the oldest president ever taking office. Incumbent Republican President Trump bagged over 70.8 million (47.7%) vote and joined the club of defeated US presidents.
Joe Biden’s distaste for president Nixon drove him towards the Democrats. In 1972, he (then 29), became the sixth-youngest senator in the US history representing Delaware. Getting elected to the US Senate six times, Biden served as longtime member of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ultimately becoming its chairman. He also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee (1987 to 1995), dealing with drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, etc. He remained president Obama’s vice-president in his two-terms from 2008-2016. Not part of the elite WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) club, he would be the second Roman Catholic president after John F Kennedy (1961-63).
His marriage to first wife Neilia Hunter (1942-1972), was initially opposed by her parents due to Biden being a Catholic. After her death in a car accident, he married a Roman Catholic, Jill Tracy Jacobs, an educator in 1977. His son from his first marriage, Beau Biden served as army judge advocate in Iraq, later dying of brain cancer in 2015.
Kamala Devi Harris, 56, affectionately called “Momala” by her stepchildren, would be the first woman vice-president, the first Black American and the first women of South Asian ancestry. A California native, Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a biologist was a Brahmin from Tamil Nadu in India. Her father, Donald J Harris, is a Stanford University professor emeritus of economics. He arrived in the US from British Jamaica and earned a PhD in economics in 1961 from UC Berkeley. Harris has been visiting her extended Indian family in Chennai (Madras) and her father’s family in Jamaica throughout her adult life. Her parents divorced when she was seven. She is married to Douglas Emhoff, 56, born to Jewish parents. An entertainment lawyer, he has two kids from a previous marriage.
A US senator from California, Harris’ background in criminal justice would help the president-elect deal with issues of racial inequality and policing, bedeviling contemporary America. She remained valuable to Team Biden in garnering votes from women, progressives and people of colour, besides the critical task of fundraising. A leading voice on racial justice and police reforms, her own run for the Party’s presidential nomination suffered from her lacklustre approach to investigate police shootings and unjust convictions, when she was California’s attorney general. She remained a low-key team player as a running-mate.
Kamala’s presence on Capitol Hill would be significant for South Asia. Her ancestry, chances of succeeding an aging and ailing president or becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2024, should Biden seek no re-election, makes her a very influential player in the years to come.
Traditionally, foreign policy issues hardly become a significant factor during the US elections. And the deep state remains at work watching and guarding the core US interests, irrespective of the candidates’ views. Joe Biden had opposed the Gulf War in 1991, but supported the Iraq War in 2002 and US intervention in Libya. He has favoured NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and US involvement in the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. He also worked towards a new START treaty between US and Russia.
Practically, domestic agenda drives the US presidency. The president-elect is faced with a deeply divided US, where the hinterland/middle America is conservatively Republican and the periphery/coastal belt is liberal and Democrat — with some exceptions. Healing a racially and bitterly polarised nation, dealing with an entrenched Trump clique, fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, rebuilding economic prosperity, working to secure healthcare for American families and stamping out systemic racism would remain priorities for the new administration. Of all these, perhaps it is the deteriorating race relations that has the potential to tear America apart.
Biden’s priority to tackling coronavirus includes free testing for all and hiring 100,000 people to set up a national contact-tracing programme. The vaccine developed by Pfizer would boost his efforts, with more vaccines on the way. Mr Biden promised to expand Obamacare, the public health insurance scheme to cover up to 97% Americans.
To mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus, Mr Biden plans to extend loans to small businesses and direct money payments to families including an additional $200 in monthly social security payments. His “Build Back Better (3B)” plan is aimed at young people and blue collar workers — considered Democratic constituencies. Biden endorsed revamping a popular education policy entailing student loan write-off, tuition-free colleges and universal preschool access.
He supports raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and plans to deal with racism through broad economic and social programmes. The president-elect, through his 3B Plan, is to create a $30 billion investment fund to support minority businesses. He stands for made-in-America.
Biden promised to reverse some Trump era policies like the travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries, limits on the number of applications for asylum and separating parents from their children at the US-Mexican border. He also intends to protect “Dreamers” — people brought illegally to the US as children and extending federal student aid to them.
Internationally, the new administration would have to restore a waning US power, deal with climate change, dial-down the ongoing trade war with China and fulfil multifarious global commitments. Mr Biden calls climate change an existential threat and vows to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord from which Donald Trump withdrew America. He proposes a $1.7 trillion federal investment in green technologies research, over the next 10 years, to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This would also create jobs in manufacturing “green energy” products.
More on the new administration’s international outlook next week.
In sum, whereas the Biden-Kamala team would find it easier to legislate in a Democratic-majority Congress (232 to 198 Republicans), they face a hostile Senate with 45 to 53 Republican lawmakers. This, combined with a defiant and charged-up Trump camp, and politically and racially divided US landscape, makes an explosive combination.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 12th, 2020.
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