History of the Present (week ending 28 July 2024)
We arrived in the US on Saturday 20 July. On Sunday 21 July, American politics suddenly got exciting again, as Joe Biden finally stood aside and Kamala Harris soon emerged as the presumptive Democrat candidate.
Going to my usual European sites to catch up with the news from Europe, I found them all full of the news from the US. The excellent Polish news website Oko-Press noted that this was our Tydzień z Kamalą (our Week with Kamala). As I've observed elsewhere, the one thing all Europeans have in common is America. This is due not just to the geopolitical importance of the United States to Europe, but also to the theatre of its politics. No one does the melodrama of democracy like the United States.
And the bullshit of democracy too. All that guff about how magnificently noble was Biden’s decision to stand aside (‘his extraordinary, historic, selfless choice’- Pete Buttigeig). In truth, the stubborn old man hang on as long as he possibly could, and far longer than he should have, until finally he was cajoled into leaving. (Recall my History of the Present commentary urging him to step aside ten months ago.)
Yet it's just possible that the stubborn, selfish lateness of his decision will work to the Democrats’ advantage. The Trump campaign has been wrong-footed, facing a new and unknown opponent. It’s stuck with a vice presidential candidate, J D Vance, chosen to consolidate the base in a competition with Biden but bringing little to win over swing voters in any battleground state. And Vance is clearly having a rocky start– as well described in this article in the FT.
For pure delight, do watch this satirical song about Vance (‘King of hypocrisy’, ‘one Big Mac from the nuclear key’) by the British musical Marsh Family, rendered to the tune of Abba’s Dancing Queen. (Both parents studied history at Cambridge, and the father is an academic specialising in US history – which helps explain how sharp the lyrics are.)
Kamala Harris, by contrast, has had a great start, with everyone uniting behind her – including those who only yesterday were saying that she was a big problem, a weak candidate, and a reason for Biden not to stand aside. Her first appearances have been genuinely strong. I like the way she has organised her intital campaign speeches around one word: freedom. One of the big things that went wrong with liberalism over the last 30 years was that it became divorced from its own central concept, liberty. Great to reconnect them.
She can also choose a vice-presidential candidate who will complement her – unlike Vance for Trump - and potentially bring her a key swing state such as Pennsylvania or Arizona. She's now level-pegging Trump in the nationwide opinion polls, doing much better than Biden was in the swing states and, above all, generating enthusiasm (see below).
But Trump remains a formidable instinctive politician, and Harris has significant weaknesses as well as strengths – well summarised in this commentary by David Brooks, and in this leading article in the Economist. In one of the most perceptive commentaries I have seen, the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel points to the"divide between winners and losers” resulting from neoliberal globalisation as a root cause of polarisation in the US, and calls on Harris to acknowledge “the resentment of working people who feel that the work they do is not respected, that elites look down on them, that they have little say in shaping the forces that govern their lives”. In response, he suggests that Harris should highlight the theme of “the dignity of work”. There's an important truth in Sandel’s analysis, but somehow I don’t think "the dignity of work"is quite going to work as a stump slogan. Odd and illogical though it may be, Trump has again and again proved himself a master of speaking precisely to those deep and widespread feelings.
Well, in less than 100 days, on November 5 – Guy Fawkes Day to the Brits – we shall find out.
This is the most important election for Europe this year, much more consequential than the elections to the European parliament or any single European national election. Above all, it's existential for Ukraine. There's perhaps a 10% chance that unpredictable Trump would turn around and actually up the ante on behalf of Ukraine, afraid of being seen as a loser in the confrontation with strong man Putin. But there's a 90% chance that he will try to compel Ukraine to negotiate a capitulative peace, as Vance has argued the US should.
Whatever else we do, we Europeans must not just sit back, enjoy the melodrama of US democracy and cheer for Kamalaaaa. We should use these 100 days actively to prepare for what is still the more likely outcome: a Trump victory. Prepare to sustain Ukraine. Prepare to do more for our own defence. Prepare to stand up for ourselves.
Thought for the week
The Olympics is the purist expression of internationalism we have. And of nationalism.
I take exception to your "bullshit" about the "stubborn old man". This is beneath you. Biden has been an excellent president and it wasn't obvious that the pile-on would doom him until his debate. That he took three weeks to be convinced is not the biggest failure in the world. And as many of us worried, if it hadn't been Kamala, a food fight at the convention would have been awful (even Pelosi was musing about an open convention). It wasn't a given that it would turn out this way.
It's interesting how many of those who ended up being right that Biden must step aside seem incapable of graciousness. All I can say is, as an American voter, I will be eternally grateful for Joe defeating Trump the first time around, and I think he deserves to be cut a little slack for having done so.
By every measure of the economy, domestic legislation, international affairs (especially Ukraine and NATO), Biden is the most successful president since LBJ (notwithstanding corporate media and pundits like you failing to acknowledge what Orwell might have said is right in front of our nose) and he outperformed Obama's 2012 polls in the 2024 primaries and if you were deaf and forced to read the transcripts of the so-called debate, you would have scored Biden the winner because he answered the questions with facts when Trump said nothing that was true. That is how debates are supposed to be scored. In any case, Biden's decision to leave the race when he did and endorse his chosen vice president is another affirmation of his great political stewardship. When Kamala Harris becomes president, at least some historians will attribute her victory in no small way to Biden.