They call it a cliffhanger when in the last episode of the season the hero is left dangling from a cliff by a thread that is about to break, leaving the coast clear for the villain to detonate a bomb that will blow up the world.
Four months before the US presidential election, we have a cliffhanger in the great reality show of our time.
President Joe Biden’s halting performance at last week’s debate — some wag described it as the worst King Lear performance he had ever seen — has fed a belief that the election is all but lost to Donald Trump.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/12341497.jpg "US President Joe Biden walks from the Blue Room to deliver remarks about the US Supreme Court Presidential Immunity ruling for the Trump vs. United States case at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 01 July 2024. EPA-EFE/SAMUEL CORUM / POOL *** World Rights ***")
The perception of US weakness could not come at a more dangerous moment.
Watching Ukraine, which is barely holding on against a renewed Russian offensive, Russian President Vladimir Putin must be feeling good.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will soon address the US Congress where he will stand up as Mr Tough Guy, possibly ready to launch another war by invading Lebanon as the fighting winds down in Gaza with more fighting on the brink in the West Bank.
Iran is taking note and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may soon decide to lift the fatwa on building a nuclear weapon. It was Trump’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the nuclear deal and then assassinate the Revolutionary Guard leader Qasem Soleimani, but Biden will get the blame if Iran gets the bomb on his watch.
China, which has just been engaged in aggressive posturing against the Philippines in the South China Sea, will not be blind to opportunity in its long-term aim of displacing the US-led global order.
As if that is not enough, there is a high alert for a terrorist attack. Former four-star Admiral James Stavridis says: “All of my signals are blinking red in terms of the potential for a terrorist attack against American interests in the US or abroad in the next few months.”
Even if Trump puffs himself up as the Dear Leader, all of the US’s adversaries would prefer him, a blundering ignoramus whose transactional approach elevates corruption to national policy (as in “You scratch my back, and I’ll sell you an F-35”), while all of the US’s traditional allies cringe in horror at the prospect of another Trump term.
Biden’s careful rebuilding of military and economic alliances in Europe, the Pacific and elsewhere, aimed at making a safer world, could be scuttled.
Biden looked aghast at the debate last Thursday, staring in disbelief as he listened to Trump’s firehose of lies. Maybe he was suddenly realising what he was up against.
One day after the debate, the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority gutted the administrative state and on Monday it gifted Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for all crimes committed while doing official business as president — which may have just absolved him from crimes committed on 6 January 2021, as insane as it may seem.
‘The second American Revolution’
This has paved the way for the attainment of his nasty second-term promises of retribution and mass detentions.
The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts smugly told a right-wing radio show on Tuesday, with more than a hint of the threat of violence: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Heritage has marshalled fringe groups from around the country to draw up a creepy Christofascist blueprint for a second Trump administration, entitled Project 2025, that will create a dictatorial presidency, lock up millions of undocumented people, send the military on to the streets to crush protests and consign women to permanent submission à la The Handmaid’s Tale.
Even more scary, this is a movement that is about much more than Trump: it is a blend of white supremacists, Christian nationalists and rogue billionaires who crave corporate welfare and an end to regulations that hold them back from polluting the Earth.
The election on 5 November will determine whether these people represent the last kick of a rancid and dying old horse or the birth of a new authoritarian United States.
Sometimes it’s hard to understand what they are so hellbent on preventing. Why are they so driven, so full of rage?
The US economy emerged stronger than ever from the pandemic. There is near-full employment, inflation is down, wages are up and the markets are on fire. Why doesn’t the US celebrate?
Here’s the rub: Biden represents the end of the era of free market fundamentalism, what the left likes to call neoliberalism.
His industrial policy of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, its manufacturing base, and strategic industries such as chip building, is starting to get the country moving and competitive again.
His support for unions, for black advancement, for protecting the rights of women and LGBTQIA people, for breaking the power of monopolies and big pharma is offensive to everything the right has held dear since the Reagan revolution.
The Republican Party, as Ezra Klein notes, is a vehicle for turning social rage into tax cuts. Its hold on the governing ideology has bred a country where the top 1% has flourished at the expense of everyone else. The New York Times reports the US is on track to have its first trillionaire by the end of the decade.
A centrepiece of Biden’s campaign has been to raise $5-trillion by taxing the very wealthy to meet the country’s social needs and cut the deficit.
Biden’s governing philosophy owes much to the liberal democracy model of the philosopher John Rawls who saw fairness and egalitarianism as an integral part of the concept of liberalism.
That is why Biden has been able to unite the Democratic Party, from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and include the “never Trump” Republicans from more conservative backgrounds.
Biden’s exit
And yet, as was painfully obvious last Thursday night, Biden is no longer an adequate spokesperson for the policies he represents.
He has to be the one to decide if and when to step down, but his exit is looking more and more inevitable.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/GettyImages-2159654394.jpg "U.S. President Joe Biden departs after speaking to the media following the Supreme Court's ruling on charges against former President Donald Trump that he sought to subvert the 2020 election, at the White House on July 1, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)")
New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman, reflecting on the failures of Netanyahu, wrote on Tuesday of Biden:
“At this moment of incredible importance for America and the Democratic Party, I would urge President Biden, his family and his party’s leadership to ask the same question: What does your worst enemy, Donald Trump, want you to do now? Then do the opposite.”
Biden must get out of the race.
But can the Democrats extract themselves from this situation without alienating millions of people who have deep affection for Biden, and without a damaging succession struggle?
Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin offered some comfort in his remarks:
“It’s got to happen quickly, but I can guarantee you there will be massive unity and focus on that task when we get to the end of this process.”
If this was a cliffhanger of old, the outcome in the final episode would be a predetermined happy ending in which the world is saved from destruction. This is definitely not that.
Former president Barack Obama has warned the party not to underestimate Trump.
He is the head of a cult of impassioned zealots and is supported by a post-truth right-wing media ecosystem dedicated to “owning and bringing down the libs”.
Yet, at the same time, Trump is weak. He is a convicted felon. He was twice impeached and has been found liable for sexual assault and massive fraud in his businesses in New York. He still faces indictments for trying to overthrow the last election and is up on charges of espionage for possession of classified documents.
His debate performance, in which he lied every minute that he spoke, was not much better than Biden’s, and he has yet to win over the swing voters in the middle, especially suburban housewives.
He enunciates very little policy during his gibberish-laden rallies and what he does have is anathema to normal people. He relies on scare-mongering about bogeymen such as illegal aliens rather than rational argument.
Maybe Biden will just hand over to his underestimated vice-president, Kamala Harris. If not, there is more than enough talent in the party: California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for a start.
Any one of them would cut Trump to pieces if he dared show up for a second debate.
If it is true that the future of democracy is on the ballot this year, then the thing that marks it out is an ability to course-correct, to make mistakes but pick oneself up and move forward, stronger.
Picking a new candidate so late in the game would be messy, but at the same time an open convention could be an uplifting display of democracy in action, a fitting tribute to Biden.
I just wish they would hurry up with it. In the words of the great US bard Bob Dylan: “The hour is getting late.” DM
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