By Joe Montero
It happened. Donald Trump is out. Joe Biden is in and the world is celebrating. While the election result and what it leads to is primarily a matter for the American population, it is also important to the rest of humanity. The reach of the United States empire extends into all continents.
Biden and Harris supporters celebrate election triumph
Video from Guardian News
Enjoying the moment should not blind people to the dark side.
One part is that Trump may continue to hold out. How far this goes will depend, more than anything else, on whether his most important backers will continue to stick by him.
If able to, he will try to stop the handover. Short of this, he may be able to delay it for long enough, to provide an opportunity to apply a new strategy. Nothing is set in concrete.
More important than this is this was an election that should have led to a landslide, given the failures of trump and the scale of the mishandling of the pandemic. It didn’t, and this left the movement bearing Trump’s name, with enough strength and momentum to make a comeback.
The immediate goal was the necessity to remove Trump from office. Now that this may have been achieved, the emerging question is where to from here?
Those in control of the Democrat machine, a faction of Wall Street, picked a leader that guaranteed to bring about the least possible change, and This meant someone lacking the capacity to inspire.
Picking Biden was a reaction to the Bernie Sanders phenomenon, which in turn, reflected the growing restlessness and desire for change at the political base.
The problem with this strategy is that the economic, social, and political landscape has changed, and there will be no going back to pre-Trump. But the Biden campaign ignored this. It went for “back to normal” and trying to find a consensus to maintain the status quo. A number of relatively minor promises on the pandemic, race, jobs, and health do not change this fact.
Behind the two contenders for the presidency were two factions of Wall Street, fighting over whether a hard line or softer strategy is the best means to achieve the same goal This is to protect Wall Street and impose a greater burden on the working men, women, and the disadvantaged communities of the nation.
So long as Wall street control remains, the democrats face the impossible task maintaining credibility as a party for change and the underdog, and at the same time, servicing Wall Street.
The inability to bridge this gap is what got in the way of the dream of a landslide victory. Trump would have won, were he not so reviled by so many. Biden won, because people voted against Trump, and not because he offered an alternative vision.
A choice between real change and Wall Street will be forced by circumstances. If it’s for Wall Street, anger within the support base and internal stability within the political organisation will become more pronounced.
Americans want change today. One part of America expects this to lead to a fairer and more caring society. It will have little patience if this is not delivered.
The other part, coalesced around the political movement linked to the other Wall Street faction, wants a different kind of change. It wants a continuation of the “Make America Great Again” politics, with its blaming others, enshrining white superiority, more virulent and direct control by big money, increasing intolerance for democratic norms and for armed thugs in the streets.
With or without Donald Trump, the movement which currently bears his name, has not accepted the election result ans will continue to militantly pursue its ambitions.
Part of its strategy will by to use the numbers it has in the Congress, the Senate, which they might continue to control, and the stacked judiciary, to check the budget and hold back legislation, and render the Biden administration paralysed and ineffective.
Photo by Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP: Trump supporters not prepared to accept election result
Biden and his people will face a deepening crisis, and their opponents will manipulate it to their advantage.
If the Democrats prove to fail to break form Wall Street and fail to bring about the needed changes, Americans wanting progressive change will be left with only one choice.
They must find ways to continue to build a political broad movement that involves and expresses the aspirations tens of millions and capable of carrying out the task.