A Biden administration will not heal a divided country, even if he has four years of success

So the transition has begun. Joe Biden is president-elect and Donald Trump is, albeit reluctantly, president-eject. Biden has already picked some of the key players in his administration and set out key objectives. All, aside from covid, are dominated by personalities and policies from the last time the Democrats were in power, that lost world of normalcy before Trump hit Washington like – very much like – a wrecking ball. The reset button has been hit. Welcome, then to Barack Obama’s third term. Can humans travel back in time, at least politically? Yes, we can!

The Biden administration will certainly have some familiar faces around. Among them are: John Kerry as Climate Envoy (formerly Obama’s Secretary of State); Janet Yellen at the Treasury (ex chair of the Fed sacked by Trump); Antony Blinken, Secretary of State (was Deputy Secretary of State under Obama); Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence (at Homeland Security last time round); Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser (did the same job for Vice President Biden) and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the United Nations (was assistant Secretary of State).  

This will be a far more experienced, competent, stable and diverse administration than the outgoing one, obviously, and will look more like the nation it purports to serve. Provided the Senate doesn’t play silly games, these will be the women and men implementing the great reset. It’ll be as if Trump never happened.  

Or will it? A lot depends on whether these two Senate seats still up for election in Georgia are gained by the Democrats. If they are, the Dems will control the White House and Congress. Rejoining the Paris Climate Change Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal will be that much easier. Extending affordable health care, defending civil rights and closing racial gaps in inequality through legislation will be that much more likely to succeed. Biden might even be able to achieve more for social justice than Obama.

If not, then Biden will have to follow Trump’s example and make extensive use of executive orders to make his mark. The House will help him fund his programmes.  

For progressives, Biden just not being Trump is a huge step forward, and everything else is a bit of a bonus. In truth, Biden’s agenda is far from complacent or sleepy – it’s woke and, at least in rhetoric, radical, particularly on migration. He is serious about race and inequality, the climate crisis and about restoring America’s place in the world. He will rejoin the World Trade Organisation and repair alliances in Nato and across the Pacific. He and his team will make whatever they can make out of a hostile Russia and semi-hostile China. Trade will probably be left where Trump left it, and the unfinished Mexican Wall a monument to the 45th president. Biden wants to win the war on covid, rather than pretend the virus will just go away, and the new vaccines will help him do just that. From that will flow an economic recovery.  

There is, then, cause for optimism about the Biden administration, even if a Republican majority in the Senate regards its job as making Biden’s time in office a failure. After all, that is nothing new either – Mitch McConnell said in 2010 that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president”. Some irony there; but it’s only fair to note that McConnell also added, “If President Obama does a Clintonian backflip, if he’s willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it’s not inappropriate for us to do business with him.”  

There might thus be some hope that the hyper-partisanship of recent years might ease off, especially given how Biden spent decades in the senate doing deals with Republicans (and awkward Democrats). Much depends on how much Republican congressional leaders have to look over their shoulders at Trump, and for how long Trump can control the “base” Republican politicians depend on electorally. His influence may wane, though.  

Whether Biden succeeds greatly or not, or if Trump fades away or not, in four years’ time Americans will very likely be faced with the same challenges and choices they had in 2016 and 2020, and be just as evenly divided. Trumpism – populist nationalism – is not going away even though it might find a new label and new leader. Trump or whoever comes after him will claim the usual stuff about the liberal globalising elite having regained control via the deep state, and not caring about ordinary Americans having their jobs exported to Mexico or China. The restoration of normal diplomacy with allies and enemies alike will be portrayed as humiliation, and international trade as a betrayal. 

Someone like Trump, or the man himself, will spend the next four years attacking Biden via social media and the putative “Trump TV” propaganda station, feeding an insatiable appetite in half the country for rabid conspiracy theories. Some Trumpian demagogue will promise, again, to make America great again. And, if Biden fails badly, Trump’s postponed second term can then pick up where it left off. Democracy in America is not going to heal so easily.