Ian Welsh's post-election evaluation

2020 NOVEMBER 9
by Ian Welsh

Trump is done and Biden is on the way in.

Let us first acknowledge that Biden is senile. The man is not what he was 8 years ago. He is well known to both be lazy and unwilling to delegate, and this may become a problem. Hopefully his increasing incapacity will force him to delegate, but the question is “to whom?” If he doesn’t make a decision, then the administration will be riven with knife fights and intrigue. A fair bit of money has to be on Harris, only because she is savagely ambitious and without any noticeable ethical qualms in her pursuit for power, but the vice-Presidency is an essentially powerless office. More likely multiple fiefdoms will emerge, with people fighting for access and control of the President. Alternatively, Biden’s wife may wind up running the show as Reagan’s did during his dementia.

Next let us acknowledge that Biden’s career is that of a very conservative liberal. He was against de-segregation. He has voted for war over and over. He is a fiscal conservative in the worst way (aka. has often talked of cutting Social Security and Medicare.) He was for the crime bills of the 90s and a driving force behind the bankruptcy bill which made it impossible to discharge student loans, thus causing the current student loan crisis. He has said many good things about the environment lately, but he has also said he will not ban fracking. In terms of his actual record, about the only high point is his work against violence on women.

Biden’s, well, a bad man when it comes to how he treats people who aren’t his family or friends. It’s clear that he’s a loving father; a good boss to direct reports and a great friend (just keep your young daughters away from his roving hands and sniffing nose.) But Americans aren’t in a family relationship with Biden, and they shouldn’t think they are. You aren’t Hunter Biden.

On the plus side, one can expect that he will undo many of Trump’s worst acts. I would expect an end to separating children from parents on the border almost immediately: presumably the US will go back to locking them up together. A removal of the worst Iran sanctions is likely, and with a bit of luck a return to the Iran nuclear and peace deal should occur. He is likely to close many of the parks and reserves that Trump opened to roads, drilling and logging.

Biden’s probable cabinet is quite conservative. Per Politico, front-runners are:
State: Susan Rice
Attorney Gengeral: Doug Jones
HHS: Michelle Lujan Grisham
Transport: Eric Garcetti
Commerce: Meg Whitman
Energy: Ernest Moniz
Interior: Tom Udall
Agriculture: Heidi Heitkamp
Veteran’s Administration: Pete Buttigieg

I trust it is obvious that most of these are not progressive in any sense. Moniz, the likely Energy secretary is a creature of the fossil fuel industry. Heitkam (Agriculture) was for the Keystone XL pipeline and Trump’s appointees. Susan Rice was one of the primary war-mongers in the Obama administration.

They aren’t all bad, Udall has a good environmental record, for example, but while interior is important, oddly, Energy is more so (and arguably so is agriculture, since farming causes vast environmental harm as it is currently practiced.)

In foreign affair, Iran will benefit from Biden’s Presidency, and I suspect Cuba will as well, though Biden is notoriously aggressive and threatening to small countries, he will want to rescue Obama’s Cuba deal. One can expect Democrats to be more aggressive to Russia, after spending the last four years blaming it for everything. I remind you that while Russia is no longer a super-power in most senses, they are still a nuclear super-power and that war between the two nations is unthinkable, in the “armageddon” sense. As best I can tell Biden does not have a personal hatred for Putin the way that Hillary appears to have, and in any case, Putin appears to be setting the stage to step down. (A recent law made it impossible to charge former Presidents for crimes committed during their Presidency, for example.)

The dragon in the patch is China. Trump’s anti-China moves had a great deal of bipartisan support. The difference under Biden is likely to be a great emphasis on working with allies against China, rather than a pivot from the anti-China position. The consensus opinion in DC is that China is a rising fascist state who doesn’t obey the rules of the current order and the primary threat to American dominance. Meanwhile, China has come to the conclusion that a split with the US is essentially inevitable. They wish to buy time, but are working furiously on improving their tech and trade area (under the Belt and Road Initiative). In short, Biden will continue the march towards a new Cold War, with the world split into two areas. China and Russia will be at the heart of the second area.

One possible bright spot in Biden’s likely administration is anti-trust. Democrats are unhappy with large chunks of big-tech, starting but not ending with Facebook. Expect an anti-trust suit against Facebook to go ahead under Biden unless, perhaps, Zuckerberg grovels like a worm (which he is unlikely to do.) There is also some possibility of actions against Google, Apple and Amazon.

As with China, there’s a fair bit of bipartisan consensus on this, even if Facebook has favoured Republicans, they are not happy with its ability to choose whose message gets thru, for example.

In terms of the economy, Biden is likely to bow to the deficit myth. Especially if Republicans hold the Senate (most likely), he will struggle to get money for his priorities, but worse, his career has generally shown him to be a fairly standard Democratic centrist who believes that only Republicans have the right to spend large amounts of money and that Democrats should reduce the deficit and instead of spend, rely on tax cuts. At worst Biden may be willing to cut a deal to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits to “fix” the deficit. (This is nonsense, but it is nonsense Biden has believed his entire career.)

The Senate requires some extra commentary. If Republicans hold it, McConnell has said he will use it aggressively to make sure that Biden’s appointments are not progressive. While this wouldn’t be a problem if progressive meant to McConnell what it does to anyone sane, what it really means is “anyone who isn’t right wing.”

There is no reason for this to hamstring Biden, all he has to do is follow Trump’s precedent and rely on Acting leaders of various agencies. The question, however, is whether Biden will be willing to do this. In fact, this is the great question of a Biden administration with a Republican Senate (or even a bare majority Democratic one), will he use the Presidency’s power to their full extent, as Republican presidents like Trump and Bush did? If so, there’s a great deal he can accomplish, if not, he will rule is as a moderate Republican even if he doesn’t want to.

This is also true with respect to the Supreme Court: there are ways around the Supremes, but they do require a President to use his power aggressively and in ways that, obviously, aren’t bipartisan. Biden’s willingness to do this is an open question, he certainly has preferred to “govern across the aisle” is the past.

As with Obama, ruling as a moderate Republican may well be what he wants, and a Republican Senate and Supreme Court may give him cover to do so, constantly blaming everything he does and doesn’t do on “we don’t control the Senate or the Court, give us more money for the next election.”

A wildcard in this is Schumer. Schumer’s certainly a centrist who has done nothing for anyone who isn’t a donor in ages, but he’s running scared of AOC. He recently talked up the possibility of using an executive order to forgive 50K in student debt, for example (which would be a wonderful thing for Biden to do.) Schumer knows AOC is a real threat to him, and the only way to innoculate himself is to become progressive enough that she doesn’t have an argument against him.

Pelosi will remain Pelosi. She will want pay-go, and be essentially conservative. But she lost seats in the last election and barely has a majority. How much power she will have remains to be seen. Still, she’ll probably hang on for at least another four years, before her advancing age forces her to retire.

One can assume that a Biden administraiton will generally be more technocratically competent. I expect the Covid response to improve significantly, for example, though stubborn red state governors and legislatures will remain a problem. Trump’s propaganda that masks don’t work; Covid is no big deal and that the closures are the problem, not the disease, will remain a huge issue crippling any American response, as will fears and refusal to take vaccines.

Getting any large aid bill through Congress will be nearly impossible if Democrats don’t retake the Senate, for the simple reason that there’s no reason for Republicans to give Democrats a win like that.

The great fear of a Biden administration, and why I only reluctantly supported Biden, is that he will start a new war. Biden isn’t as bad as Hillary, though, and we can hope that his foreign adventures remain restricted to bullying weak nations and instigating coups (Venezuela is going to have a particularly bad time.)

The other great fear is that Biden’s administration will be weak tea, like Obama’s. It won’t do much good for most people, and in four to eight years, they will turn to a Republican. That Republican will be a more disciplined, more genuinely “populist” version of Trump, and will be able to do what people thought Trump would do, but which he was fundamentally too incompetent to accomplish.

I wish the Biden administration well, but fundamentally, I don’t think it’s going to be enough different from Obama’s to really change the direction America, or the world is headed in. Some people will certainly be helped, and I’m happy for them, but that America continues its “undeveloping nation” slide as the oligarchy continues to become richer and richer and the majority of the population stagnates or becomes worse off is unlikely to change.

And while I expect Biden to be better for the environment than Trump or Obama, he will not be enough better to change the fact that climate change is now running away, and that environmental consequences which will destroy multiple countries are almost inevitable. Indeed, this administration was probably the last chance to do anything that really matters short of geo-engineering, but that window was closed when Sanders lost the primary due to Clyburn and Obama’s intervention.

Slightly better Obama administration, with a worse Republican President than Trump following seems like the best bet for the Biden administration. Hopefully, while the best best, it is not the one that comes to be.


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