For more than a century after Emancipation, we were told we were not “ready” to govern ourselves: we had to be “tutored” by those in the western developed countries like Britain and the US. After the US presidential debate last Thursday between the incumbent President, Joe Biden and his challenger, Donald Trump, who is himself an ex-president, one has to wonder what exactly has happened to the process they taught us about practising “democracy”.
The 81-year-old Biden appeared in a different zone as he stumbled and slurred his way through the 90 minutes on stage and, in fact, at one point lost his train of thought and rambled on aimlessly only to be saved by the one-minute limit on answers. One learnt incredulously that he had been prepped for four days at Camp David. His 78-year-old opponent Trump was very snappy with his answers, but he kept the fact checkers busy. He chalked up 30 “alternative facts” – as one of his spokespersons during his term of office had defined his misstatements — to Biden’s nine. None of this was new, but the performance on the eve of elections questions the democratic process that produced these representatives.
This is not an idle or academic question since the world order is at an inflexion point as America’s post WWII hegemony is challenged by China and Russia. In Europe, the US is fighting a proxy war against a resurgent and revanchist Russia, with Ukraine caught in the crossfire. Russia is a firm ally of Maduro and his Venezuelan dictatorship, having supplied them with over US$30 billion of arms in the last two decades. Russia has also exposed the weakness of the international multilateral institutions that were supposed to protect the sanctity of borders and this would have been an encouragement to Maduro’s adventurism. We cannot remain sanguine that the US would remain in the hands of an individual who is quite clearly age-challenged.
Officials in the Democratic Party immediately began huddling to openly discuss the possibility of selecting another candidate to face Trump in November. The New York Times, a bastion of liberal democratic values, openly announced in a headline: “To serve his country President Biden should resign”. He was defended, however, by ex-President Barack Obama. One individual firmly convinced that Biden should remain as the candidate was his wife Jill, who simply made matters worse by telling him at a function held immediately afterwards, as if he were a 12-year-old child, “You did well. You did well”.
Since the Democratic primaries to select their candidate are already over, the delegates pledged to support their candidates at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago from August 19-22 – give Biden an overwhelming majority of the approximately 4000 delegates. They cannot switch their votes unless released by Biden. But in US politics it is ultimately the funders of campaigns who have as much influence – if not more – than the voters. We witness this in Biden’s continued support of Israel by supplying arms and munitions even though Prime Minister Netanyahu absolutely refuses to follow his line on making peace. On Sunday morning, there was a conference call by top donors from across the country to Biden, who was at the East Hamptons resort in NY to raise funds from the rich and famous who frequent that resort.
Presently, the top contenders for replacing Biden on November’s ballot are his VP, Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who are all in their fifties. Harris is considered a long shot even though she is already on the ballot because of her low approval ratings among American voters, which show that she would not be able to defeat Donald Trump. Gavin Newsom has much of the appurtenances that have now risen to the top of presidential candidates: good communication skills combined with debonair good looks. Gretchen Whitmer had been on Biden’s VP shortlist in 2020 and is representative of centre-left Democratic politics. None of these individuals– for obvious reasons – have publicly announced their availability.
