US elections: The Trump interregnum is over

By Dennis Etler

As things now stand, Joe Biden looks to be assured of becoming the 46th President of the USA. The Trump interregnum is over and American political life will return to some semblance of normalcy. The political temperature will eventually be turned down and the chaotic and bombastic verbal assaults of Trump will eventually fade into the past.

Trump turns out to have been a political anomaly who exposed the racist, misogynist, xenophobic underbelly of half of the US electorate. If you look at the election returns compared to the past, Biden has outperformed all Democratic candidates since 2000 other than Obama in 2008 and 2012. If Biden had been the candidate in 2016 instead of Clinton he would have probably trounced Trump. Hilary was a poison pill.

Biden will find a bevy of challenges once he assumes office. The failure of the US to effectively manage the COVID-19 pandemic under Trump's watch, has made the crisis of capitalism more severe than ever. It will only get worse, but while the disease is terminal the patient's decline will be long and protracted. Biden has been given the unenviable task of presiding over it.

In retrospect the election results have not been out of the ordinary. A look at the last 5 presidential elections since 2000 shows an electorate that is split down the middle, urban vs. rural, coastal vs. central, liberal vs. conservative, north vs. south, secular vs. religious, white vs. multiethnic, no matter how you cut it there are two Americas, blue vs. red and never the twain shall meet. Some people may be pulled in one direction or the other but the pattern persists.

Underlying these differences, however, is a political, economic and social system that is under the absolute control of different factions of the big bourgeoisie, the corporate, financial and media moguls who serve their own self interests. The two major factions take the divisions within the electorate and demagogically fashion coalitions that favor their hold on power. The fundamental interests of both factions, Democrat and Republican, are, however, in unison, the preservation of corporate and financial capitalism at home and US hegemony abroad. They only differ in their tactics.

When Biden assumes power he will face a Congress that is evenly split and a Supreme Court that is in Republican hands. The end result will be the continuation of political deadlock and an inability to address the systemic problems of the crisis of capitalism. We will see a mirror image of the last four years, but instead of aggrieved Democrats and triumphant Republicans pandering to their base, you will see aggrieved Republicans and Democrats pandering to theirs.

It is a mistake, however, to discount the positives and negatives of the two factions. With all his bluff and bluster Trump can be credited with putting the Korean situation on the back burner, but the policy of maximum pressure on the DPRK has not changed. Trump also fashioned a tentative withdrawal from Afghanistan, but US troops are still engaged there and in Syria. His Middle Eastern policies have been driven by his allegiance to both the Zionists and the Saudis. None of that will change under Biden. The one bright spot will hopefully be a US return to the framework of the JCPOA (aka Iran nuclear deal) and an easing of sanctions.

Otherwise, Thump's policies towards China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba have been extremely antagonistic. A perceived tilt toward Russia was purely rhetorical and never materialized. His protectionism was opposed by China's call for a new globalism that favors emerging markets. Trump's China policy has been a complete failure. While disruptive, it encouraged China to double down on protecting its sovereign rights in the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and its peripheral autonomous regions and bolster its economy by becoming more self-sufficient. In that respect many Chinese, and friends of China, saw Trump's China bashing as a loss for the US and a win for China.

Biden's presidency will see a return of the Clinton-Obama bureaucrats to power and a continuation of their domestic and foreign policies. But the times have changed. Domestically progressive forces have gained strength and influence and abroad resistance to US hegemony has grown. Biden will try to reverse the US decline but it will be too little, too late.

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*Dennis Etler is an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs. He’s a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. He recorded this article for Press TV website.

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