This was adapted from the November 8 edition of CNN’s Meanwhile in America, the daily email about US politics for global readers. Click here to read past editions and subscribe.
The world took a momentous turn at 11:24 a.m. ET on Saturday: In the instant that CNN projected Joe Biden would become the 46th president, the United States embarked on a starkly different road than the one it would have barreled down had President Donald Trump won a second term.
Presidential attacks on democratic institutions, science and the vulnerable, including immigrants and religious minorities, will stop. The White House will stop being the country’s biggest source of lies. America will no longer have a President who uses division as an instrument of power. Governance and foreign policy will not be made by tweet. Biden has already announced a task force to fight the worsening pandemic. And the burden of Trump’s racial fear-mongering will be lifted from Americans of color.
Trump’s demagogic presidency will become an aberration in American history, rather than a new foundation that affronts the country’s bedrock values. Fears that a second Trump term would destroy NATO and buckle America’s role as an exemplar of democratic values will not materialize, however treacherous the world remains. The US will try to do something about a warming planet. Trump’s defeat caused relief abroad, where the lives of people who have no capacity to influence American power are shaped by the behemoth between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
But explosions of joy on the streets of cities like Philadelphia and Atlanta where citizens voted in extraordinary numbers were not shared in the vast American heartland. More than 70 million Americans voted for Trump, and followed him with an intensity that matched the antipathy felt by his critics. Those critics always struggled to understand how friends and relatives who love him rationalize his belligerence, lying and bigotry. But Trump partisans saw in his chaos a scourge of “elites,” who they believe patronized them and their values.
Trump spoke for vast numbers of Americans who believed their government’s embrace of globalization destroyed their livelihoods. Growing secularism and liberal social reforms convinced others that their Christian faith was threatened. The fact that Republicans may cling onto the Senate and cut the Democratic majority in the House suggests that while many conservatives are tired of Trump’s antics, they’re not done with his policies.
While Trump will soon be gone, the political dislocation he tapped to win the presidency in 2016 endures. His refusal to concede defeat now will foment a grassroots outrage that could strangle Biden’s presidency. The aftermath of the election is serving only to highlight internal estrangement in the Disunited States of America. Biden recognizes the choleric forces rocking the nation he will lead in 73 days — but whether he can heal them will be the story of his presidency.
People celebrate at Times Square in New York after Biden was declared the winner.
‘Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end — here and now’
Speaking in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, Saturday evening, the President-elect reached out to voters who supported Trump. “Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end — here and now,” he said. “The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another is not due to some mysterious force beyond our control. It’s a decision. It’s a choice we make. And if we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate.”
Howdy Joe!
This one will sting for Trump.
Remember the warmth of Narendra Modi and Trump’s joint appearances at massive rallies in Houston and Ahmedabad? The Indian prime minister seems to be ready to forget already. As leaders from around the world welcomed Biden, Modi tweeted a picture of the new President-elect whispering in his ear during a previous meeting.
The PM, who has always had an acute sense of the power of India’s US diaspora, also praised Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and noted her ancestral links to the world’s largest democracy.
Modi’s attitude, echoed by other prime ministers and presidents, underscores the unsentimental and cruel reality of power that might come as a shock even to someone as transactional as the current US leader. Politicians — who often see themselves as indispensable (and we are not just talking about Trump) — would do well to remember that.
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