What next for the US?

Ever since his disastrous performance in the first US presidential election debate in June, the pressure on President Joe Biden to drop out of the race and not seek a second term in office has been tremendous and unprecedented. Everyone from donors to prominent colleagues and sympathetic voices in the liberal-centrist media were urging Biden to drop out, relinquish his delegates, and allow another Democrat nominee for president to be anointed at the Democratic National Convention next month in Chicago. Then came the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which the Republican nominee managed to turn into a plus in a way only he can, and Biden’s Covid diagnosis, forcing him off the campaign trail and into isolation last week. This appears to have been the straw that broke Biden’s hopes, with the incumbent US president finally releasing a message that he was dropping out of the election on Sunday.

So what does soon-to-be outgoing President Biden leave behind? A nation still struggling with inflation and people frustrated about the lack of opportunity. On the global front, while Biden ended the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan he has enabled the continued occupation of Palestine and the genocide of Gaza. When it comes to his party, Biden’s ascent to the presidency might have kept Trump and his right-wing reactionary politics from the door but has also stifled the party’s move to the left. This is a shift led largely by younger voters and those from minority and immigrant backgrounds who, in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide, are more alienated from the party than ever before.

One hopes that those surprised or even upset about Biden’s decision to call it quits realize that putting a frail, 81-year-old man through the rigours of a presidential election was not wise. Especially when the alternative is a convicted felon with no qualms about breaking any of the rules that govern a democracy, written or otherwise. That task, in all likelihood, will now fall to Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump meanwhile has proclaimed that “Harris will be easier to beat than Joe Biden would have been”. If one has ever seen Kamala Harris speaking in public and her publicized interactions with voters and colleagues, one can see why Trump thinks this way. Then there is the fact that as a black woman born to immigrant parents, she cannot count on white working-class voters, especially older ones, in the way that Biden could. Looking closer to home, at this point, few in the developing world will be excited at the prospect of a child of immigrants from the Global South possibly assuming the most powerful political office in the world. The Obama experience, with its drones and unjust interventions and regime changes, mostly left a long trail of disappointment. Harris seems to be more of the same and has backed Biden’s support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The US attitude towards the rest of the world will likely remain largely unchanged. However, a country this dysfunctional seeking to continue dominance over the world that it no longer seems capable of maintaining makes this late phase of US hegemony arguably its most dangerous.