Less than two months after it began, primary season in the United States has come to an end. The front-runners in the two major parties, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, have clinched their respective nominations by already winning a majority of the total delegates – to no-one’s surprise, since both of them have been effectively unopposed for the last week.
The last serious alternative candidate, Republican Nikki Haley, bowed out a week ago after losing to Trump in all but one of the Super Tuesday contests (and her one victory was a narrow one in a small state, Vermont). She congratulated Trump on his victory but pointedly failed to endorse him; he responded in kind with his trademark ungraciousness.
There’s nothing very unusual about the nominations being wrapped up this early: the 2016 Republican contest, which dragged on into May, was the exception rather than the rule. What’s distinctive about this year is the high level of public dissatisfaction with the two victors. Republican partisans are enthusiastic about Trump, but the majority of voters are not, while even Democrat partisans are unenthusiastic about Biden.
Having the numbers to secure the nomination does not necessarily translate into being the candidate come November. A lot could happen in eight months; both men are old (Biden is 81, Trump 77), and it’s entirely possible that either or both could be forced to withdraw due to health issues. Trump is also facing numerous criminal prosecutions; conviction would not disqualify him, but it might lead to some sort of a rethink.
It’s among the Democrats, however – who still function, unlike the Republicans, more or less like a normal political party – that the real soul-searching is going to happen. Although he received a boost from last week’s State of the Union address, Biden still trails Trump in the opinion polls, and even those who (like me) don’t take those numbers very seriously have to admit that the danger to American democracy is very real.
The thing that is preventing a consensus from emerging among the Democrats that Biden should step aside is the question of who would replace him. Vice-president Kamala Harris seems to share much of his unpopularity; as a Black woman she is a particular hate figure for much of the right, and the party is traumatised by the memory of how Hillary Clinton was targeted in 2016. But to by-pass her would risk alienating much of the party’s base, some of it already unhappy about Biden’s failure to halt the carnage in Gaza.
I hope that wiser heads than mine are working on the problem. And whoever ends up being the nominee to oppose Trump, that person should plan on offering Haley the number two spot on a national unity ticket. Desperate times require desperate measures, but it is not at all clear that the Democrats, or perhaps modern parties in general, are suited for drastic action.
The World is Not Enough 
I fear that social cohesion is fraying badly in the States.
Given the current SCOTUS plus the other seats lower down filled by Mitch and Don, if i were a USA progressive activist or NGO, i would be cautious about bringing cases to help marginalised groups that could worsen things a thousand-fold.
Also, the increasing concentration of reformist and progressive voters in fewer U. S. states is going to impact in a debilitating way the reformists and progressives’ seat numbers in Congress — particularly in the Senate — the small states will never agree to restructuring the Senate.
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‘Does it have to be this way?’
Well, strictly speaking it’s not completely inevitable, but nothing short of a terminal cancer diagnosis or an incapacitating stroke will prevent Joe Biden from being the Democratic nominee or Donald Trump from being the Republican nominee. Something like that doesn’t fall into the category of ‘impossible’, but for practical purposes it might as well.
The chance of Joe Biden (or any other Democratic nominee) offering Nikki Haley the Vice-Presidential nomination is even less: nil. People can fantasise about it if they like, but fantasy is all it’ll ever be. Personally, if I’m going to fantasise, there are fantasies that please me more.
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Thanks J-D. I’m not saying it’s likely, but I think the chance of one of two men of that age (one of whom seems to have a very unhealthy lifestyle) developing a serious health problem in the space of seven & a half months is far from insignificant.
As to Haley as a running mate, I agree it’s not going to happen. But I remain firmly of the view that something like that should happen. As I’ve said before, we’re in for the fight of our lives, and we need to build as broad a coalition as possible to defend democracy.
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Well, I guess it depends how you want to measure significance. I don’t have any actuarial figures and might not be able to interpret them if I did. I bet both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are receiving top-of-the-line health care, which must make some difference, although again I don’t know how much.
Anyway, if anything did happen to one of them, I’m sure the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee, as the case might be, would act, but beyond that I don’t know how it’s something anybody can prepare for.
If there were any chance of her being offered the Democratic Vice-Presidential nomination (which we agree there isn’t), the chance of her accepting the offer would be (if anything) even less than the chance of its being made. She’d have to regard it as political suicide.
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Re Haley, I think the two go together: what’s needed is a change in the political culture that would make it thinkable both for the Democrats to make the offer & for her to accept it.
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I’m afraid it’s not clear what kind of change in the political culture you might have in mind.
I know some people say that there’s a big problem with US political culture having become ‘too polarised’, but if it were significantly less polarised then it’s not clear what argument there would be in favour of the Democrats offering a Republican the Vice-Presidential nomination in order to block a Republican from being elected President, nor what argument there would be in favour of a Republican accepting it. Would it have made sense to argue in 1924 for Calvin Coolidge to offer the Vice-Presidential nomination to a Democrat to block John Davis from being elected President?
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Sorry, I thought the reasoning was clear – the point isn’t “to block a Republican from being elected President”, but specifically to stop Trump, on the basis that he represents a unique threat to American (and indeed world) democracy. If you don’t think that, then no, the argument doesn’t apply.
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Yes, I get that much, but I’m still not clear on what kind of ‘change to the political culture’ you are thinking of. If the change was ‘make it less polarised’, then that in itself would make it improbable that somebody like Donald Trump could be nominated or, if nominated, be elected. I absolutely agree about the importance of blocking Donald Trump from becoming President again, but the exact same sociopolitical conditions which make it possible that he will become President again are also the sociopolitical conditions which mean that there’s no chance of a cross-party ticket to block him. If the US had a political culture where a cross-party ticket to stop somebody like Donald Trump becoming President was possible, then it would have a political culture where a cross-party ticket to stop somebody like Donald Trump becoming President wasn’t necessary. That’s why I don’t think in terms of ‘what the US needs is the kind of change in political culture that would make a cross-party ticket possible’.
Compare and contrast, for example, the current situation in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders has (so far**) been prevented from becoming Prime Minister without anybody having to deviate from the way Netherlands politics is normally done. If US political culture were more like Netherlands political culture, then perhaps that would prevent somebody like Donald Trump from becoming President; but what is the course of action which leads to US political culture becoming less unlike Netherlands political culture?
** Both in the Netherlands and in the US things might change for the better or they might change for the worse: different futures are within the bounds of possibility. Geert Wilders might yet one day become Prime Minister, but only if a significant change in Netherlands political culture happens first, as far as I can tell, so I don’t think it’s wrong to say that current Netherlands political culture won’t allow somebody like Geert Wilders to become Prime Minister.
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OK, thanks, now I understand what you’re saying. But I’m not convinced. The cultural change I’m talking about is a shift away from the dogmatic 2-party thinking that makes a cross-party ticket impossible. Is that really the same as a cultural change that would make it impossible for Trump to be nominated by a major party in the first place?
Compare the Netherlands: its political culture doesn’t stop a Wilders from winning a plurality & being a contender for prime minister, but it does allow other political actors to combine to block him in a way that has no real counterpart in the US.
Now, how do you get there from here, sure, good question.
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No Americans are asking me for political advice, nor are any likely to, but if any were my advice would be ‘Do what you can to get more Democrats elected, at every level–preferably more and better Democrats, but in any case more Democrats. It won’t be enough, but there’s no substitute for it.’
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