While the USA has apparently recovered from the attack on US Capitol by Trump supporters out to overturn the election result, the inauguration of Joe Biden as President has not been enough to overcome the episode, and there seems a sufficient degree of support for Donald Trump’s impeachment, which will be the second he is undergoing, the previous one having come in 2019.
At the same time, the second impeachment, which has formally moved from the House, which has dr4afted a single article of impeachment, is likely to have the same result as the first: an acquittal. Unlike the last time, the Republicans no longer control the Senate, with a dramatic loss by them of both Georgia seats in a special post-November special election leading to Democrat control of that House. However, that control is narrow, as that House is now 50-50, and the Democrats still need 17 Republican Senators to break ranks and vote for the impeachment.
While the world needs the USA to act responsibly, a large section of the American people doesn’t want this. Biden will have to make this section stay satisfied enough with the system not to overthrow it
At one level, the impeachment of Donald Trump seems bit of overkill. After all, the main punishment of an impeachment is removal from office, and Trump has already been so removed by the electorate. However, that would be to underestimate the shock felt by many at the attack on US democracy. At bottom, democracy is about accepting election result, not just by the main contenders, but also those who are watching the competition. Perhaps most importantly, the results have to be accepted by the competitors, including the losers. That the holder of the highest office should refuse to accept results if they go against him or her, seems particularly reprehensible, and worthy of punishment.
Apart from that motive for impeachment, there are other partisan-political considerations. If impeached, Trump cannot be removed from office, but he can be disqualified from holding, and thus running for, public office, again. Normally, Presidents defeated after bone term usually just fade into the background, but Trump seems likely to run again in 2024, assuming of course that he is alive at that point.
The real reason he is spoken of as likely to run again, is the reason for the attack on the capital: the feeling by so many that they have been dispossessed. It is perhaps paradoxical that symbol of rebellion should belong to the New York that symbolizes the very force that there is a rebellion against, but it seems that the real conflict is between the two coasts of the USA, and Middle America. The dominance of the two coasts comes from that of the urban centres of Los Angeles on the West Coast and New York on the East, which are not just heavily represented in US soft power, but which represent the USA to the world. It is also instructive that those two cities are the main magnets for immigration, and both almost rival each other in the size and diversity of their migrant populations. They are also magnets for internal populations.
These people are the basis of a permanent Democrat majority, because New York state has 29 electoral votes, California 55. Those 84 votes always go the Democrat candidate, which means there are 83 votes there, which an opponent has to overcome. With a winning total of 271 electoral votes, Democrats start out with a huge advantage. Generally, demographic changes in the USA make for a coming permanent Democrat majority. Among the numerous changes occurring, the most significant will be the colorization of the US Population. By mid-century, the majority will be no longer white. It will remain the largest racial group, but it will no longer be 51 percent of the total.
The Republican candidate, who represents the most conservative and racist elements in the USA, is permanently disadvantaged, to the point where the last two have only come to election because of the electoral-college system, because both George W. Bush (in 2000) and Trump in 2016, had lost the popular vote, but won in the Electoral College. If the Electoral College becomes impossible to win, the Republicans may be reduced to a semi- minority.
One solution is outreach to minority voters. That has been tried, but does not seem to be working. One reason is the strength of the white supremacists within the Republicans. However, there have been two major transformations. Republicans started out as the default party for blacks to choose, after a Republican President, Abe Lincoln, accepted a Civil War over the slavery question, and ultimately issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The defeated South went into the Democrat Party, and the ‘Dixiecrats’ were born, and it was in the South that the colour bar, which succeeded slavery, had its strongest support. The Democrats underwent a change under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who won four consecutive presidential elections. The coalition he constructed included minorities too, in those days primarily African-Americans.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s saw a struggle within the Democratic Party for its soul between minorities and white supremacists. The minorities won, but at the cost of the South going to the Republicans. Biden may be the first Democrat to win in eight years, but he is the first non-Southerner, non-black Democrat since FDR himself, who last won an election in 1944. And just as FDR had Harry Truman, a Southerner as his running mate, Biden had selected Kamala Harris, a black, as his. He himself had twice been the running mate of the USA’s first black President.
His running mate is also symbolic. Not only is Kamala Harris black, but she is Indian through her mother. It’s also significant that she is a woman, another break with precedent. She was an almost inevitable choice for Biden, who had to counter the cooperation he had engaged in as a Senator with Dixiecrat Senators. The campaign mixed with the Black Lives Matter campaign, which had blacks in the forefront, but supported by whites who did not like the way police treated blacks. Those who supported the police were ironically the ones who killed a policeman in the attack on the Capitol. He was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. One woman only was shot by the police. (Three other protesters died of a heart attack, a stroke and by being crushed in a stampede).
Apart from Trump not being in office, impeachment opponents say any trial would be divisive. That means that the USA does contain some people opposed to how it is governed. The attack on the Capitol, and the role of President Trump, indicate that the Republicans might see only a coup as the means of obtaining power. That would be an unfortunate development, for it would give ideas to many operators worldwide.
It is now possible to see how the USA might implode. In that respect, Biden’s Presidency will be important. He spent the Obama years as the adult in the room, the designated driver, who brought a white male perspective to the foreign policy which was in the hands of a black President and a woman Secretary of State. Now his primary task will be to restore reason and responsibility to American behavior.
However, while the world needs the USA to act responsibly, a large section of the American people don’t want this. Biden will have to make this section stay satisfied enough with the system not to overthrow it. There are many well-founded arguments why there can’t be a coup in the USA, mainly the diffusion of power within the system. Problem is, losers don’t care. They’re ready to tear down the edifice without any idea of what to put in place.
