The Memo: Biden faces tough road on pledge to heal the nation

President elect Joe bidenJoe BidenHarris says she has’ not yet ‘spoken to Pence Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams among Time Obama magazine’s 2020 Person of the Year nominees: Republican Party members think’ men whites are victims ” MORE campaigned on the promise that he would mend “the soul of the nation”. But now he faces the challenge of making that commitment a reality.

It won’t be easy. The country’s divisions have been widening for decades, a process that has accelerated during the four years of the Trump presidency. This dynamic has been turbocharged in recent weeks as the outgoing president argued, against evidence, that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Biden has spent much of his career insisting he can work across the aisle. He often quotes a maxim from his days in the Senate that you should not criticize the motives of your opponents. He won the Democratic nomination earlier this year in part because he is a more centrist and consensus-driven figure than left-wing leaders like the Senses. Bernie sandersBernie Sanders Clyburn: Biden fails to name black personalities to top positions Brace buyer’s remorse when Biden / Harris nationalizes healthcare Biden: ‘Tough decision’ to handle personnel administration with members of the House and Senate PLUS (I-Vt.) And Elizabeth warrenElizabeth Warren Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams among Time Mnuchin magazine’s 2020 Person of the Year nominees to put 5B in COVID-19 relief funds out of reach of successor No, government can’t grab, break or ‘ bypass ” pharmaceutical patents – even for COVID-19 PLUS (D-Mass.).

It is more difficult to answer the question of whether these strengths will measure up to the polarizing forces that have torn American society apart for so long.

“The fundamental principle is to unify a divided nation,” said Moe Vela, who worked as director of Biden’s administration during Obama’s presidency. “Now does that mean he has a magic wand or that overnight their 74 million people and our 80 million people are going to join hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’?” No, that will not happen.

Vela argued, however, that Biden could at least turn the temperature down. He could do so in part through his rhetoric and affable demeanor, Vela suggested, but also by finding common ground with Republicans on certain political issues – the most obvious possibility being a stimulus bill in response to coronavirus.

“He’s going to reach out and say, ‘For the love of our country and for the love of our children, how can you be against a stimulus package for the pandemic? Vela predicted.

This idea is consistent with Biden’s tone. In a pre-Thanksgiving speech Wednesday, Biden insisted that “it is under the most difficult circumstances that the soul of our nation is forged.”

Speaking of the pandemic – but also perhaps American culture more broadly – Biden added, “It has divided us, angered us and pitted us against each other. … But we have to remember that we are at war with a virus, not with each other. … Let us remember that we are all in the same boat.

The problem is, the common ropes that once held Americans together are showing serious signs of breaking.

In the latest Economist-YouGov poll, conducted November 21-24, nearly one in four Republican voters said the coronavirus was “definitely” or “probably” a hoax. Nearly 13 million people across the country have contracted COVID-19 and more than 260,000 have died.

The same poll showed that 80% of Republican voters said Biden did not legitimately win the presidential election and 73% claimed that President TrumpDonald John TrumpUSAID administrator tests positive for COVID-19 Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams among nominees for Time magazine’s 2020 Person of the Year appeal decision, preventing him from replacing Trump in defamation lawsuit against E. Jean Carroll PLUS must not concede. Among independents, 55% admitted Biden won legitimately, but 45% said he didn’t.

In Biden’s world, there are no rose-tinted glasses on the depths of the nation’s divisions. Instant healing is not promised. But allies of the president-elect believe it offers comfort and stability.

Biden’s age, ethnicity, and centrist politician could at least help bring moderate voters with him. During the campaign, Trump’s efforts to portray Biden as some kind of hostage of radical socialists failed.

Racism has been the chronic plague in America throughout the country’s history, and it seems implausible that Biden could somehow make the kind of transcendent breakthrough that has eluded almost everyone.

But, as a 78-year-old white man, he may elicit less backlash from conservative whites than did President Obama, the country’s first black president.

In his recently published memoir, Obama notes how his vote rate among whites dropped precipitously early in his term in the White House, simply because he said the police acted “stupidly” in arresting a Black professor. Harvard, Henry Louis Gates, at home.

At the very least, no one would expect Biden to engage in the kind of rhetoric used by Trump, which was to tell the four non-white women in Congress on “the team” to “go back” to where they came from. and to threaten that “when the looting begins, the shooting begins” amid protests against racial injustice in the police.

Biden, of course, will also have the black first vice president, Sen. Kamala harrisKamala Harris Harris says she has ‘not yet’ spoken to Pence Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams among Time magazine’s 2020 Personality of the Year nominees Mexican president breaks with other world leaders, refusing to recognize Biden’s victory until the end of the election. (D-Calif.), Who will also be the first woman to fill this role.

If part of Biden’s presidency will be trying to reduce polarization, he faces a good chance. The problem isn’t just Trump and his legacy. In a number of areas, political incentives favor extremes. Radical views are often the way politicians steer clear of a main challenge, make themselves known via cable or boost their followers on social media and raise money.

“The forces he faces are much larger than President Trump and are tectonic in nature. There is a set of forces that separate us rather than pull us together, ”said Grant Reeher, professor of political science at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

But Reeher also noted – as people close to Biden do – that this fact does not necessarily doom the United States to continue down the deeply polarizing path of the Trump years.

“I think having a period for the country to experience the absence of the daily melodrama of the Trump presidency will help,” Reeher said. “And once we get the chance to experience this for several months, we might underestimate how different it will be. Will he restore the soul of the country? No, but I think it will help.

The Memo is a column published by Niall Stanage, focusing primarily on Donald Trump’s presidency.