This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Posted in: US Politics
The Republican Party is deeply invested in this false equivalency between 2016 and 2020. It remains essential not just for Trump and those closest to the 2016 campaign, but for many in the GOP who deliberately mislead the American people about the extent of Russia’s role in 2016, that the truth about 2016 remain obscured and that the question of holding people accountable for what they did in 2016 remains buried.
The political, medical, financial and logistical difficulties may be overwhelming, but global leadership is only meaningful if it helps achieve the most difficult goals. For the US, leading a massive international vaccination is a rare confluence of the national interest and the ethically right thing to do. If the Biden administration can take this on and succeed, it will repair the damage of the Trump administration and make it clear to the rest of the world that American leadership is more than just a platitude.
he American ethos of rules not applying to us has not only helped define our terrible response to the Coronavirus pandemic, but also is key to understanding American foreign policy. America’s relationship to the rest of the world frequently can be summed up by the idea do as I say, not as I do. The US urges countries to conduct democratic elections while we conduct our own elections using antiquated structures that do not value each vote equally. We seek to promote human rights around the world, while asking the world to ignore the bombs we drop, the children we put in cages and the long and horrific history of American racism. We invade foreign countries with chilling regularity while demanding that the rest of the world honor international borders. The ubiquity of this dynamic of America’s relationship to the rest of the world is hard to miss and suggests that while the hypocrisy of Governor Newsom, Mayor Breed and others is stark, it may just be the American way.
A few months from now, Trump may be an odd sideshow, occasionally appearing in the media to spread disinformation and indulge his megalomania, while trying to stay one step ahead of the law and creditors. This will be a familiar role for Trump as it was the one he played for decades before running for president.
The fact that a sitting president, with no evidence to support his claims, screamed election fraud and was supported by close to a third of the country and, initially, almost all the leadership of his own party, cannot be erased simply because Trump was too lazy, too stupid or lost by too big of a margin to succeed in this endeavor.
It may be counterintuitive, but Georgia’s greatest strategic accomplishment over the last four years, with regards to the US, was staying out of the spotlight. Even during a presidency as erratic as Donald Trump’s and even with an American president with disturbing ties to Russia, as long as Georgia was not in the news, it was relatively safe from the capricious decision making of an unpredictable American president.
Although it was Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, a mishandling that amounts to a crime against humanity, that has put America in such a terrible place regarding the pandemic, on January 20th, Coronavirus will become Biden’s problem.
By spreading doubt and trafficking in deliberate lies about the election, Trump and his Vichy Republican enablers are continuing to undermine America’s faith in its democracy. Trump’s universe, where elections either end in victory or fraud, is the product of his narcissistic and authoritarian mind, but when that view becomes widespread it threatens the basic processes and functioning of democracy.
Trump’s foreign policy was clumsy, poorly coordinated, and too frequently guided by Trump’s ignorance, sense of personal grievance and avarice. However, some of the guiding principles of Trump’s foreign policy, notably the notion that the US should be less engaged with the rest of the world, resonated with large proportions of the American people and, if articulated by a less toxic politician, can do so across party lines.
We are stuck with the unalterable reality that almost 70 million Americans, representing more than 45% of those who voted, looked around at the racism, democratic rollback, ties to the Kremlin and 230,000 deaths from Covid-19 and decided it was a good idea to give Donald Trump four more years in office.
The problem with this symmetry framework is not only that it does not hold up under real scrutiny, but that it overlooks the most important development in American politics over the course of the last few years, and in some respects much of this century-not the rise of polarization, but the descent of the Republican Party into a far right, white supremacist, conspiracy mongering, anti-science collection of cult-like followers of Donald Trump who now happily overlook, and at times celebrate, the criminality, cruelty, bigotry and avarice of his failed administration.
On Tuesday November 3rd voting will conclude in one of the most unusual and fiercely contested elections in American history. It is not possible to predict what will happen on November 3rd, but below are some things to look for that evening and the following days.
Thursday night’s debate, mercifully the last in this presidential election, revealed two very different understandings of and approaches to governance. Moreover, it highlighted how Donald Trump’s failure regarding the Coronavirus pandemic was, among other things, an extraordinary failure of governance.
In the final days of the election the race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump remains the main attraction, but the battle for the senate is as crucial. If Biden wins, but the Republicans hold on to the senate, the Democratic victory will be pyrrhic and incomplete.
To a great extent the strangest thing about Donald Trump’s racism is not the we have a racist president-Trump is certainly not the first American president about whom that could be said. Rather, it is extraordinary that almost four years into his term, we are still debating whether or not he is a racist and that we still think that if he denounces white supremacy that somehow makes him less of a racist.
In the last four years Donald Trump has squandered America’s greatest asset-not our wealth or our military strength, but our reputation in the world as an enduringly stable country. We are now just another country that has flirted with authoritarianism and political instability, just another country that was always stable until it wasn’t. America is now a country that, to borrow a phrase from the great Leonard Cohen has “been stable, give or take an administration or two.”
It is probably impossible to tally all of the Covid deaths in the US stemming from Trump rallies, superspreader events at the White House and the millions of cult members who spread the disease by following Trump rather than the health guidelines, but that number is undoubtedly far greater that the 900 who perished on Guyana in November of 1978. For four decades now, Jim Jones has been considered the gold standard for murderous cult leaders who by strength of personality, perverse psychological ploys, violence and threats, was able to lure people into his cult, to Guyana and ultimately into his murderous plans. Tragically, it is now apparent that compared to the current occupant of the White House, Jim Jones was a piker.
Sanctions, cyberattacks, freezing assets, reinvigorated rhetorical and material support for key allies, notably Ukraine, a larger presence in regions like Central Asia and the South Caucasus, will all be part of the menu of options facing a potential Biden administration, but while all of those will send a message to Moscow, they will not undo the damage that the Kremlin-GOP access had done to the US over the last five years or so; nor will these actions go unanswered by Moscow.
Trump failed utterly to craft and implement a strategy for addressing the biggest crisis the US has faced in many years. Instead, he lied, distracted, undermined the scientists and doctors, embraced quackery, set Americans against each other and stood by as more than 200,000 Americans succumbed to the pandemic.
The election was chaotic, unnerving, difficult to follow and even frightening at times. Both candidates performed as expected. Trump was dishonest, bullying and erratic. Biden was calmer, but did not communicate as effectively as he might have. For example, he did not explain that the reason Obama left so many judicial positions vacant is because Mitch McConnell would not let the senate confirm many of Obama’s nominees. Call it a draw, but with Biden’s solid lead in the polls, a draw is all he needed. I think I speak for many Americans when I say do we have to do this two more times and can’t we just watch the baseball playoffs instead.