Biden’s precarious victory
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Tuesday
February 07, 2023

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2023
Biden’s precarious victory

US Election 2020

Eric Posner, Project Syndicate
07 November, 2020, 08:45 pm
Last modified: 07 November, 2020, 08:55 pm

Related News

  • Biden's climate agenda has a problem: Not enough workers
  • China defends its Covid response after WHO, Biden concerns
  • Ukraine's Zelenskiy could visit Biden, US Congress on Wednesday
  • Biden blacklists China's YMTC, crackdowns on AI chip sector
  • At state visit, Biden and Macron face dispute over American subsidies

Biden’s precarious victory

After surviving a grueling election campaign and a cliff-hanger election, Joe Biden will most likely enter the White House with a significant achievement under his belt, but little to look forward to. Congressional Republicans and a right-wing Supreme Court will ensure that any attempt at meaningful reform or governance is dead on arrival

Eric Posner, Project Syndicate
07 November, 2020, 08:45 pm
Last modified: 07 November, 2020, 08:55 pm
Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images/Foreign Policy
Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images/Foreign Policy

Joe Biden has survived a grueling election campaign and a cliff-hanger election. Next, he must fend off legal challenges from US President Donald Trump's campaign. While he will most likely enter the White House on January 20, 2021, he will wonder when he gets there whether the prize he sought for so long is a poisoned chalice.

A President Biden will enter office confronting widespread economic distress, the seasonal escalation of a deadly pandemic, and a brutal international environment. These challenges would test even the most skilled leader. But Biden will be further hampered by a divided government, a hostile judiciary, a weakened federal bureaucracy, and lingering Trumpian populism among the public.

In the past, a newly elected president could expect some cooperation from the opposing party in passing legislation. Biden should expect nothing of the kind. Republican members of Congress largely beat expectations in the election and will see no reason for compromise. If Republicans retain their majority in the Senate, they can and will try to undermine the Biden administration, to create the conditions for an anti-Democratic backlash in the 2022 midterm elections. Progressive bills will be dead on arrival, and sorely needed constitutional reforms of the Electoral College, voting laws, and the presidency will not occur. More likely, Americans will have to endure sporadic government shutdowns amid a cold civil war that maintains a status quo of paralysis – at best.

Many of Biden's nominations will also face hostility in a Republican-controlled Senate. Republicans probably will not deny him a secretary of state or an attorney general, but they will ensure that the executive branch is understaffed. Having incurred no electoral punishment for their hardball tactics over judicial nominations, they will block and delay all confirmations of federal judges.

Even if Democrats win a majority in the Senate, Biden will face formidable obstacles. With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett a week before the election, Republicans will enjoy a 6-3 majority on a Supreme Court that was already leaning more rightward than any court since the 1930s. Today's Court will continue chipping away at the legal foundations of US regulatory agencies and advancing socially conservative values, as it has for the last two decades. Even if Biden can push progressive legislation through a divided Congress, he will still face the prospect of the Court striking it down. Indeed, the Court might finally deal a deathblow to the Affordable Care Act, the signature achievement of Biden's former boss, Barack Obama.

With a likely understaffed executive branch and a hostile judiciary, Biden will have trouble exercising executive power. Federal agencies have suffered a loss of morale – and qualified staff – during the Trump era, and will most likely take quite a while to regroup. Efforts to undo the damage that Trump did to environmental, health, and safety regulation will come slowly from the depleted agencies, and all changes will be met with judicial skepticism from Republican-appointed – and especially Trump-appointed – federal judges.

Similarly, ambitious uses of regulatory and executive power to reform immigration or address climate change (on the model pioneered by Obama) will receive a frigid reception at the Court. Biden will inherit substantial legal authority to take measures to contain the pandemic; but Trump-appointed judges will push back when that authority conflicts with religious liberty and property rights, as they have already done when governors issued similar orders.

Finally, there is the elusive issue of public opinion. Though Biden won the popular vote, the American electorate remains deeply divided. Trump's lawsuits claiming electoral fraud are unlikely to succeed, but his attempts to persuade Republican voters that Democrats stole the election will likely have a lasting effect. If Trump succeeds in delegitimizing the outcome in the eyes of enough voters, Biden will have even more trouble securing support for his policies from alienated Republicans and their elected representatives. Moreover, Biden also will be contending with a fractious Democratic coalition that could explode at any moment into a battle among leftists, moderates, and anti-Trump independents.

For all of these reasons, Biden will not benefit from the traditional honeymoon period that other newly elected presidents have enjoyed. He ran as a unifier, but, like Obama before him, he will quickly learn that you cannot win over those who despise you.

That said, Trump's defeat is a triumph for American democracy. Trump has been the most divisive and destructive president of modern times. His failure to win a second term, despite the numerous advantages of incumbency, will send a signal to ambitious politicians that populism and demagoguery are not the keys to victory. The moment should be savored for that reason – if for nothing else.


Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is the author, most recently, of The Demagogue's Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump.

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on projectsyndicate.org, and is published by special syndication arrangement.

Analysis / Top News

Biden / US election 2020

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • A man stands in front of collapsed buildings following an earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey February 6, 2023. Ihlas News Agency (IHA) via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. TURKEY OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN TURKEY.
    Deaths exceed 2,600 as catastrophic quakes ravage Turkey, Syria
  • 30% cos see double-digit growth even in hard times
    30% cos see double-digit growth even in hard times
  • Govt borrowing from commercial banks surges
    Govt borrowing from commercial banks surges

MOST VIEWED

  • The supermarket deal, valued at around 6.8-billion pounds ($8.8-billion), follows an auction process for Asda over several months and returns the 71-year-old supermarket company back into British ownership after 21 years, a development welcomed by UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak. PHOTO: COLLECTED
    UK watchdog to rule on $9.5 billion Asda takeover by April 20
  • REUTERS/Carlos Barria
    Georgia prosecutors launch criminal probe into Trump efforts to influence election
  • Photo: Reuters
    Coca-Cola expects sales growth as vaccines set to allow venues to reopen
  • People line up to cast their ballots shortly after sunrise during early voting session in Celebration, Florida, US, October 25, 2020. REUTERS/Gregg Newton
    Stolen election? Republican lawmakers paralyzed by Trump's false fraud claims
  • Picture: Collected
    6 migrant workers dead after falling into pit in India's Meghalaya forest
  • FILE PHOTO: Razor wire is seen on a fence around the U.S. Capitol ahead of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, in Washington, U.S., January 17, 2021. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
    Empty streets, thousands of troops in Washington as Biden becomes US president

Related News

  • Biden's climate agenda has a problem: Not enough workers
  • China defends its Covid response after WHO, Biden concerns
  • Ukraine's Zelenskiy could visit Biden, US Congress on Wednesday
  • Biden blacklists China's YMTC, crackdowns on AI chip sector
  • At state visit, Biden and Macron face dispute over American subsidies

Features

Photo: Collected

Get your partner a lovely present this Valentine's Day

18h | Brands
Pottery Wheel Craft Kit: A creative outlet for little hands

Pottery Wheel Craft Kit: A creative outlet for little hands

17h | Brands
Say it with Colours

Say it with Colours

1d | Mode
Photo: Courtesy

From 'Made in Bangladesh' to 'Designed in Bangladesh'

1d | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

Who will survive? Adani or Hindenburg?

Who will survive? Adani or Hindenburg?

8h | TBS Stories
James Gunn’s 8-10-year plan for the DC Universe

James Gunn’s 8-10-year plan for the DC Universe

8h | TBS Entertainment
LC issues lead to severe shortage of surgical equipment

LC issues lead to severe shortage of surgical equipment

11h | TBS Insight
Stage plays are going on in the digital age

Stage plays are going on in the digital age

16h | TBS Stories

Most Read

1
Leepu realised his love for cars from a young age and for the last 40 years, he has transformed, designed and customised hundreds of cars. Photo: Collected
Panorama

'I am not crazy about cars anymore': Nizamuddin Awlia Leepu

2
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) logo is seen outside the headquarters building in Washington, U.S., September 4, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
Economy

IMF approves $4.7 billion loan for Bangladesh, calls for ambitious reforms

3
Belal Ahmed new acting chairman of SIBL
Banking

Belal Ahmed new acting chairman of SIBL

4
Fund cut as Dhaka's fast-track transit projects on slow spending lane
Infrastructure

Fund cut as Dhaka's fast-track transit projects on slow spending lane

5
Photo: Collected
Startups

ShopUp secures $30m debt financing to boost expansion, supply chain

6
Photo: Courtesy
Panorama

From 'Made in Bangladesh' to 'Designed in Bangladesh'

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2023
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]