The weak in US politics

Paolo Kernahan

“OK, BIDEN was terrible in the debate. But focus, people! We must get behind Biden, otherwise we’re finished as a country!”

As an unprecedented natural disaster was churning its way through the Caribbean, Americans were assessing the aftermath of a stomach-churning man-made disaster.

The debate between a visibly frail and intermittently vacant US president and the morally bankrupt and abhorrent challenger Donald Trump was striking.

For his part, Trump sauntered into the debate with nothing to prove or lose. Unfettered by the weight of expectations, the embattled but unbothered former president was free to be his evasive, toxic self. Biden, throughout the debate, couldn’t sustain enough lucidity to manage a decent rebuttal against Trump’s vomitus of fiction, race-baiting and political base-baiting with all the old conjured hurts and hatreds.

A surge of panic swept through the Democratic camp, with many senior politicos calling for Biden to step aside – a call echoed by the most influential, left-leaning publications in the US. This crescendo of judgement coming from "inside the house" is like a son being turned over to the police by his own mother.

For the Republican cabal and Trump’s most rabid flock, the night couldn’t have gone any better. Their man didn’t have to "win." Indeed, the former president was his own version of incoherent, albeit more energetically so. All that was needed was for Biden to glitch enough to turn a failing grade into a pass. Trump at the podium was the lord of odium, yet his animus burned brightly enough to illuminate Biden’s apparent neural decay.

In fevered defence of their nominee, Democrats volunteered that while the president is indeed of advanced years and has slowed "somewhat," he has a phalanx of competent advisers. This response, meant as a palliative for skittish Democratic voters, seems to obviate the need for the office of president – the nation can simply be run by committees; special interest groups, even.

Americans only recently had a reminder of what that looks like under Trump. At least ten of his former associates and trusted political advisers are, like himself, convicted felons with many of them sentenced to prison terms.

The left is hoping the existential threat of a second term under a man to whom the rule of law doesn’t apply (as upheld by the Supreme Court) will be impetus enough for voters to get behind Biden. This is notwithstanding glaring evidence of precipitous cognitive decline. Such faith may be misguided. Biden’s support among black voters remains brittle.

Worse still, he is polling poorly with the youth demographic. There’s strident contempt for his presidency among them, owed in no small measure to the administration’s complicity in Israel’s disproportionate violence against the Palestinian people.

To be fair, the youth set are no more enamoured of Trump, whom they dismiss as corrupt and a fool.

For those who think of young American voters as feckless and ageist, Bernie Sanders, who is older than Biden, enjoyed immense support among them in the run-up to the 2016 election. We all know how that went.

The Democratic leadership believes it can terrorise the youth cohort with imagery of a post-apocalyptic landscape laid waste by Trump’s second coming of fire and retribution. This may not be enough to stir that disaffected group.

One important consequence of Biden’s catastrophic debate and the Supreme Court’s ruling gifting Trump with "some immunity" from criminal prosecution is this: the Democrats are trying to draw fire away from their defective nominee by focusing more on the grave peril Trump represents than on Biden’s record of achievement during his term.

It’s tough to resist drawing parallels with our political stagnation. In Trinidad and Tobago we have around our necks two ageing political leaders who won’t release their death grip on the political culture.

Their age isn’t the issue, of course. Neither Keith Rowley nor Kamla Persad-Bissessar demonstrates the mental acuity (not in words or deeds) needed in our leadership to grapple with the crossroads issues at our throats.

It can be argued neither of them ever displayed any notable sharpness of mind at any point in their expansive political careers. The voters who steam-press their political jerseys and fold their mini-Trini flags military style would vote for Keith or Kamla even if they were stuffed with sponge.

Others who are more discerning, however, are deeply frustrated by the voters’ "choice" between Gramoxone and Paraquat. But then, we Trinis do love to emulate American society in all of the most self-destructive ways.