Ridin’ With Biden
Photograph of former American Vice-President Joe Biden at a campaign event in Detroit, Michigan, Photo courtesy of Paul Sancya of the Associated Press.
During the last four years, Americans have witnessed a paradigm shift in American politics and government. President Donald Trump's administration has brought on an era of incompetent governance, ignorance towards the rule of law and norms, blatant corruption, and catastrophic division.
Mr Trump has lost the confidence of the American people and is not fit to govern the United States or lead the free world. It is time to dump Mr Trump and make former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden, the 46th president of the united states.
Mr Trump has spent the last year attempting to paint Mr Biden and the Democratic Party as ill-intentioned, radical-socialists trying to bring America to the precipice of collapse. However, this could not be further from the case.
Democratic voters decided against nominating the left-wing leaders of the party to high executive office. Instead, the Democratic candidate is a long-serving pragmatist with a long-record moderation and amicable compromise.
Upon coming to office, a Biden administration would seek to raise the standard corporate income levy to 28%, from 21%, implement minimum taxes on foreign earnings, and raise the income tax on individuals earning more than $400,000 to 39.6%.
Mr Biden may also pursue the reintroduction of the federal estate tax, which Republicans largely slashed early-on in Mr Trump's term, change capital-gains tax rates for those making over $1 million, and better coordinate challenges to China's growing malfeasance with our allies, according to The Economist.
Mr Biden's economic policy is also highlighted by his short-list for secretary of the treasury. Many conservatives fear that the job would fall to a left-wing figure like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. However, the names that we have heard thus far are all fairly moderate: Federal Reserve Board Members Lael Brainard, National Economic Council President Jeffrey Zients, American University President Sylvia Mathews Burwell, and former Deputy Treasury Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin.
Both Moody's, an independent financial services corporation, and Goldman Sachs, an investment bank and analyst, have endorsed the Biden economic plan as having signifiant potential to grow the American economy.
These policies and leaders hardly represent a candidate or party that is rushing to the left. They show a return to stability and responsible administration, in contrast to Mr Trump, who has undermined the independence of the U.S. Federal Reserve and monetary policy, flouted rules and norms instated after the 2007-09 economic crisis, dug up environmental and energy regulations, ignored the growing deficit, and started a trade war that has laid waste the economic growth.
Even more, pressing to some voters, are the two candidate's position on social issues, as well as on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr Trump's record thus far on domestic issues has been appalling and an open denigration of American and Western values. Government policies on immigration, voting rights, criminal justice, corruption, and the environment should disqualify Mr Trump from serving public office.
Combing through the Trump Administration's long record on domestic policy failures would be interminable, and our readers would spend days going through every point. However, Mr Trump's immigration policy and upholding of the rule-of-law displays a snapshot of his incompetence and poor governing.
The Trump Administration has openly and aggressively sought to halt migration into the United States, as well as disrupt the domestic migration system.
Wide-spanning migration restrictions, as well as threats of economic retaliation to friendly governments in Central America, have lead to the net immigration into the United States to fall by half between 2016 and 2019, according to a report by the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank.
Among these have been the infamous family separation policy, which was accused of being a violation of human rights by organisations such as Amnesty International, an international watchdog. An estimated 8,000 family units were separated between 2017 and 2018, while reports on the standards on the detention facilities delivered a grim image of the situation at the Southern border.
Mr Trump has attempted to re-write history by claiming that former President Barack Obama's Administration introduced the family separation policy, and that his administration wished to end it. However, as reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation, while previous governments did institute rules about processing families and minors through government facilities, no law or policy called for long-term separation, and explicitly stated that minors were to remain with their parents and could not be held for longer than 72-hours.
Immigration officials also reportedly denied asylum officials the right to pursue government protection, a move which openly violates both domestic and international rules for asylum seekers.
Department of Justice officials also instituted changes to America's immigration courts, which are under the purview of the executive branch of government, and not, as many assume, under the view of the judicial system. The Justice Department barred asylum seekers from staying in the country temporarily while waiting for their court hearing and refused to pursue reforms that would unclog the many-year-long backlogs in the system.
While some of these policies were later reversed or amended by officials, their implementation shows the disregard for human rights and the rule of law by the Trump Administration. Denying civil and human rights to migrants, as well as refusing to reform the deeply-broken immigration judicial system is a public disgrace and denigrates American values and history.
Also important to note in the Trump Administration's overtly-destructive domestic governance is its relationship with the Department of Homeland Security.
In the Trump Administration's arguably inappropriate and overly-militarised response to the Black Lives Matter protest earlier this year, Americans noticed that paramilitary forces had been deployed to cities like Portland, Ore. and Washington, D.C, to 'protect federal property'. However, during the protests, reports of these unidentified officials, arresting civilians and protestors away from federal property became concerning.
Most of these unidentified officials were members of the 'Federal Protective Service', operated by the Department of Homeland Security. However, despite its name and mandate, these forces did not just guard public property, but acted as de facto protest control and political enforcement, arresting a large number of demonstrators and reporters.
It was also revealed in July that the Department of Homeland Security complied 'intelligence reports' of opposition journalists who covered the Portland protests. The intelligence network in question was originally designed to track information on suspected terrorists, but fell into egregious misuse, as reported by The Washington Post.
While the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, United States Military, and most federal agencies have century-long restrictions on their use in domestic and law enforcement matters, the relatively new Department of Homeland Security has significantly less, both by design and as a factor of youth.
The Department of Homeland Security was designed to have wide-spanning authority in post-9/11 America. However, Mr Trump's Administration has taken advantage of that lack of rules and restraint to essentially have a private policing force to pursue his own political ends.
This type of disregard for institutions and the long-standing tradition of American justice and the rule-of-law shows the kind of disgraceful policy and politicisation that Americans would look forward to in a second term for Mr Trump.
Mr Biden is an experienced moderate leader for America, who understands the importance of the rule-of-law and who respects institutional governance and the building of a national consensus. A Biden Administration would pave the way for national reconciliation and move America towards a better future.
Mr Biden is also an experienced statesman and foreign policy leader. Mr Trump has alienated our allies abroad while entering into nonsensical foreign policy strategies.
There has been almost no change in the state of negotiations on the Korean Peninsula, America's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has yielded almost no results, except for an escalation in tensions in the region, the Sino-American Trade War has offered no long-term solutions to our two country's economic relationship and lack international support, Mr Trump's so-called 'Middle East Peace Plan' has almost no chance of being widely-accepted and does not offer in-depth solutions, and, in the end, America has found itself more isolated and more entrenched in conflict than it was before.
Mr Trump points to foreign policy developments such as the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain as examples of his foreign policy success. However, this example, as in countless other claims of Mr Trump, is mostly without much weight. While the normalisation of diplomatic relations in the region is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, it ignores the need for a broader approach to the conflict and ignores the factors on the ground.
The step to establish official diplomatic channels with Israel, by the UAE and Bahrain, was mostly a step to delay the Israeli government's move to annex the Jordan Valley (see report: Finally, A (Shaky) Government), as was importantly included in the agreement. The plan does not offer long-term solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian question, and is only a temporary stopgap to full annexation, according to Foreign Policy.
Even some of the Trump Administrations nominal 'successes' portray little interest of the president to understand the intricacies of these conflicts and how to explore avenues for reconciliation.
Mr Biden, a seasoned veteran on foreign policy decisions and policy, would not act in the same reckless way that Mr Trump does. He would coordinate with our allies, pursue multilateral solutions, calm diplomatic and economic tensions, and help to restore confidence in American global leadership.
Despite the endless amount of domestic, foreign, and even spacial policy failures of the Trump Administration, the underlying reason why these events happen and why Americans should choose to vote the president out of office, is that Mr Trump is just not good at being a leader.
The president is a divisive and destructive administrator who has allowed his government to be filled with political appointments and neoconservative ideologues not fit for professional administration. Mr Trump and his government's ineptitude was highlighted by and directly exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr Trump muzzled the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, undermined public confidence in public safety measures such as face masks, social distancing, and sanitation, berated reporters seeking information on the pandemic, and repeatedly lied about the development of therapeutic treatments and vaccines.
Mr Trump is unable to see beyond his reelection and has acted in bad faith to his constituents. He has little interest in the survival of American democracy or public health if it doesn't directly suit his political agenda.
Mr Biden will not be able to whisk away COVID-19, nor will he be able to clear the long-term damage that the Trump Administration has done to America and its reputation. However, he will be able to begin the process of healing our deeply-divided country and restore normalcy to government.
This election, America's democracy, role as a global leader, and sustainable health are all on the line. Mr Trump has failed to make America anything close to the great egocentric state that he imagines and will continue to do great harm if allowed to continue. America needs a leader who will step up and bring the country back to stability and decency. Who America needs is Joe Biden.
Sources:
‘Joe Biden would not remake America’s economy’. The Economist, The Economist Group, 3 Oct. 2020,
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/10/03/joe-biden-would-not-remake-americas-economy
‘The Macroeconomic Consequences: Trump vs. Biden’. Moody’s Analytics, Moody’s Corporation, 23 Sept. 2020,
John Roberts, Jeff. ‘Biden ‘blue wave’ would boost economy, says Goldman Sachs chief economist’. Fortune, Fortune Media Group Holdings, 05 Oct. 2020,
Pierce, Sarah and Bolter, Jessica. ‘Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency’. Migration Policy Institute, July 2020,
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/us-immigration-system-changes-trump-presidency
‘US border: Who decided to separate families?’. BBC News, British Broadcasting Corporation, 26 June 2019,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44303556
‘USA: Catastrophic immigration policies resulted in more family separations than previously disclosed’. Amnesty International, Amnesty International, 11 Oct. 2018,
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/10/usa-treatment-of-asylum-seekers-southern-border/
Harris, Shane. ‘DHS compiled ‘intelligence reports’ on journalists who published leaked documents’. The Washington Post, Nash Holdings, 30 July 2020,
Feith, Douglas J. ‘Palestinians Can’t Stand In the Way of Israel’s Regional Integration’. Foreign Policy, The Slate Group, 16 Sept. 2020,