Sampad Patnaik
The Democratic Party does not appear to have a clear grasp over the nature of the mandate it has won. In a country desperate for economic relief, the Democrats are signalling they may repeat Trump’s cardinal mistake of ignoring promises on the economy and spearheading the intensification of culture wars.
The Trump campaign in 2020 was as culturally toxic as in 2016. The difference lies in his economic agenda during both campaigns. Trump, in 2016, ran on a clear economic populist message breaking with the traditional Republican playbook. He slammed Clinton and Obama trade deals such as the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), major factors in the immiseration of the manufacturing (rust belt) states that won him the Electoral College.
In 2016, Trump even eschewed standard Republican rhetoric on cuts to Medicare, a federal health insurance programme for Americans aged 65 and older, and Social Security Payroll Taxes, roughly the equivalent of India’s Employees Provident Fund. In doing so, he won Hillary Clinton’s supposed firewall by flipping voters that Obama had won in the previous cycles.
As President, Trump took a number of poor decisions, separating immigrant children at the borders to banning entry from some Muslim countries. However, voters gave Trump the lowest marks in his presidency when the Republicans passed $1.8 trillion tax cuts for the rich. Taxes are an immensely significant political topic in America, which can trace its transformation from a colony to a country partly due to a famous tax protest – the Boston Tea Party.
The Trump administration negotiated the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) that experts have termed a cannibalised copy of NAFTA. In the 2020 campaign, Trump proposed future cuts to Medicare and Social Security Payroll Taxes.
Disillusioned with Trump, Americans have given a clear mandate to the Democrats who now control the White House and both Houses of the US Congress. Control over all three levers will allow the Democrats and Biden to act on their policy promises, such as efficient vaccination programmes, raising the minimum wage, using federal dollars to buy American goods, enacting criminal justice reform, re-joining global climate pacts, and improving on the healthcare system passed during the Obama years.
However, one of the first legislative items executed by the Democratic Party, after it regained control of the House of Representatives by a slim majority, was the replacement of gender-specific words with gender-neutral words in legislative language.
The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, introduced changes in the “Rules of the House of Representatives,” a document where an incoming Congress has to formulate and observe a new set of rules. The fresh rules substitute “he and she” with “such member, delegate,” and “himself or herself” with “themselves.” “Father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister” were replaced with “parent, child, sibling” and so on.
Democrats claim the rules were changed to reflect the growing diversity in the US House of Representatives that saw the election of many openly LGTBTQ+ members this cycle. However, the Republican Party and its ideological partners in the media saw an opening to reignite culture wars and hide their own failure on developing popular economic agenda. They have begun the task of painting Democrats as immature cultural radicals and economic failures.
The Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, tweeted the Rules document stating – “This is stupid. Signed, A father, son, and brother.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson, widely seen as a future presidential candidate, said in his news segment – “Now, we learn it is an act of hostility against women to acknowledge that women exist. The word women itself is an offence against women.” Right leaning media spun the move as Democrats trying to be inclusive by excluding the human experience and human biology that lies in gender.
Democrats have been happy to participate in this debate, while getting side-tracked from the economic promises they must now fulfil. Instead of using their majority and public platforms to corner Republican leadership on popular economic measures, they have begun their tenure playing defence on cultural debates.
Even before he takes office, Biden is personally under fire for wriggling out of a major campaign promise that won his party critical control of the US Senate this month. Had Democrats lost the Senate, their victory in the House of Representatives and presidential elections would have been meaningless with Republicans blocking legislation in the Senate.
Faced with the prospect of a razor thin defeat in two Senate races in the state of Georgia in January, Biden realised he needed economic populism and accept a proposal he was not keen on – $2,000 in relief checks. Polls have shown support for the checks as high as 65 per cent among the American public.
In a campaign speech for Georgians, Biden said, “The debate over $2,000 isn’t some abstract debate in Washington. It’s about real lives…If you send (Democratic candidates for Senate) to Washington, those $2,000 checks will go out of the door…if you send senators (from the Republicans) back to Washington, those checks will never get there.”
The announcement has been acknowledged as the push that helped Democrats tip two state-wide races in a Republican state and achieve legislative control over the Senate. However, days later, Biden unveiled an economic package that has whittled down the promised relief to $1,400. Biden supporters are now saying his campaign speech meant additional relief of $1,400, following the $600 relief checks that were passed under Trump, prior to the Georgia election. The backpedalling has infuriated some Democrats, who have called him out in public.
The two moves signal Democratic leadership has not grasped the answer on why Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020. Contrary to mainstream media propaganda in the USA, Americans are not as culturally polarised as they are economically desperate. If the Democrats fail to use their political majorities to push on economic relief, they invite major electoral losses in the future.
The writer is an Oxbrige scholar and former Assistant Editor with The Indian Express.
