2020 Elections: a test for democracy

Every four years the American presidential campaign is a test of the vitality of democracy. In the United States, citizens stand before the mirror and think, in some way, about the state of their society's values, how the economy is progressing and how is confidence in the institutions that have enabled them to progress for over a century between wars and social conflicts to become the benchmark of the free world. If the political system inherited from their parents and ancestors, from their founders, is today more consistent, more just, stronger. If the cession of sovereignty that they make during a period of four years to a democratically elected administration has been responded to from the president's fiduciary commitment by returning to the American people a freer society that respects the principles, rights and obligations that make it up. For many millions of Americans, despite the pandemic and the social and economic crisis, the country is better off than President Trump found it. For millions of other citizens, a few more according to the polls, the country is much worse off and not only because of the pandemic and its consequences but because of an atypical and at least disconcerting presidency. And, finally, for many thousands more who are undecided, the most decisive in the battleground states, with only 60 days to go before the elections, the answer is still not clear.

The mandate of the 45th president of the United States has focused on the figure of Donald Trump as rarely has it focused so much on the personality, behaviour and decisions of the person who embodies the presidential institution. The pre-campaign that took place until the Democratic and Republican Conventions in August also focused as rarely as on the president. Few elections have been so polarised around the figure of the president, or in which one of the reasons for the polarisation of society and politics is, in this case, Donald Trump himself: impeachment; demonstrations in front of the White House, groups of pro- and anti-Trump activists...

In recent episodes of activism, such as that generated by the Tea Party, the movement at that time did not have clear leadership and its objective was not so much Barack Obama but rather opposition to a series of policies of his Presidency: taxes, cultural disputes, health. Obama himself did not represent the leadership of a specific minority, but rather assumed his presidential aura in the elections for his second term. Bush was not the target of the final rejection of the war in Iraq. Clinton, harassed by his personal behaviour, did not stand for election in 2000, even if his process clouded Al Gore's campaign. One would have to go back to the Vietnam and Watergate years to find similar public and media pressure, but Nixon was not running for election when he resigned.

Since 2016, Donald Trump has been able to attract public attention to himself. It would seem that his political communication strategy has reached the decisive moment of its existence. American democracy, the oldest and longest-standing democratic expression of modernity, the most influential and decisive, now and for the next 60 days revolves around the sphere of a figure who has not managed to reduce the uncertainties of a country and a world that coincide for the time being only in their alarming complexity. The growing spread of the coronavirus has ended up feeding uncertainty and encouraging doubts in the United States and international society.

The other electoral figure in this majority system, in this battle between two sides where whoever wins takes it all, that of the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, a liberal, two-time vice-president with experience in foreign policy and in Washington, also appears as an uncertain alternative. Perhaps trusting that a low profile in the pre-campaign would allow the president's deterioration to make extreme political debate unnecessary in the 2020 elections, the moderate and elderly Biden has seen the latest polls and the stock markets warn of the fresh impetus the campaign is gaining in the final two months. His certainties today lie in his awareness not only that he has almost half the country in his favour, but also that one part of the other almost half needs a solvent, credible and sustainable project for individual voters to cede sovereignty to him for the exercise of power over the next four years. A project that tries to recompose some multilateral alliances and strategies abroad, but in a world unlike that of 2008 or 2012. Now Biden's project needs to be aware of the size and plans of the major powers, headed by China, of the changes in the Middle East, where the United States is no longer hardly deployed in pursuit of energy and democracy, and of the needs of the emerging countries and the weaknesses of their democratic partners for whom the United States was a model of coexistence, respect for institutions, promotion of freedoms and progress.