Times of moderation
Although some media have taken it upon themselves to stage Joe Biden's latest stumble, the truth is that the agreement reached between the moderate sectors of the two major parties in the US Congress to readjust the debt ceiling and avoid a downturn in the economy has been in part a success for the Democratic president. This has been recognised by the stock markets with a rise and confirms the upward trend of the balanced and centred positions of Republicans and Democrats in public opinion. On Capitol Hill, the wave of populism was reduced to a gentle tide of opposition, which once again revealed the intention of the Trumpists and the ultra-progressive Democrats to continue with their main political objective: to weaken liberal institutions so that the turmoil continues, even though the social majority is fed up with wasting energy and money on ideological, false and insubstantial struggles.
The coincidence of the agreement in Washington with the municipal and regional elections in Spain, where the rejection of the confrontational positions that the coalition government has represented suggests that the global reactionary wave to which President Sánchez has referred is, on the contrary, a trend towards understanding between moderate sectors, which wants to put an end to the infectious populism that has intoxicated politics for a long time. Trumpism and the Democratic left have been left in the minority, which has been welcomed by the economy and by common sense.
The message has been clear enough for the Republican candidates for the 2024 presidential elections to understand that the world's first power, a reference for democracies at a global level, cannot be represented by deconstructive and demagogic leaders. On the contrary, Nikki Haley, former Republican governor of South Carolina, a moderate liberal with international experience; Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey and an avowed anti-Trumpist; Mike Pence, representative of the traditional conservative sector of Republicanism, who is putting the finishing touches to his candidacy; and the governor of Florida himself, Ron De Santis, who does not disavow Donald Trump, but at the same time distances himself from the former president to build his own political space, now have in their hands the possibility of succeeding President Biden, whose age is causing him a credibility deficit.
The change of leadership in the Republican Party, which includes the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, a key player in the shift towards moderation in Washington politics, opens the door of the electoral debate to the renewed and focused proposals of the liberal-conservative sector in the United States. If the trend is confirmed, Joe Biden would find himself in the position represented by Jimmy Carter at the end of the 1970s, which served as a spur for the American centre right to regain energy and leadership under Ronald Reagan.
The reactionary wave that is building up in the left's arguments in Spain ahead of the next elections could become the last miscalculation of democratic socialism if it has not understood that, in recent times, the enemy of society is not the moderate right but the radicalised populism that has controlled the political narrative for a decade and has ended up impoverishing and wearing down society. Biden understood this in his 2020 campaign. Now the stock markets are applauding him.