When US President Joe Biden first ascended to the White House as the commander-in-chief of the country, there was an undeniable air of optimism and familiarity. He promised to bring back normalcy, after the turbulent years of Trump, and floated big ideas like complete control of the coronavirus pandemic, economic rejuvenation and withdrawal from “pointless, foreign wars”.
Now, a few months into his presidency, Biden is facing the political fight of his life as he struggles to deal with a delta variant spiralling out of control in the US, a civil war in Afghanistan and major policy positions in jeopardy because of intra-party fights.
The 2022 mid-term polls are approaching and the election cycle will commence soon. The Democrats hold Congress—which they cannot afford to lose—by a wafer-thin majority, and the opposition Republicans are going hammer and tongs at the slightest of chinks in his armour.
How will Biden navigate the stormy waters?
The coronavirus plague
Even as the delta variant is rampaging through the United States, with infection cases averaging 1,00,000 for three days in a row, and hospitals in states like Arkansas and Louisiana all but overrun, Biden has to walk a tightrope. It was essential that the US get a grip on the surge in cases—the lowest-vaccinated Republican territories like Texas and Florida are facing the highest surge in cases—even while the president carefully negotiated the political landmines of vaccines and mask mandates. The latter is a very polarising issue in the country, especially in the red (Republican-controlled) and purple (swing) regions. An opinion poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in July gives an idea of just how divided the United States is on the idea—51 per cent of Americans said there should be mandates from employers that workers are required get vaccinated, while 45 per cent said it should not be the case. The Centre of Disease Control (CDC) vacillating on its mask mandate requirements—in July, it inexplicably reversed an earlier decision that allowed the vaccinated to venture outdoors without face covers—has only added to the public anger.
While it might be convenient to pigeonhole the maskers and vaxxers into the Democratic party, and the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers into the Republican side of the equation, the reality lies somewhere in the middle. As reported by numerous publications, there has been massive backlash from middle-ground voters against vaccine mandates in states like New York and lockdown mandates in places like California. It is also cleaved deeply among racial lines. As the Washington Post reported from an opinion poll, minority communities were more likely to adapt to vaccines and masks; in the study, 82 per cent of Asian Americans, 71 per cent of Latinos and 74 per cent of African Americans said they had been wearing a mask or scarf, while only 66 per cent of whites said the same.
When the pace of vaccinations in the US first began to slow, Biden backed incentives like million-dollar cash lotteries. But as new coronavirus infections soar, he is testing a tougher approach. In just the past two weeks, Biden has forced millions of federal workers to attest to their vaccination status or face onerous new requirements. He has met with business leaders at the White House to press them to do the same.
But even as Biden becomes more aggressive, he has refrained from using all his powers to pressure Americans to get vaccinated. He has held off, for instance, on proposals to require vaccinations for all air travellers or, for that matter, the federal workforce. The result is a precarious balancing act as Biden works to make life more uncomfortable for the unvaccinated without spurring a backlash in a deeply polarised country that would only undermine his public health goals.
Meanwhile, the administration has taken steps toward mandating shots for people travelling into the US from overseas. And the White House is weighing options to be more assertive at the state and local level, including potential support for school districts imposing rules to prevent spread of the virus over the objection of Republican leaders.
With the mid-term elections inching closer, Biden is facing a tough political fight from Republicans who have called his measures “draconian” and “anti-freedom”. Top Republicans are battling school districts in their own states' urban, heavily Democratic areas over whether students should be required to mask up as they head back to school reigniting ideological divides. The posture comes with some clear political incentives for Republicans. The party's base has opposed mask rules for more than a year and long recoiled at the word mandate. Still, some within the GOP's own ranks have begun to warn of the safety and political risks involved in making schools and children's health the chief battleground for an ideological fight.
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has issued an executive order threatening to cut funding from school districts that defy a statewide ban on classroom mask mandates. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster is threatening to withhold funding to schools in his state's capital of Columbia over masking rules, while Texas Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to enforce a similar order against mask mandates despite large school districts around the state, including Dallas and Austin, promising to go ahead with classroom face covering requirements.
Even the Republican gubernatorial candidate in the purple state of Virginia has decried school mask mandates in the name of parental rights.
Quicksand in Afghanistan
With Taliban ravaging Afghanistan and on the verge of capturing the capital in Kabul, Biden is stuck in a Catch-22 situation. His decision to withdraw completely from the country has invited massive criticism from the opposition Republicans, with top leaders of the party calling the move “cowardly” and “leaving an ally out in the cold”. The long war in Afghanistan, with the US staying in the country for almost 20 years now, has always been a point of debate in the US.
A majority of the American public has long wanted the war to wind down, and opinion polls reflect the sentiment. In a NORC fall 2020 poll, as Brookings reported, 34 per cent survey respondents said that they supported troop withdrawals (in exchange for the Taliban’s counterterrorism assurances as per the deal struck in Doha in February 2020), while 25 per cent said they opposed them. Thirty-four per cent of respondents to the University of Maryland polls from October 2019 were in favor of maintaining troop levels in Afghanistan, 23 per cent were in favor of reducing troop levels, and 22 per cent were in favor of removing all troops in the next year.
Biden is planning to ride that wave of sentiment, even as Republicans are pointing out that Biden was in error in the hasty manner in which the exit was implemented, and that it diminished America's standing in the world.
Biden has stood firm, swatting away all pressures for further intervention in Afghanistan. “Look, we spent over a trillion dollars over 20 years. We trained and equipped over 300,000 Afghan forces. Afghan leaders have to come together. We lost thousands—lost to death and injury—thousands of American personnel. They've got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation,” he said.
Biden said the Afghans are beginning to realise they've got to come together politically at the top. “But we are going to continue to keep our commitment. But I do not regret my decision,” he said.
Policy ideals
For Biden, this is a very significant month for crucial policy victories, hopes of which are fading deeper into the horizon with each passing day. Together, his $3.5 trillion dollar infrastructure and social and environment bills—which was passed by the US Senate recently—make up the heart of Biden's governing goals, and their enactment would likely stand as one of his legacy achievements as president. But neither wing of his party in Congress—moderates or progressives—fully trusts the other to back both packages, so leaders want to sequence votes in a way that gives neither faction an edge.
Nine moderate Democrats have now threatened to derail the budget blueprint crucial to opening the door to much of that spending. Democrats control the Congress by just three votes, giving virtually all 220 of the party's lawmakers tremendous leverage. They run the 50-50 Senate only with Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote.
In a letter to Congress Speaker Pelosi, the nine said they will not consider voting for a budget resolution mapping Democrats' ambitious fiscal plans until the House approves a separate, Senate-passed package of road, broadband and other infrastructure projects and sends it to Biden. “We simply can't afford months of unnecessary delays and risk squandering this once-in-a-century, bipartisan infrastructure package,” the centrists wrote.
That is the opposite of Pelosi's current strategy. She has repeatedly said her chamber won't vote on the bipartisan, $1 trillion infrastructure measure that moderates covet until the Senate sends the House a companion, $3.5 trillion bundle of social safety net and environmental initiatives favored by progressives.
Progressives have applied their own pressure, saying many would vote against the infrastructure measure until the Senate approves the separate $3.5 trillion social and environment bill. That larger measure is not likely to be ready until autumn.
Moderates, including many who represent swing districts and face competitive re-election races next year, are leery of that huge bill because of its massive price tag. Democrats plan to pay for much of its costs with tax boosts on the wealthy and large corporations and want it to include provisions crafting a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the US illegally, which also worry centrist Democrats.
Democrats have too much at stake to let internal turmoil sink their domestic agenda, but it was initially unclear how leaders would resolve the problem. Biden, Pelosi and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who faces a similar moderates vs progressives balancing act in his chamber, may have to present a united front about how to untie their knot and pressure rank-and-file lawmakers into line.
-Inputs from agencies