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By APD writer Alice
Joe Biden has been named the 46th president of the United States after earning a total of 290 electoral votes, but many said that a lot of challenges will wait for him behind the doorof the White House.They have begun to think about his first challenging term at the White House.
Biden's first and foremost challengeprobably lies in serious problems the US is facing, prominently the divisions among parties, the risk of President Donald Trump refusing to hand over power, and Covid-19.
The first scenario that could give Biden a headache is that President Donald Trump refuses to accept defeat. Trump could demand a recount in states that he lost to Biden and wage a legal war for weeks. Trump is also likely to not cooperate with Biden's team to carry out 11 weeks of power transfer.
Biden's presidency could begin with the danger of getting caught between two irreconcilable forces: entrenched Trump and a depressed, tired Democratic Party.
The most serious scenario for Biden's presidency is that the Republicans retain control of the Senate. While Biden won the election, many Democrats were unable to dominate the race to enter the Senate.
Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina and Republican leader at the Senate Mitch McConnell were all re-elected. The Democratic Party may also lose many seats in the House of Representatives. The newcomers may be more "Trumpist" than the President himself. One of them is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a fervent supporter of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon. Any opportunity to break the Republican fever, as former President Barack Obama once said, has been extinguished.
Biden may still pass some of its agenda on health care insurance for Americans, investment in green technology and waiver oftuition fees for middle-class students.
Edward Luce, in an analysis on the Financial Times, said that there is no chance for Biden to be able to abolish the Senate filibuster, add new states to the US such as Puerto Rico and the District of Colombia, or could not expand the Supreme Court.
The best Biden can hope for is a modest stimulus, Luce wrote, while describing Biden as a "lame duck” if he becomes presidentwithout control of the Senate.
Agreements with McConnell would be what the Democratic leftists would stay away from, but without cooperation between the two houses, the Biden government wouldn't be able to do much, according to Edward Luce.
In this situation, McConnell is holding advantages. Some issues like the federal anti-Covid-19 scheme can be enacted by a decree, but others, such as appointment of officials, require Senate approval.
The wise choice for Biden is to appoint at least one or two Republicans to the cabinet. But the left will hate this, Luce said.
With difficulties in finding a consensus between the two parties, Biden may also face many obstacles in the fight against Covid-19. The Democratic candidate and his allies tried to turn the presidential election into a referendum on how Trump had dealt with the pandemic.
Adam Tooze, professor of history at Columbia University, said this is not the "winning card". Nearly half of Americans disagreed with President Trump's response to Covid-19, a pandemic that killed more than 200,000 people. If Biden is elected, the anti-Covid-19 effort will be placed on his shoulders and it will certainly not be an easy task in the early days of his term.
Without a collective effort against Covid-19, this fight could only expect the availability of a vaccine. However, this path does not guarantee success, according to Tooze.
The economic recession with millions of people still unemployed due to the impact of the pandemic will be a difficult problem to Biden if becoming president.
The second major challenge to the Biden administration will be foreign policy. The Democratic candidate had declared that he would make important changes in US foreign policy if he wins the election. Many people close to the former US Vice President said that when in power, Biden will immediately reverse a series of policies of the Trump administration on many issues, from Iran, climate change, Covid-19, and the World Health Organisation (WHO), to North Korea.
Biden's goal is to rebuild alliances to heal "rifts" in the US’s international relationsand deal with the climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic through cooperation among countries. His ambition is to bring the US back to the role of "big brother" of the world.
Edward Luce argued that foreign policy would be an area where the new US president could decide more freely on domestic issues. However, what President Trump has left on the US over the past four years is not something that can be easily reversed.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
