America is an unpredictable challenge

I quickly ask Joe Biden to please step aside. The problem is, it’s not a personal decision. Or rather, if the president of the White House is deemed willing to take a step back, a power vacuum will open up that no one knows how to fill. Because choosing the leader of the world’s leading power is a very complicated process.

In which the average citizen does not know the titles – and the faces – on television. But, in fact, it responds to precise and very complex rules.

Let’s start with seniority. Contrary to a recent trend on the European scene, the majority of American presidents are long-term politicians, indeed very long-term politicians. Obama’s exemption quickly backfired with Clinton’s candidacy, helping to reaffirm the central role of family ties in passing the presidential baton. Before Obama, the young Bush literally inherited the White House scepter from his father. The most important requirement for aspiring to an imperial seat is ensuring that one is part of a wider and more integrated network of relationships with the company: corporate, financial, cultural. The European observer, traveling to basically homogeneous countries and resulting from ancient national histories, cannot even begin to imagine what the construction and management of a network of personal relationships involving fifty different states, such as California and Alabama, is. Artificial intelligence, and old and new media influence millions of users. As with elections in Europe, they are governed almost exclusively by parties – but with genuinely interested stakeholders willing to take a side and/or sit at the decision-making table – in the worst case scenario. Or on the other hand, and contributing their own money to the success of a candidate.

With this we enter the heart of the race, the barrier – Landmine – of primaries. A challenge – as we’ve seen on many occasions – is that it’s often unpredictable, as something enticing with the establishment factor comes into play. A gift that can’t be improved, and most of the time you’ll find out straight away. And, perhaps, when it is too late to make amends or back down, as happened with the Vice President, he turns from a life-saving crutch to a terrible handicap in the succession game.
From this short list, it’s clear that even if Biden steps down, it will be a leap in the dark. In theory there would still be time to start fresh. But to credibly aspire to become Trump’s adversaries, it would be at least essential to have a high-profile crowd in the starting lineup, already equipped with the credentials — and the electoral machinery. There is nothing, and, at the point we are in, there is unlikely to be anything.

And because – like it or not – the individual factor still plays a decisive role in the first and last instance. Biden is certainly aware of the context we have described, and the chasm that opens if he steps aside. But why would he accept it, even if he believed that a window might open for an alternative and stronger candidacy? What movement of the soul would compel a man to leave the pinnacle of worldly power, freely and unrestrainedly?
Perhaps, only health conditions. If they spoil too quickly. But from what we’ve been told, it doesn’t sound like much to those who don’t want to see Donald Trump return to Capitol Hill without breaking the windows.

Read the full article
On Il Matino