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Biden v Trump

I’ve testified many times before Joe Biden, who was a stalwart of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before becoming Vice President. He was knowledgeable, inquisitive, and amiable. In other words, the precise opposite of Donald Trump, who is ignorant, uninterested, and grumpy. Biden will be the Democratic candidate who gets a chance to take down this entirely unworthy, corrupt, and egotistical sham of a president.

He’ll be doing it with a base the opposite of Trump’s as well. Biden will be strong among blacks and other minorities, college graduates, and women. Trump is strong among whites, high school dropouts, and men. The presidency will be decided largely by which of them gets more people out to the polls. Turnout will be crucial. This means the campaign will be ferocious, as each candidate tries to motivate his own voters with negative images of the other.

Trump will come down hard on the false allegations of Biden misbehavior in Ukraine. Rudy Giuliani will return in his role as attack dog. Biden will try to stay above that fray but will need to clarify his own and his son’s roles, about which nothing illegal has even been alleged, much less demonstrated. Biden will come down hard on Trump’s many foibles: his intemperate tweeting, his expensive golf outings, his failure to separate himself from his business interests, his appointment of incompetents, his erratic decisions, his botching of the response to Covid-19, and his softness on Putin and other autocrats.

I suppose the vice presidential candidates will be of some importance. Biden’s best bets are Amy Klobuchar, who might be able to help deliver Minnesota, and Stacy Abrams, who will turn out black voters and Sanders supporters in droves. Trump will likely dump Vice President Pence, who is a nonentity he can blame for the corona virus mess, in favor of a woman. Nikki Haley is the odds on favorite at the moment. She has been anxious to preserve her relationship with Trump after quitting her job as Ambassador to the United Nations.

On domestic policy, Trumpworld and Bidenworld are far apart. Trump wants to wreck Obamacare while Biden wants to widen it. Trump wants to roll back environmental regulations while Biden would expand them, especially in response to global warming. Trump favors tax breaks for the well off, Biden favors them for the working class and poor. Trump has increased the Federal deficit by close to 50%; Biden helped to halve it during the Obama administration. Trump opposes abortion while Biden favors a woman’s right to choose. Trump has failed to favor any serious gun control while Biden would tighten registration.

The candidates are also far apart on foreign policy. Biden supports America’s alliances, favors multilateralism when possible, and will be prepared to act unilaterally when necessary to protect American national security and prosperity. Trump has been willing to abandon American allies in favor of dubious autocrats, acts impulsively without consulting others (or even his own advisors), and favors foreign leaders willing to flatter him. On trade, Biden has long supported agreements that lower barriers to American exports while Trump has been willing to impose burdensome tariffs that raise the prices of imports, to the detriment of both American producers and consumers.

In the parts of the world I worry most about, the two are also far apart. Both men favor reducing American commitments in the Middle East, but Trump has done it without the necessary diplomatic backfilling whereas Biden is acutely aware of the need for continued American leadership even as the number of troops goes down. Trump has supported the Greater Israel fantasy of the settler movement while Biden is a two-stater. Trump has pursued a so far failed policy of maximum pressure on Iran in order to get Tehran back to the negotiating table. Biden would take the US back into the nuclear deal and seek to negotiate further agreements from inside it.

In the Balkans, Biden is a strong supporter of the Dayton agreements and the independence of Kosovo. Trump doesn’t know where the Balkans region is, even if his wife is Slovene. Trumpworld is nevertheless pushing changes of borders and threatening Kosovo’s prime minister if he doesn’t unilaterally back down from tariffs imposed on Serbian and Bosnian imports by his predecessor. Some in Trumpworld are even threatening withdrawal of US troops from Kosovo, forgetting that they are there these days mainly to protect the Serbs.

There haven’t been any clearer choices in my lifetime. Biden is my choice.