Debates and distractions

The US presidential election process is deeply flawed. It is based more on cults of personality than substantial policies. It is infected by financing from whomever has the deepest pockets. It is about sound bites and publicity rather than policy. Presidential debates exemplify these flaws in the best of times. In the days of Biden versus Trump, the idea of a debate is consumed by them. Will Biden prove himself too old and senile for the job? Will Trump demonstrate his mental unfitness? Who will sling the best insults and jibes? Who will have the wittiest rejoinder, the most withering putdown?

The presidential debate is the most relevant event to our current culture of distraction and also the least relevant to the serious issues we are actually facing as a nation. It is a play in which both candidates get to act out their animosity and supposed differences. In fact, they are aligned on far too many policies. Both Biden and Trump support Israel’s devastating and ongoing attacks on Gaza. Both Biden and Trump support restricting the rights of asylum-seekers. Both Biden and Trump support the continuation of oil drilling on public lands.

Biden aligning himself with Trump’s policies, at one level, makes little sense. Not only is Biden adopting the policies of his Republican challenger, he is adopting policies that are unpopular with a majority of the American people. A majority of Americans wants a ceasefire in Gaza. A majority of Americans wants to maintain or increase the number of asylum-seekers we admit, not decrease it. And a majority of Americans wants a decrease in fossil fuel drilling on public lands.

But at another level, the agreement of mainstream Democrats and Republicans on these policies makes perfect sense. These are the policies that allow corporate donors to make money, either directly in the case of oil drilling, or by distracting Americans from the real source of our problems – greedy corporate elites – and diverting us to focus on the “hordes of illegals coming to take our jobs” and the “horrid terrorists trying to destroy civilization”.

These are the policies that the corporate elites want and the ones they will finance. The fact that a majority of Americans disagrees with those policies is irrelevant – unless we take action to press our politicians to act on them. Does that action mean acknowledging that Biden, although problematic, is unquestionably better than Trump, so we pull the lever for him in November and then pressure him to adopt better policies? Does that action mean we refuse to vote for either Biden or Trump and vote for someone more clearly aligned to the policies we want? I can see the argument for either of those courses of action. Either way, I think it is too early to say.

I am not going to give my support to Biden more than 4 months prior to the election. I don’t need to see him throwing down with Trump on the debate stage tonight. I need to see him making better decisions for the American people between now and November.