Sweeping changes ahead if Biden wins

“I don’t think there will be any kind of civil war if [United States President Donald] Trump loses,” said foreign correspondent, author, and broadcaster John Matisonn in his talk at the eLimmud2 series of webinars on Sunday, 25 October. “If Florida goes to [presidential nominee Joe] Biden early, that will be the end of it.”

Matisonn has covered the White House, state department, and US houses of congress for six years. He spoke on his predictions of the outcome of the US election, and how things might change or stay the same.

He believes Biden will win the election for a number of reasons. “First, the Trump campaign spent huge amounts of money early, so Biden has a cash advantage. Second, the polls have been relatively stable since January – in Biden’s favour – while in 2016, the polls were more volatile.”

While the polls were totally off the mark four years ago, “they weren’t as wrong as people thought,” he said. They were mostly wrong in that they “underweighted” white non-college-educated voters. This has now been “re-weighted” in new models.” However, he notes that some analysts say Trump has much more support on social media, and that the election will therefore go to him.

Matisonn said that Trump had shown “autocratic tendencies”, and one of the “ironies of Trump” was that while he modelled himself as a successful businessman, he was a grossly incompetent manager who couldn’t keep staff or maintain their loyalty. “So many senior figures in his campaign and cabinet have rejected him. Even generals don’t support him. He can’t organise complexity, and has little idea of how government works,” he said.

Matisonn implied that voters now know this, and it may have an impact on their choices. By contrast, “Biden is the better candidate. He is more likeable and a better politician, who has run a strategically clever campaign – in fact, the most disciplined campaign of his life. Strategy matters. He has made very few errors.”

Matisonn said Biden had refused to take an extreme line. For example, he rejected outright a purely governmental medical aid. When #BlackLivesMatter protestors called for the defunding of the police, he said that the police need more money, not less, to improve the way they functioned. Essentially, he has “insulated himself” against any charges that Trump throws at him.

Even though Biden has his age against him and will probably only do one presidential term, he has done very well to “define himself,” said Matisonn. “He is known in America as ‘the poorest man in the senate’, who used to ride the train to and from work every day. He lost his wife and child in an accident, and later his son to brain cancer. People are empathetic to him, and he is more popular than Hillary [Clinton].”

Matisonn said there were “more undecided voters in 2016, and they voted for Trump. Now there are less undecided voters. Four years ago there were also more third party supporters. Biden has gained more support [than Hillary] in the white population, especially among white women. He has also gained [popularity] with the elderly and non-college-educated. Trump has gained support among the Hispanic population, especially in Florida. He has made Biden out to be a communist, and many in this population group fear communism. But ultimately Trump has run a really poor campaign. COVID-19 hurt him, and he has tried to get away from it, but everything he has done has just brought the discussion back to the pandemic.”

In 2016, Matisonn said, “Trump was the beneficiary of an underlying condition. He represented the grievances of ordinary working people.” These people, mainly in the “rust belt”, were the voters who gave Trump his victory. They lost their jobs when factories closed and moved to China. Many are also military veterans. “The social conditions of white poor people include high suicide rates and the use of opioids. Something bigger has to be done to change things for them. Their grievances need to be attended to, or there will be constant disruption.”

“A new president is usually a remedy for the past president,” he said, as can be seen in the way former President Barack Obama and Trump are total opposites. After the divisions sown by an “uncontrollable Trump”, it’s likely that Americans will want Biden to come in as the “soothing unifier”.

However, “We can’t go back four years, and Trump has done many things that can’t be undone.” Biden will, however, try to remedy them. “There is no question that Biden will rebuild relationships with allies and ‘unilaterals’ like the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization (WHO). He will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran deal. This is not because he thinks Iran is a benign player, but because he believes Iran and Saudi Arabia are two strategic powers and that the US should act as the middleman to stop them both getting nuclear weapons.”

His approach to China will be more hard line than Obama’s, but he won’t want to start a Cold War with them. China is “the only major country that has grown this year”, so Biden will try to “catch up”.

Meanwhile, “If Trump wins, the break with democratic allies will deepen, which will have long-term consequences,” said Matisonn. “America will be sidelined even more, and other countries will make their own deals and find their own way, becoming less dependent on the US. I don’t think Trump has a long-term strategy. Traditional Republicans dislike Trump, but they got what they wanted from him, and now wouldn’t mind if he goes.”

In terms of Israel, Matisonn said the difference between the two candidates was that “Trump backed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies. Biden is a strong friend of Israel, but not necessarily Netanyahu.”

“Biden will be good for South Africa,” Matisonn believes, saying he’s quite enthusiastic about the country. “Once he restores multilateral relationships with the WHO and the UN, it will be good for South Africa, especially during a global pandemic. There is a lot for South Africa to gain. Under Trump, there was very little engagement, and South Africa can be blamed for some of that. Biden will have more of an ‘open door’, and we will probably see President Cyril Ramaphosa go to Washington.”