Looking at the 2020 presidency and beyond
⚠️Disclaimer: This isn’t an endorsement of either candidate, but an attempt at thinking through what could come next. I think both candidates have problems and baggage — just for different reasons that aren’t explored in this post.
While anything is possible on November 3, things aren’t looking very good for President Trump. The following thoughts I’m sharing assume that Biden wins — but if politics in the last four years have taught us anything — it’s just as possible Trump wins. If that were to happen, I’d have to revise what ‘2020 and beyond’ could look like.
Now, the last few decades of American politics have had tumultuous moments, though the one right now feels the most heightened. (This could be a sort of confirmation bias about the present moment, but we’ll stick with the sentiment for now.) Unfortunately, many of the problems that the United States faces aren’t going away regardless of who wins the presidency. That may dismay both conservatives and liberals, but it’s important to have some sobriety when we look beyond the 2020 election (and since both parties believe their candidates are saving the Republic — albeit for vastly different reasons).
Here are a few of the problems we would still face under a Biden administration:
- The farthest left in the democratic party likely won’t be fond of the establishment democratic policies that’ll be similar to the Obama years.
- How long until the Kamala Harris camp starts leaking stories that Joe is ‘unfit to lead?’ Would there be tension in regards to political power between that hypothetical pair of Vice President and President?
- The things that caused the Obama swing-state voters to vote for Trump in 2016 are not going away. It was always wrong to chalk up ‘racism’ as the reason why people went from Obama to Trump. These problems especially won’t be fixed by a likely Obama style rerun in 2020.
- The nationalist style populism that Trump sparked won’t go away.
- Trump himself won’t go away. He’ll probably lead some sort of populist conversation, and who knows, his own news network? The American media also needs him. He’s big money and big ratings. How many more Trump books will we have this decade?
- Our culture war and the divisiveness of identity politics won’t go away.
- Our existential rendezvous with China won’t go away. (Think Covid-19 and their current human rights violations.)
- Congress has been polarized for the last decade. Both Trump and Obama’s big legislative wins were down partisan lines. If democrats control the house, senate, and presidency, and then they face opposition from what many liberals have labeled a ‘conservative’ and ‘illegitimate’ Supreme Court, we’ll see even more political dogfighting.
- Covid-19 has created even more income inequality.
- There’s likely more but I’ll stop here.
Again, it’s possible that Trump wins, and in that case another article with a revised list would need to be drafted. It’d have some similar problems, but some different ones that are unique to Trump.
What’s important at this moment is that conservatives (if Trump wins) and liberals (if Biden wins) realize that their candidate winning doesn’t mean all our problems are going away. We’ll still have all the ones we have now, and likely more since the future is unpredictable.
To get anywhere, we need a healthy body politic. As citizens and political consumers, we should each do our best to continue working toward de-polarizing political conversations.
I know viewers of this post will likely have different perspectives (some viewing Trump as a unique threat and others viewing Biden as a unique threat), and I know that LinkedIn isn’t the most natural place for political conversations, but LinkedIn is a hub for innovative and judicious professionals. If there’s ever a group of people that can help lead the charge toward a healthier political landscape in America, it’s here.
