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America is broken – can Joe Biden and Kamala Harris put it back together?

In another age, Joe Biden’s promise to heal the nation might have been regarded as the kind of blandishment expected from any new leader taking power after the divisive cut and thrust of an American election.

But the next president will repeat the oath of office on Wednesday sealed off from those he governs by a global pandemic and the threat of violence from his predecessor’s supporters. Biden steps into the White House facing the unprecedented challenge not only of healing a country grappling with the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world but a nation so politically, geographically and socially divided that seven in 10 Republicans say the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Surging Covid infections would have discouraged the crowds who usually turn out on the National Mall to welcome a new president. But the storming of Congress by right-wing extremists and white nationalists in support of Trump has prompted an almost total shutdown of the heart of American governance.

America is broken – can Biden and Harris put it back together?

Even before the assault on Capitol Hill, Biden warned that deepening partisanship was a threat to the stability of the United States.

“The country is in a dangerous place,” he said during the election campaign. “Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope is elusive. Instead of treating the other party as the opposition, we treat them as the
enemy. This must end”.

The enormity of the challenge was made starkly clear by the sacking of the Capitol. Most Americans recoiled in horror at the sight of their compatriots, some dressed as if ready for war, smashing up congressional offices, beating police officers and threatening to hang the vice-president. Five people died, including a member of the Capitol police.

Yet more than 70% of Republicans agree with the protesters’ core claim that November’s election was rigged and say Biden is not the legitimate president. What will it take to even begin to heal the country, as Trump is likely to maintain his role as agitator in chief? The incoming president also faces a moment of racial reckoning in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that have given new urgency of demands for America to reconcile with a bitter past and present.

Can Biden even hold together the Democratic party, as its more liberal wing advocates for police reform, a green new deal and public healthcare – not policy positions which all moderates support.

“We are so polarised that polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short term,” said Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette opinion poll in swing state Wisconsin.

“The question is whether over a little bit longer term, let’s say over the course of the year, whether Biden can win over a segment of the population to create a majority that is both willing to give him a chance and is not unhappy with his performance. That’s up in the air but I don’t think it’s inconceivable.”

The clamour for change that elected Barack Obama and then Trump has not gone away, and large numbers of Americans continue to believe the system does not work for them. For many Democrats, the key to addressing that is to think big and deliver while the party controls both houses of Congress, which may be for no more than two years.

The incoming president faces the immediate challenge of intertwined health and economic crises caused by a pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000. Trump’s mishandling of coronavirus has left testing and vaccination rates woefully short of his promises, and unemployment claims are rising sharply again as the economy struggles with the latest wave of shutdowns, infections and deaths.

Biden is likely to be judged swiftly on his ability to accelerate the pace of inoculations, presenting the opportunity to create early goodwill and momentum.

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