Much of America will heave a collective sigh of relief if Joe Biden becomes America’s next president. All of the wokes and some in the right-wing as well. The racist Trump would have gone and would have taken the canker of racism from America’s body politic along with him. But racism in America didn’t start with Trump and will not end with Trump.
Police brutality against minorities will continue in Biden’s reign, as it did under Barack Obama’s. There will only be feeble attempts, if any, at police reform. Remember the beer summit during Obama’s time, when the black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was arrested because he couldn’t get into his own house. Biden was there to defuse the anger of the police against comments that Obama had made against them.
And that was the end of police reform for the next eight years of the Obama-Biden administration.
America is reeling under the onslaught of the pandemic. The economy desperately needs to be revived. Trump inherited a strong economy from Obama and let it rip further by lowering taxes and removing regulations. That will be Trump’s recipe to revive the economy if he wins. Biden on the other hand promises to resuscitate the economy with the green new deal and the millions of jobs that he says it will create.
Whether the green new deal costs ten trillion dollars or a hundred trillion dollars, trying to convert a fossilfuel economy such as the one that we have into one based strongly on renewable energy has failed miserably. And that too not too long ago. Obama and Biden poured tens of billions of dollars into the green economy but their bundlers and financiers made out like bandits with the money by building fake companies. Even Bill Gates has admitted that wind and solar are not ready for prime time because they are intermittent.
Fracking created about half a million jobs in Obama’s first term and was essential to making him win his second term. Obama let fracking go unimpeded, only banning it from federal lands. He even promoted America’s fracking technology to China and Poland.
Biden on the other hand has been all over the map with fracking. During the Democratic primaries he said that there would be no new fracking under him. Now he’s singing a different tune to win the general election. But the wokes in his party, the Kamala Harrises and the AOCs, are dead-set against fracking. Yes, Biden will be president, but can he afford to antagonize his woke base, especially since he would have another term to win.
The key to fracking is not to ban it or limit it but contain the pollution that emits from it, as President Trump outlined in the last presidential debate.
Biden faces tremendous foreign policy challenges. One has been hidden from public view. Al Qaeda has been planning to nuke America for over 20 years. How is that threat going to be combated? And just in case Al Qaeda succeeds in its nefarious plans, what is America’s response going to be? Al Qaeda is not dead, it is alive and kicking. I have written a book, Inside Al Qaedas Plot to Nuke America, which is available on Amazon.
The second major challenge is Iran. Obama and Biden deeply antagonized the Sunni Gulf States as well as Israel by inking the deal with Iran. Saudi Arabia and Israel are traditional allies of the US. Trump has restored amity with them and between them. I hail from India. Iran has made shrill noises on Kashmir annoying India no end. India has become firm friends with Israel and the Sunni Gulf States.
Thus a real friendship has emerged between the US, Israel, the Sunni Gulf States, and India. By reentering a deal with Iran, Biden will only break the coalition against Iran. Israel, the Sunni Gulf States, and even India may abandon the US. Does Biden really want to do that?
Trump has been accused of undoing all that Obama and Biden achieved. But Biden promises to upend everything that Trump has done. Biden will take us back into an already-proven unsustainable era of building the economy. Biden will spurn America’s dearest friends in order to clasp the hand of a crafty enemy. Biden has outlined no plans against Al Qaeda’s nuclear threat. Biden will flail around with police reform. All of this will happen if Joe Biden becomes America’s next president.
The writer is an expert on energy and contributes regularly to publications in India and overseas.