Earlier this morning the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States Joe Biden took place in Washington DC.
Associate Professor Tim Kuhner from Auckland University is the author of Capitalism v. Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution and the co-author of Democracy by the People.
He joined Summer Times to discuss the predicament Biden finds himself in as new president in a country so divided.
Photo: AFP
“Things have gotten so bad in the United States that we rejoice simply being able to inaugurate the lawful winner of an election without continuing violence. It’s amazing that things we would have taken for granted, a peaceful transition of power or belief in electoral results, are something that, today, we feel to be an incredible achievement when they actually occur.”
Kuhner says the situation in America is still “ablaze” due to extremist groups that have been empowered by Donald Trump’s rhetoric.
“I don’t think it can be solved quickly. Once people have been radicalised, once those habits of looking at evidence and having a civil debate on the merits of issues, once those sorts of democratic habits have been destroyed and replaced by undemocratic habits it’s much harder to recover democracy.
“Democracy is so fragile, it’s much harder to rebuild than maintain. Even had Hillary [Clinton] won in 2016, she would have been facing these incredible economic inequalities and political inequalities and legitimate policy issues like climate change, but you fast forward four years and you’re simply trying to rebuild the fundamental bricks of democracy.”
He says that, before Trump was elected, there was already a major gap in democracy – the political exclusion of people based on wealth.
“We have this incredibly expensive system, a privatised system of financing our campaigns, our political parties, and our lobbyists and that’s a big part of what I think the Trump electorate was actually responding to; that they were politically powerless and they were in a situation of economic insecurity.”
Kuhner says Trump was right in saying there was a swamp in Washington but instead of draining it as promised, he became very much a part of it and used it to empower his cronies.
“He wasn’t wrong that there was a swamp and that elites had abandoned the average person and there were serious problems from international trade and our relationship with China.
“I would hope that Biden and the Democrats would get back on the side of ordinary people, that’s what I would hope.”
