A couple of European left critics of Biden during this transition period

Here are a couple of European left perspectives on the immediate political situation in the US, a video and an audio interview from former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, and one from Sahra Wagenknecht, who has been a leading figure in the German Left Party for decades. I doubt that anyone would dispute that they are both figures of "the left".

Both touch on the perennial point of dispute within the US Democratic Party, class vs. social identity. It seems that everyone has their own take on how those divisions actually break down and their own preferred descriptions for them. Felix Schilk in a recent essay refers to the terms "economic cleavage" and "cultural cleavage" to refer to those differences, noting that they are common terms in academic research on populism. ("Die soziale Frage als Ordnungsproblem," Das faschistische Jahrhundert, 2020)

The use of "cleavage" to talk about party affiliations is identified in political science with a concept elaborated in 1967 by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan. Without folding in the particular structural analysis they made, these could be useful terms in discussed the "intersectionality" issue involved in understanding the current political distinctions among the center-left, the populist left, and the populist right in European and American politics.

Varoufakis gives a statement on the current US poltiical situation on behalf of the small DiEM25, for which in the serves as a Member of Parliament in Greece for the national party affiliate. Yanis Varoufakis on the 2020 US election DiEM25 11/10/2020:

His interview with Wolfgang Münchau of the Eurointelligence podcast can be found here at Varoufakis' blog, In conversation with Eurointelligence’s Wolfgang Munchau on Trumpism, European fiscal discipline & the US-China Cold War – 10th November 2020

Varoufakis thinks that Democratic progressives in the US are generally on the correct path. He suggests that it's key for Democratic progressives to remember, "It was Obama's failures that gve rise to Trump." And that he uses to stress the need for adequate economic and social policies to give a wider circle of voters and emotional stake in progressive Democratic policies.

Sahra Wagenknecht YouTube talk in her weekly Thursday video podcast is here, Böser Trump, guter Biden? Warum wir uns keine Illusionen machen sollten 11/12/2020:

In the notes to the video, she includes this message, which is not a transcript of the video. I've included it below, with my paragraph breaks added, and my translation into English below.

Joe Biden hat die US-Wahl gewonnen. Aber wird jetzt wirklich alles besser? Dafür lohnt ein Blick in die Biographie des neuen Präsidenten: Wer ist Joe Biden? Wofür steht er? Was hat er in der Vergangenheit gemacht?

Die Antworten sind ernüchternd. Um das tief gespaltene Land zu einen, helfen ein paar schöne Reden und symbolische Akte nicht. Das für viele Medien erneut überraschende Ergebnis von Trump ist Ausdruck davon, wie viele Menschen sich vom politischen »Establishement«, für das Biden steht wie kaum ein anderer, nicht vertreten fühlen.

In den deindustrialisierten Regionen der USA herrschen Armut, Kriminalität, Perspektivlosigkeit – und Politiker, von beiden Parteien, schauen seit Jahrzehnten weg. Die mangelhaften sozialen Sicherungssysteme, in denen Menschen nach 5 Jahren Bezug von Sozialleistung für den Rest ihres Lebens nichts (!) mehr bekommen außer Essensmarken, die schlechte medizinische Versorgung für weite Teile der Bevölkerung, lebenslange Schulden für einen Hochschulabschluss, explodierende Mieten und Immobilienpreise, Obdachlosigkeit, die Drogenkrise, Millionen Menschen in Gefängnissen, steigende Suizidraten, sinkende Lebenserwartung – diese und andere Probleme mögen sich unter Trump weiter verschärft haben, doch die Ursachen für die extreme soziale und kulturelle Spaltung des Landes liegen viel tiefer.

Ich hoffe sehr, dass jetzt besser Zeiten anbrechen. Bidens Bilanz aus fast 50 Jahren politischer Tätigkeit lässt anderes befürchten.

[Joe Biden won the US election. But is everything really getting better now? It's worth a look at the new president's biography: Who is Joe Biden? What does it stand for? What has he done in the past?

The answers are sobering. To unite the deeply divided country, a few fine speeches and symbolic acts do not help. The surprising result of Trump for many in the media is an expression of how many people feel unrepresented by the political "establishment" that Biden stands for like no other.

In the de-industrialized regions of the US, poverty, crime, lack of prospects – and politicians, from both parties, have been looking away for decades. The flawed social security systems in which people get nothing (!) for the rest of their lives after 5 years of receiving benefits except food stamps, poor medical care for large parts of the population, lifetime debt for a college degree, skyrocketing rents and property prices, homelessness, the drug crisis, millions of people in prisons, rising suicide rates, falling life expectancy – these and other problems may have worsened under Trump, but the causes of the extreme social and cultural division of the country lie much deeper.

Biden won the US election. But is everything really getting better now? It's worth a look at the new president's biography: Who is Joe Biden? What does it stand for? What did he do in the past?] (my emphasis)

Both Varoufaks and Wagenknecht articulate the idea that working-class voters were attracted to Trump in signficant part because they felt that politicians were not listening to them. This is okay as a throwaway campaign line. But in American politics, "I don't feel listened to" has become a stock complaint, essentially meaningless without more specific context. Especially for voters whose "cultural cleavage" includes a particular disdain for black people and Latinos, for instance, "I don't feel listened to" is a socially safe of saying they support extremely conservative Republicans without copping to more explicit prejudices.

And of course, here's where the "cultural cleavage" overlaps with the "economic cleavage." On the one hand, for many people the cultural cleavage actually is subjectively more important than any feelings of the now-proverbial "economic anxiety" in their voting decisions. Race and gender and nationalist sentiments count. But at the same time, the material conditions produced by extreme economic inequality, declining incomes, and increased economic security have a huge though not entirely predictable effects on how people experience the cultural cleavage. As Varoufakis notes, extreme economic problems have fueled left as well as rightwing movements in the past.

Varoufakis and Wagenknecht both also stress that Trump didn't start any new wars. This is true. Trump didn't go try to occupy any additional countries with US troops. Obviously, you can't say much about four years of US foreign policy in a sentence or two. But as a polemical point to argue against future unnecessary wars under the Biden-Harris Administration, it makes sense. E.g.: Even Donald Trump didn't do anything as drastic as invading Country X!

But it's important to remember that Trump's "America First" foreign policy was never a peace policy, any more than the Republican isolationism of the pre-World War II America First movement or its immediate postwar "isolationist" successors were. It is a narrowly nationalistic, militaristic view of foreign policy.

I am confident that the level of incompetence that has always characterized the Trump-Pence Administration has been a significant reason that his foreign policy hasn't been even worse. Speaking of invasion, the Administration's exceptionally clownish regime-change operation against Venezuela also included an even more fumbling attempt at an invasion of "freedom fighters" than the Pay of Pigs invasion of 1961 against Cuba. And Trump almost blundered into war with Iran early this year with his targeted assassination strike on a senior Iranian general. (Qasem Soleimani: US kills top Iranian general in Baghdad air strike BBC News 01/03/2020)

The Trump-Pence Administration also fueled the war in Yemen, an ongoing horror show. (War in Yemen Council on Foreign Relations Global Conflict Tracker; accessed 11/11/2020).

The last four years have been yet another serious setback for nuclear nonproliferation, with Trump's sad farce of negotiations with North Korea and his pulling out of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Trump was operating on a genuinely primitive view of foreign policy and international trade and self-enrichment for the Trump family business. A constructive peace policy is something very different.

In terms of EU-European relations, Biden won't be as obnoxious as Trump. But Varoufakis discusses how the expectation of a much better relationship with the US the next four years may remove some of the subjective urgency of strengthening the European Union. Britain has left the EU, weakening both Britain and the EU as actors capable of influencing international events. Trump is openly hostile to the EU. But the US policy under Clinton, Bush II and Obama was to favor a broad expansion of the EU but keep the EU as a relative loose organization with limited ability to challenge US foreign policy. The Cheney-Bush national security policy was very explicit about preventing the emergence of any "peer competitor" in global power. They wanted a weaker rather than stronger EU.

But I don't think anyone on the left or center-left should be complacent about a Biden Presidency. He's facing giant public health and economic crises and a very recalcitrant QAnon-ified Republican Party that will bitterly oppose him on every front.