Biden offered no alternative to Trump’s pro-police authoritarianism in debate

In 2020, the United States saw some of the largest protests in its history, centered around police violence and demands for restructuring public safety. CNN Moderators of Thursday night’s presidential debate did not find it necessary to directly question the candidates on these issues. And while some of them arose in the context of the opioid crisis, border control, and the general well-being of Black America, the responses offered by both candidates lacked a clear policy agenda.

Donald Trump’s dominant narrative during the debate was that Joe Biden has diminished the power of the United States by opening the border and allowing millions of “illegal immigrants” released “from prisons, detention centers, and mental institutions” to enter the country to “take our jobs,” overwhelm our health and welfare systems, and rape and kill us. This narrative of the decline of American strength and security absolves multinational corporations and Wall Street of poisoning us, creating massive inequality, and destroying the planet—the real sources of middle- and working-class insecurity. Trump’s solution is to pour ever more resources into policing, prisons, and the deportation state. In response to this powerfully toxic speech, Biden boasted that he has put more police on the streets and made some feeble claims that the police and border patrol support him — hardly a progressive or convincing counterweight to Trump’s xenophobic and authoritarian tirades.

Asked about the fentanyl crisis, Biden focused on interdiction issues, such as blocking the entry of precursor chemicals and machinery needed to process fentanyl into Mexico. There is no mention of expanding health care and harm reduction services or exploring controlled and safe distribution of opioids, which would immediately reduce the presence of fentanyl and significantly reduce the risk of drug overdose. Trump didn’t even answer the question, using his time to hammer home his main messages about migrants as threats and Biden’s overall incompetence. Rather than highlighting Trump’s complete lack of concern for the well-being of citizens, Biden’s rebuttal fell into the trap of attempting to respond to Trump’s tirades, allowing the former president to control order of the day and the tone of the debate.

The candidates were asked about stubborn racial disparities in economic, legal and social outcomes for Black Americans. Trump used the opportunity to highlight how little progress has been made under Biden and that Biden contributed to these disparities by buying into the “superpredator” myth in the 1990s. Trump also had the audacity to claim to support the “superpredator” myth. police reform,” without defining what that means. Biden has rightly highlighted the employment gains made by Black Americans under his administration and a variety of social and educational programs he supports that would have a disproportionate positive impact on the Black community, such as expanded appropriations tax for child care, Pell Grants, and support for historically black colleges and universities. But he has done nothing to address the huge disparities in the criminal justice system, despite the fact that his administration has taken some concrete steps in that direction, such as funding community violence reduction initiatives. Biden’s lack of a clear answer on this issue may be linked to his perception of the situation as a losing position. Although many in the Biden administration and its key constituents favor reducing criminalization, they believe it is politically impossible to state it clearly and openly, leaving the president to quietly support some good programs, while by publicly relying on a police-centric crime control strategy that can never rival Trump’s hard-line authoritarianism.

As long as Democrats, from Biden to city mayors, rely on pro-police policies to try to win the support of the few remaining independent voters, they will fail to win electoral victories or to establish any semblance of justice. By validating the idea that the police are the central institution responsible for ensuring public safety, Democrats are reinforcing a narrative of authoritarian crime control that they will never achieve, because the right will always go further. Their efforts to “appear reasonable” only shift the Overton window to the right. Democrats will not be able to energize their base without a bold vision of public safety that is clearly distinct from Trump’s racist diatribes.

We need a completely different vision for the overdose crisis, one grounded in values ​​of care and compassion, as well as the science of drug treatment, harm reduction and safe supply that would save lives, restore families and communities, and weaken violent international drug cartels.

We must embrace the incredible value of immigration, legal and otherwise, which has played a huge role in revitalizing entire sectors of our economy and regions of our country. We must categorically reject xenophobic policies, articulate values ​​of solidarity, and directly address our own role in creating the conditions that have driven people to leave their homes in desperation. A program of true racial justice would go beyond kneeling in Kente cloth and appointing a few nonwhite people to highly visible positions. Such a program need not be constructed as a zero-sum racial game in which the advancement of one group comes at the expense of another. A broad anti-poverty program that raises wages and essential services like education and health care would particularly benefit communities of color and help break down racial barriers rather than reinforce them. At the heart of such an effort should be a widespread reduction in our reliance on police and prisons to address problems of poverty, social dislocation, and differential access to essential services.

Trump’s debate responses reflect his allegiance to the most reactionary forces in our society—those who want to demonize immigrants, unleash corporate power, and “give a free hand” to the police so they can use whatever violence and humiliation they deem necessary to reestablish a fanciful notion of order at the expense of the most vulnerable among us. Biden’s weak policies and incoherent debate responses could give us four more years of Trump and his drive to turn America into a despotic kleptocracy.