In the succession of broadcasts and analyses after Joe Biden’s step back, it is easy to notice a couple of considerations that are very fashionable in Italy. The first concerns Michelle Obama; from the Alps to Lampedusa, the name excites a large part of the world of the Italian left, especially the youth. Michelle here, Michelle there, everyone hoping for the ex-president’s wife to step down. Too bad that in the United States this thing simply does not exist, there is no possibility, there is no one who even talks about it. It is all pure fruit of our imagination and of political analyses one to the kg, more based on (unachievable) dreams than on reality.
But there’s worse. Since yesterday evening, several analysts and politicians on the left have had their eyes lit up thinking about the new pair of candidates for the US Democratic Party: Kamala Harris for president and the current governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. “It would be the best, it would be wonderful,” repeated the host (super partes, obviously) of a TV show, “think about it: two women, one of whom is black, against two men. It would be wonderful…”
Here is the program of the new American left, and that the Italian one likes so much; women against men, a black person against two white people. In short, gender and race. That’s enough to have the right to sit in the oval office, the central place of power not only of the United States, but of the entire West. There is no talk of economics, there is no talk of international politics (for example: what to do about the war in Ukraine? How to solve the Gaza issue?), there is no talk of the challenge (or coexistence) with China, no idea about migrants and inflation. It is enough to put a woman against a man, and if he is black then that’s the best.
The weakness of this reasoning alone speaks volumes about the overall limitations of the Democratic Party (both the American and Italian ones): no political program, only slogans.
It is even more hilarious the justification that is being given today for Kamala Harris’ absence from the major international theaters. Whether it is Ukraine, Gaza, NATO or Africa, only the Secretary of State, Blinken, always moves in the name of Biden. Kamala is in Washington. Well, today we discover that “that of the US vice president is an obscure role, that works hard and well but in secret…”. Here we are again, the beatification campaign of someone who is not even too loved by her own party (still few have supported her publicly) and who was the worst vice president in the history of the United States. Imagining her in the White House with the briefcase of nuclear codes does not reassure us, not even a little.
To lead the leading Western power requires much more.
