US ‘is back’: Biden touts democracy on first overseas trip

United States President Joe Biden has begun a multiday trip to Europe with one clear goal in mind: telling the world that democracy – not autocracy – is the path forwards.

But as he carries that message overseas, back home there are Americans on the political fringes that critics fear are chipping away at the very idea Biden is aiming to sell to the world.

“We’re at an inflection point in world history. A moment where it falls to us to prove that democracies will not just endure but they will excel as they rise to seize the enormous opportunities of a new age,” Biden said on Wednesday when he landed at RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom.

Biden will meet in the UK leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations and in Brussels with NATO allies before ending the eight day trip with a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

“This is my first overseas trip as president of the United States,” Biden told troops at the airbase. “I’m heading to the G7, then the NATO ministerial and then to meet with Mr Putin to let him know what I want him to know.

“At every point along the way, we’re going to make it clear that the United States is back and democracies of the world are standing together to tackle the toughest challenges, and the issues that matter most to our future.”

Critics: Republicans are threatening democracy

As Biden left the US on Wednesday morning, a new poll revealed that nearly three in 10 Republicans believe that former President Donald Trump will be reinstated as president in the coming months.

To be clear, this is something that has never happened in US history nor is there a mechanism within the American system of government to allow that to happen.

The vast majority of Americans – 72 percent – think it is not very or not at all likely Trump will be reinstated, including 84 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independents, the Morning Consult poll (PDF) released on Wednesday found.

But 29 percent of Republicans believe it is likely, including 17 percent who say it is very likely, a result that amplifies the worries some US political observers have about the underpinnings of American democracy.

“We have to face the facts that Republicans – obviously with exceptions – have become an authoritarian party,” Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book How Democracies Die, told the Associated Press news agency last week.

“It’s impossible to sustain a democracy in a two-party system when one of the parties is not willing to play by the rules of the game.”

The idea that Trump will get his old job back is being driven by the months-long, constant drumbeat of false claims that the November 2020 election was stolen from the Republican leader.

For months, Trump pounded that message without any evidence as courts and elections officials dismissed his and his supporters’ claims.

The effort to undermine Biden’s win served as the basis for the January 6 US Capitol riot and is the driving factor behind continued attempts to bolster Trump’s unfounded theories.

Over the past months, individual members of Congress voted against the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory, partisan “audits” of presidential election ballots have been held, and Republicans in battleground states such as Florida, Georgia and Texas have rewritten voting and election rules in reaction to “fraud” that never actually occurred.

These efforts have spurred fears among critics that democracy in the US is under threat.

Arizona audit

In Arizona, a state Senate-sanctioned and highly partisan audit of the presidential election results, funded by Trump’s inner circle, it turns out, has captured the focus of the ex-president and his supporters.

They are banking on its conclusion being a catalyst for overturning results there and in other states, eventually leading to the unprecedented “reinstatement” of Trump as president.

“None of that is possible. But this is the kind of thing that he is trying to flush into the conservative media ecosystem,” The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who reported Trump has been privately touting the reinstatement idea, said on CNN last week.

The Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday also revealed that a large majority of Americans – 77 percent – believe democracy is under threat. That includes 77 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans.

“There are a lot of warning signs,” Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California-Irvine, told the AP. “It is a very dangerous moment for democracy.”