Delivered. During the year 2019, they were 29 to embark on the race to nominate the Democratic Party for the US presidential election in November 2020. A plethora of candidates who all had their own opinion on the unthinkable defeat of Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump in 2016. Specialist from the United States, guest researcher at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, Célia Belin shows that this battle of interpretation has guided everyone's campaign strategies. The reading grid it offers is useful for understanding the challenges of the "invisible primary", this period when debates between candidates are linked before even the slightest ballot has been counted.
Hillary Clinton's failure
According to her, there are three different readings of the political earthquake of 2016. The first is carried by the radical left embodied by Elisabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who believe that the Democratic Party lost because it did not understand the anger People. Convinced that Hillary Clinton sinned by a soft centrism, they intend to beat Trump on his own ground: by reconnecting with the popular classes, by attacking social inequalities.
The second way, represented by Pete Buttigieg, intended to reconcile the Americans, by overhauling American democracy whose institutions are exhausted. Less audible during these primaries, but very active, the third trend, in which many progressive activists find themselves – feminists, LGBTQ, African-Americans… – considers that Trump is not an anomaly, but the eminent representative of a system of oppression that must be overthrown .
Biden: restoring "the soul of America"
Célia Belin gives less importance to a fourth force, which was losing momentum at the time of writing its essay, but which is once again on the rise: the centrism embodied by Joe Biden. In the eyes of this figure ofestablishment Democrat, Trump is an accident in history, we must restore "The soul of America". The former vice president builds on his experience to rally against Bernie Sanders, now his only competitor.
The author avoids the pitfall of locking herself into a description of the candidates' programs. First of all, it does this thanks to valuable field observation work: the contrast it shows between a Bernie Sanders taking up in the megaphone the claims of McDonald's workers in a parking lot in Cedar Rapids, in Iowa, and a Pete Buttigieg offering his supporters an improvisation of jazz on the piano, before giving a speech at a meeting a few kilometers away, is striking. Above all, she was interested in the proliferation of ideas, around immigration, police violence, the climate and social inequalities, which allowed the American left to renew itself. All in all, a relevant and well-documented analysis of the American democratic landscape.
