Successful Democratic candidates for the presidency of the United States invariably campaign with promises of domestic largesse and moral uplift. They nearly always end up taking their country to war. Can Joe Biden be a rare exception to that rule, if he succeeds in defeating Donald Trump on November 3? That will depend not just on how well he and his national security team conduct U.S. foreign policy. It will also depend on how stable the world around them is. The bad news is that post-pandemic peace is another historical rarity. First, the Democratic Party's amazing century-plus track record of running on progressive policies and then going to war. Consider Woodrow Wilson, reviled by today's progressives for his racist views, but nominated and elected in 1912 as a progressive. Wilson's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Baltimore was a classic in the genre of American uplift. "We must speak," he told the delegates, "not to catch votes, but to satisfy the thought and conscience of a people deeply stirred by the conviction that they have come to a critical turning point in their moral and political development. We stand in the presence of an awakening Nation, impatient of partisan make-believe. … Nor was the country ever more susceptible to unselfish appeals to the high arguments of sincere justice." Read the whole thing. The Future of Trader Joe's Looks Bumpy — Andrea Felsted and Sarah Halzack The Kagan Court? Unpacking a Conservative Charge — Noah Feldman A Cure For Covid-19 Could Be Right Under Our Noses — Lionel Laurent Trump's Presidency in Seven Metrics — Bloomberg Opinion China Just Killed Its $491 Billion Private Loan Market — Shuli Ren Did Europe Make a Mistake Reopening Its Borders? — Chris Bryant An Epidemic of Depression and Anxiety Among Young Adults — Andreas Kluth The Real Danger With $26.5 Trillion of U.S. Debt — James Clark America Needs President Bill Lincoln — John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the 10 most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion published this week based on web readership. New subscribers to the newsletter can sign up here. |
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