Journey of Mushtaq Rajpar
US Politics-Trump Era
Indicting Trump
The United States Senate is scheduled to start hearings into former president Donald Trump’s second impeachment, passed by the US Congress. Though unlikely to be convicted by the Senate, the indictment itself is historic in nature as never before has a US president been impeached twice in his tenure.
How did Biden win?
Donald Trump is not the only American president in recent American political history who has not been elected for a second term.
Jimmy Carter in the 1980s and George Bush in the 1990s could not avail a second tenure because of their failure on the foreign policy front. American voters felt that Trump has failed them on both accounts. Observing the US presidential election in 2020, one notices a striking contrast between the past two presidents who lost elections mainly because of domestic reactions to their foreign policies. In this election cycle, a large number of voters and both the candidates touched very little on foreign policies.
Dangerous divide
The November 3 US presidential election will be the first one whose outcome is already scary and uncertain, not in terms of who will win, but whether the result will be accepted, or a new wave of intensified conflict will begin, ending up in the US Supreme Court.
Elections are meant to give legitimacy to an elected majority to rule and to put an end to electoral rivalry. It is seen as a democratic method to resolve conflict in societies. This US presidential election does not present the traditional case though. President Trump has repeatedly expressed his unwillingness to concede defeat if he fails to win. He will accept results only if he wins.
Democratic voters in the small state of Iowa are set to vote for their party’s nominee for the November Presidential election today on Monday, February 3.
At stake are only 41 delegates out of a total 4979, which is less than one percent, but the amount of time, resources and energies that the contesting candidates spend in this state is greater than any other primary.
Iowa gets huge national attention mainly because for many candidates it is a make or break primary. There is a lot of history involved in the primary of this state. Two prominent candidates who won the Iowa primary ultimately won the presidential nomination – Jimmy Carter (from Georgia) and Barack Hussain Obama (Chicago).
The gamble backfires
Trump’s assertion that the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani would save American lives has proven wrong.
On many accounts, Trump’s unwise move to kill Gen. Soleimani has backfired; Americans are not celebrating killing of alleged top terrorists. Neither Democrats nor some even in his own party have applauded the action. As a matter of fact, the legality of Trump approving a drone strike against a sovereign country’s top general has come under question.
After the 9/11 attacks, this is first time that the US Congress has passed a non-binding resolution to curtail the president’s war powers, fearing Trump’s impulsive temperament could land the country and the world at a greater risk of war.
Political storm in America
US President Donald Trump is facing impeachment in the House of Representatives over accusations of abusing his power for personal political gains, to influence the 2020 presidential election and to reassure his second tenure in office.
On the other hand, the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination race has deepened the divide between moderates and the progressive left. Within the party, there are currently 15 candidates bidding to be the party’s nominee for next year’s election.
When the race for nomination started the number of candidates was over 20, and most recently two more candidates have joined the growing field for nomination, including billionaire and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, something that never happened before. Why are there so many candidates within the party this time? Why does each one of them think that he/she is the right person to defeat Donald Trump?
ached twice in his tenure.
American disorder
US President Donald Trump’s attempts to shake America (which, to him, is equivalent to making America great again) have persisted with no end in sight. In less than two years in public office, he has managed to rankle politicians, the media and the people with his views on long-standing policies, alliances and trade agreements.
Trump has questioned the two pillars of the US-led, post-war new world order: Nato and free trade. In the past, US diplomats in Pakistan believed that there was never a dull moment in Pakistan’s politics. There was always something happening. This view now holds true for the US, where tweets from the president set the agenda for television debates, providing an opportunity for policymakers to react and Trump’s supporters to defend his stance. Despite large demonstrations against him, Trump still enjoys support from 45 percent of America’s white population.
The man in the White House is in the midst of a political storm. Donald Trump chooses his team members on one day and sacks them the next. At one point, he insisted on withdrawing troops from Syria, but eventually decided to change his tack without an endgame and a future strategy when he carried out airstrikes in the country.
There is no plan of action that can explain what the US president means by his emphasis on ‘America first’. The FBI’s decision to raid the office of Trump’s personal lawyer – who is widely viewed as the president’s middleman in New York – and the findings gleaned from other ongoing investigations have revealed that the aggressive posture is only a diversion tactic.