A grande dama da democracia americana: Nancy Pelosi - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose (CNN)

 CNN Meanwhile in America

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

The true power in Washington

Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Democratic Unity Dinner in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Saturday.

Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden reached the dizzying heights of the United States presidency.   But the most powerful Democratic leader of the first quarter of the 21st century is Nancy Pelosi.   The former House speaker has officially retired as Washington’s top Democrat. But she was back moving her chess pieces again in recent weeks, as the critical player who at first subtly, and then forcefully, pushed President Joe Biden aside after she judged that he could no longer beat ex-President Donald Trump in November. If Vice President Kamala Harris pulls off a victory against the Republican nominee in November, it will count as Pelosi’s most audacious political triumph yet.   The California Democrat wasn’t elected to Congress until she was 47 – she had spent the previous two decades bringing up her five kids – but she had politics in her bones as the daughter of Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., a congressman and mayor of Baltimore.   She shattered a glass ceiling in becoming the first woman speaker after leading Democrats to a majority in the midterm elections in 2006 and was instrumental in stifling Republican President George W. Bush’s power in his final two years and preparing the way for the first Black president, Barack Obama.   If it wasn’t for Pelosi, Obama would never have passed his signature domestic accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act. The speaker threaded the narrowest of political needles to get it done. When Donald Trump shocked Democrats by winning the presidency in 2016, Pelosi became his most effective countering force in Washington – and led Democrats back to control of the House in 2018 and reclaimed the speaker’s gavel.    Pelosi’s efforts led to Trump’s two impeachments, a stain in history no other president has suffered. And she again marshaled a restive Democratic coalition as speaker to secure Biden’s critical early legislative achievements, managing her caucus with expertise in the first two years of his term, before Democrats again lost the House.   Pelosi still represents her California district and, as a prolific fundraiser and behind-the-scenes political strategist, she’s been working to try to ensure that her heir, Hakeem Jeffries, becomes the first Black speaker with Democrats hoping to win back the House in November. The fear that objective could be drowned by Biden’s unpopularity was surely one of the reasons that Pelosi was so active in leading a weekslong pressure campaign to get him to step aside. And she also recognized that everything she had  accomplished in two spells as speaker was at risk from an extreme Trump second term and a Republican Congress that would do nothing to restrain him.   It is a mark of her aura that everyone in Washington --- including Biden – understood that when Pelosi has made up her mind, she’s almost impossible to resist.

D Day, 1944: the greatest generation, 80 years ago - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose (CNN Meanwhile in America)

Before endeavors fade

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

CNN Meanwhile in America, June 5, 2024

 

The new world for which the greatest generation sacrificed in the bloody surf of the Normandy beaches is fading into history along with the last of the old soldiers.

 

The 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings observed by President Joe Biden in France on Thursday will likely be the last major decennial commemoration attended by significant numbers of veterans. Even a 19-year-old who stormed ashore in the biggest amphibious operation in history would soon be 100.

 

Biden is certain to cite an unrepayable debt owed to US, British, Canadian and other troops involved in Operation Overlord. He’ll walk among row upon row of white crosses and Stars of David shaded by pine trees and oaks overlooking Omaha Beach. This is where more than 9,000 fallen Americans from all 50 states and the District of Columbia lay at rest thousands of miles from the land they left to save foreigners they’d never met.

 

This year’s memorial ceremony represents far more than a poignant farewell to surviving comrades of more than 150,000 allied troops that forged a beachhead for the liberation of Europe from Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

 

Presidents, prime ministers and monarchs from NATO nations are gathering at a paradoxical moment. They are unusually united but experiencing growing dread. The alliance has a new sense of mission in opposing another war started by a tyrant bent on territorial expansion — this time in Ukraine. But at no point since June 6, 1944, has US leadership of the West and support for internationalist values that the invasion enshrined been so in question. 

 

Democracy is facing its sternest test in generations from far-right populism on the march on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Geopolitical empires like Russia and China are meanwhile resurgent and threatening to obliterate the global system dominated by Western values that has prevailed since World War II.

 

European nations that were already rattled by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s constant attacks on NATO in his first term have been further rocked by his recent comment that he’d let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” with allies that he regarded as failing to “pay their bills” on defense spending. The comment weakens the foundational NATO creed of mutual self-defense, without which the alliance has no meaning. Some of Trump’s ex-advisors have warned that he might try to exit the alliance if he wins a second term in November. Even if Biden wins, there are growing indications that America’s willingness to maintain the security guarantees — even to former enemies like Germany and Japan that bought 80 years of peace — may be waning.

 

Trump’s “America First” philosophy has taken deep root in the Republican Party that once prided itself on winning the Cold War. Some GOP figures, led by the ex-president, now appear to have more empathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin than for the liberal European democracies that the United States rebuilt after World War II. And the months-long delay in funding Biden’s most recent aid package for Ukraine has raised doubts that Washington will always stand up for democracy in Europe.

 

 

US elections: These two states could decide it all: Michigan and Wisconsin - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu, Shelby Rose (CNN Meanwhile in America)

These two states could decide it all

 Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

CNN Meanwhile in America, April 3, 2024

By November, you’ll be bored with hearing about Wisconsin and Michigan.

 

The two midwestern states might well hold the key to the second terms that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden crave, but that only one can claim.

 

Because the US electoral system works on a state-by-state basis rather than according to a nationwide popular vote, presidential candidates must plot a path to the White House through a handful of states that are competitive.

 

This year, in a country that is becoming increasingly polarized, there are even fewer swing states than usual. Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina make most lists. But there’s a strong case that the election will be decided in Wisconsin and Michigan.

 

In 2016, Trump won both, shocking Hillary Clinton on turf that her campaign had assumed was solidly Democratic. In 2020, Biden grabbed them back and made Trump a one-termer. The Midwestern pair could be even more critical in 2024. If Biden clings onto Pennsylvania and keeps Michigan and Wisconsin in his column, he will almost certainly be president again. He can even drop two far western states — Arizona and Nevada — that he won last time but that are tight in 2024.

 

This explains why Wisconsinites and Michiganders will see a lot of Biden and Trump. The former president had both on his itinerary on Tuesday, in a rare venture away from the court room and the golf course. Trump knows that if he can repeat his double win from 2016, Biden will probably have to find a much harder long-shot route to 270 electoral votes, assuming the rest of the map remains stable. The President in fact would have to fashion some combination of Georgia and Arizona that he won in 2020 and North Carolina which Trump carried — to get back to the White House.

 

Wisconsin and Michigan offer a passable approximation of the US as a whole. Both include cities — like Milwaukee and Detroit and their suburbs — where Democrats prosper and deep red rural areas that Republicans rule. Both reflect Biden’s current troubles. High interests rates and grocery prices are making life tough for many.  In Michigan, Arab American voters are critical of the president’s support for Israel in its war in Gaza. 

 

Biden needs to block Trump’s bid to claim a higher share of the Black vote in the cities than Republicans normally get. In Wisconsin, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could pose a particular threat to the president among disaffected Democrats. Trump, meanwhile, is trying to play up fears of auto workers around the Motor City that Biden’s support for electric vehicles could cost them their jobs. 

 

So there is an opening for the ex-president in two states that polls suggest are currently too close to call. And then there’s this. These two battlegrounds that could decide the election will probably depend on just a few thousand votes.

What happened to the new world order? - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu, Shelby Rose (CNN)

Todo mundo quer uma nova ordem mundial, desde que seja a seu favor. Alguns embarcam na conversa de outros. É o que está acontecendo agora mesmo com a diplomacia lulopetista.

What happened to the new world order?

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose CNN in America, Sept 5, 2023

 

At the G20 summit in London in 2009, Britain's then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown heralded a “new world order” in which rich and developing nations would come together to tame the inequities and excesses of globalization.

 

At the height of a global financial crisis, Brown declared a “new progressive era of international co-operation.” Fourteen years later, the G20 summit in India later this week will reflect how hopes of a global order based on a Western rules-based system have splintered, the world's division into democratic and autocratic camps, and the way in which internal populism and protectionism in many states have eroded pushes for free trade. Brave words about reforming carbon economies now face resistance as the economic price and political complications of fighting climate change emerge. Xi Jinping, the leader of the world’s new superpower, China, won’t even show up to the summit. G20 member Russia is a pariah over the war in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin cannot risk travel in case he’s arrested for war crimes on an international warrant.

 

It’s unlikely that the G20 meeting will produce any consensus on the war in Ukraine, given that Russia and probably China would block it. The biggest risk of the summit is that it could actually heighten antagonism between many of the Western and developing nations that the group was set up to bridge. Any new mistrust between Western democracies and developing states in the G20 of course plays into the hands of Putin and Xi.

 

Xi’s reasoning is often opaque, but his no-show might be a protest at simmering border tensions and rising geopolitical angst with the great eastern Pacific superpower India, or could even be motivated by internal economic concerns over a property market crisis in China. But Xi did find time to attend an summit of the BRICS nations in Johannesburg last month. The group -- including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- welcomed new members Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates. The move was widely interpreted as another step by China toward creating its own competing world order to the US and its allies, in which it leads a group of developing states. In that light, his absence from the G20 takes on a whole new perspective.

 

US President Joe Biden said at the weekend that he was disappointed that he wouldn’t see Xi, after a flurry of US foreign policy and trade officials visited Beijing in a bid to slow plummeting relations. Biden might still be able to set up a bilateral meeting with Xi at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in San Francisco in November. But the jury is still out on whether Beijing is as keen on easing crisis-hit relations as much as Washington is.

 

Xi’s absence could offer Biden an opening to push forward his relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom he welcomed to a glittering state dinner at the White House in June. The US would like to nudge India closer to security arrangements and political groupings involving its allies in the Pacific, as it seeks to counterbalance rising Chinese power. But India is likely to go only so far, as its historic non-aligned status evolves into a posture of trying to have a foot in both camps. New Delhi has disappointed the West by failing to forcefully condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has profited from cheap Russian oil following a boycott by US-allied nations. As a rising power that is still regarded as a developing nation, India is a leading member of both the BRICS and the G20.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping during the 2023 BRICS Summit in Johannesburg.

O dia que vai encerrar o apoio dos EUA à luta pela soberania e democracia na Ucrânia - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose (CNN)

 

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose CNN Meanwhile in America, March 7, 3023

Will Ukraine be a big loser in the 2024 US election?

China might soon give it a run for its money, but no foreign nation has been dragged deeper into US politics in recent years than Ukraine.   In 2019, a rookie President Volodymyr Zelensky (top right) was the unfortunate recipient of what Donald Trump misleadingly termed a “perfect” call: The then-US president tried to use military aid to extort him to open an investigation into his eventual Democratic rival Joe Biden.   Ukraine has played a huge role in Biden’s presidency as well -- after the brutal Russian invasion led to an extraordinary US and Western attempt to ensure its survival with billions of dollars in arms and aid.   Now, as it heads into the second year of a vicious war, Ukraine’s plight is again about to be tied up in America’s extreme and shifting politics. First, radical members of the new Republican majority launched an attempt to halt its lifeline of American aid. The stirring Republican presidential race meanwhile brings more bad news, with two potential top candidates who take a dim view of Kyiv’s fight for freedom.   Trump says he'd end the war in Ukraine in one day -- claiming that doing so would avert World War III -- while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (top middle) is keener on waging a culture war than a proxy one to save a foreign democracy. Their positions might be bad news for democracy, but they make sense politically in the scorched earth politics of the Republican primary. Support for US military aid to the country has decreased compared with last spring, according to an AP-NORC survey conducted in late January -- and the decline was sharper among Republicans, falling from 53% in May 2022 to 39% .    In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Trump seemed eager to rekindle his genuflecting relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. ... I will get the problem solved. And I will get it solved in rapid order and it will take me no longer than one day," Trump said. "I know exactly what to say to each of them," he added, before hinting at a potential strategy of siding with the aggressor in the war by reminding his audience, "I got along very well with Putin." DeSantis has yet to declare his campaign. But he’s already warned against the possibility of a proxy war with China in Ukraine after Washington told Beijing not to send weapons to Russia. And in his new book, he lashed out at US democracy promotion overseas, especially under ex-President George W. Bush who launched the Iraq war 20 years ago this month. A tough primary against Trump, who is gearing up to accuse Biden of caring more for Ukrainians than Americans, would probably force DeSantis to adopt his former mentor’s hardline position.   If one of these two Republicans were to win the White House, Biden’s vow to stand with Russia in its fight for Ukraine may have an expiry date: The day of the next US presidential inauguration on January 20, 2025.

Presidents' Day ... in Ukraine - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose (CNN Meanwhile in America)

CNN, February 20, 2023

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

Presidents' Day ... in Ukraine

US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embrace in Kyiv after their visit to the Wall of Remembrance to pay tribute to killed Ukrainian soldiers on Monday.

There is no more powerful symbol of Vladimir Putin's failure. A year ago, the Russian leader launched a blitzkrieg against Ukraine, mocking its history and sovereignty, sending his tanks churning toward Kyiv to obliterate the democratically elected government led by a former comic actor. His purpose was clear: To crush once and for all Ukraine's dreams of joining the West and to force it to return to the orbit of greater Russia. Back then, anyone predicting how the anniversary of the war would be marked might have mused about a Russian military parade and a visit by Putin himself to a puppet leader he installed in a nation again under Moscow's iron fist. The reality is far different following heroic Ukrainian resistance bolstered by weapons sent by NATO members. The president of the United States, in overcoat and shades, strolled through Kyiv in daylight Monday, visiting a historic church as air raid sirens wailed. He stood exposed alongside President Volodymyr Zelensky in the city's vast, open and iconic St. Michael's Square. Biden's presence sent a message of defiance to Putin most directly along with a cherished sign of resolve and empathy for the people of Ukraine. His audience also included European powers in a Western alliance that Biden has led and invigorated like no president since the end of the Cold War. And every time a commander in chief makes such an audacious splash on the world stage, he's also making a point to Americans -- on whose support continuing extraordinary aid for Ukraine's war effort depends -- and to his own fervent domestic critics.

President Joe Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at St. Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral in Kyiv on Monday.

"One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands," Biden declared. "The Americans stand with you and the world stands with you."   Biden's words might have lacked the poetry of "Ich bin ein Berliner" or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." But his visit instantly went down in history alongside two defining trips to divided Berlin by Presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan that were flashpoints of the Cold War and each of which sent their own image of US resolve to the Kremlin.

President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attend a news conference in Kyiv on Monday.

Those presidential trips made clear that the United States stood with its Western allies for as long as it took to prevail over the Soviet Union. Biden's visit was meant to give similar historic heft to his comment that Washington is there for "as long as it takes" -- though it's unlikely that it will assuage fears in Kyiv and Europe that a change in president might weaken that US vow.   Biden's secret visit, which involved the president leaving the US unannounced and heading to an active war zone, matched some of the colorful stagecraft that Zelensky -- a master of public relations -- has used to maintain Western support for his people and the multi-billion dollar pipeline of weapons and aid. During America's Middle East wars of the last 20 years, Americans became accustomed to Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump leaving Washington in the dead of night and popping up in Baghdad or Kabul to visit US troops and US-backed leaders. And while those trips had their own measure of daring and danger, Biden's visit went a step further -- venturing into a foreign capital that is often under air attack and lacks the security offered by large garrisons of American troops and air assets.  Biden had always planned to visit Europe this week to mark the anniversary of the Russian invasion -- though his public program mentioned only a trip to neighboring Poland. But a journey across the Atlantic that lacked a Ukrainian component would have been unsatisfactory given that fact that many European leaders have already visited Kyiv. Still, the security footprint of the US president is far greater than the one accompanying those leaders, and his position as the leader of the West leaves him far more exposed. But by not visiting Ukraine, Biden would have been implicitly admitting that there were some things that Putin could prevent him from doing -- in effect showing US weakness.   Political symbolism is only effective if it gets results, drives policy and changes an entrenched situation. So, like the Berlin visits of Kennedy and Reagan, the true historic sweep of Biden's perilous journey to Ukraine can only be judged in the light of subsequent events. In other words, his gesture will be an empty one if Russia -- which appears to be mustering for a spring offensive -- wins the war.

In this handout photo issued by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, US President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Ukrainian presidential palace on Monday.

Joe Biden, State of the Union: déjà vu all over again - Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose (CNN)

 

February 8, 2023       Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

'The State of our Union is ....'

Biden arrives back at the White House on Monday after spending the weekend at Camp David where he worked on his speech for the 2023 State of the Union.

If President Joe Biden were truly honest in his annual televised address, he might have said something like this: “The State of our Union is divided, politically, culturally and between the uber rich and everyone else; it’s worried about a possible recession; self-estranged over guns; and slipping deeper into confrontation with two nuclear superpowers. And it really doesn’t want to see another election contest between myself and Donald Trump.” But of course, the theatrics of the State of the Union address and his own political requirements mean that Biden -- between incessant standing ovations from his own side of the House chamber -- must proclaim America stronger than ever. The rituals that play out year after year, after the House Sergeant at Arms bellows “Mr Speaker, the President of the United States” beg the question of whether the huge attention given to these addresses is over the top. Presidents are actually only required by the Constitution to deliver to Congress information on the state of the union from “time to time.” Presidents for generations only delivered written updates to Congress, until Woodrow Wilson decided to reinstate the in-person address in 1913. Later in the television age, savvy commanders-in-chief understood the huge opportunity of a captive audience of millions of viewers at home. The State of the Union address has become a bit of a political cliche — but it still offers a rare chance for a President to speak to the nation in prime-time across all TV networks without interruption or questions from pesky journalists. With the splintering of media in the 21st century, the White House typically streams the speech online and swamps social media with soundbites. It remains a big event — though viewing figures will pale in comparison to the numbers of Americans tuning into the other annual winter ritual — the Super Bowl on Sunday. Given America's politically fractured condition, it'd be asking too much for the State of the Union address to unite the nation. Especially this year, for the first time in his presidency, Biden will be in a House chamber run by Republicans, following the party’s narrow win in the midterm elections last year. Pundits are framing this State of the Union as the unofficial kick off of Biden’s reelection campaign. He is expected to tout his quite impressive legislative record, send a message of US resolve toward Russia over the war in Ukraine and to China following last week’s spy balloon crisis, and to subtly make the point that if many Americans are still feeling uncertain and hurting economically, things would be far worse under the Republican Party. One reason why Presidents like the State of the Union: It's one moment in the year when they can bask in the ceremony of their office and are shown the respect that is fleeting in bitter modern day politics. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised his side will live up to the dignity of the occasion and avoid political stunts that could play into Democratic characterizations of the “Make America Great Again” crowd as unhinged extremists. He's also promised not to tear up his paper copy of Biden's speech -- as former Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi once did after one of Trump's addresses. That’s great, though this is the same McCarthy who in 2021 voted not to certify the president's election victory over false voter fraud claims, so he may not be one to talk about respecting America’s political institutions.  Biden will also have to confront a dubious distinction — as the first 80-year-old to deliver a State of the Union address — and so is under pressure to show vigor and coherence as he asks Americans to begin to think about handing him another term.    While much of the State of the Union hoopla seems hackneyed, it does serve an important, and unseen function. As draft after draft is passed between the White House and government departments, for weeks before the big night, an administration gets to assess what it has done and where it needs to go next. It’s a rare chance to regroup and tighten focus amid the rush of events, crises and political kerfuffles that can easily consume a presidency.