JOE BIDEN IS THE 46th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: WHAT NEXT?

Alexander Speid

By Alexander Speid

So, it has been decided; Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States.

But could this be considered a good for the lower and middle class, or is he just the lesser evil of the two? For some, myself included, Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Candidate who had the strongest record that many felt would deem well for presidency. However, it was Joe Biden who was picked to travel on a presidential campaign against Donald J. Trump. Some could say that he was able to pull in a strong backing from Black voters due to his original role as former President, Barack Obama’s Vice President. That could be a strong component to the final decision, but I want to believe that there was a more realistic plan for the current country.

Now, while his campaigning took a snag during the wake of COVID-19 amid the claims that he did not al-ways stand for Black people.

A rumor had sprung that, when he was a senator in 1993, he supported the Violent Criminal Control and Law Enforcement Act, in which, he referred to the Black youth as ‘Super Predators.’ However, it has also come out that the context of that time was greatly exaggerated. On the Senate floor, Biden said he wanted to do something for the youth in general, not just the Black community, who did not have structure to help themselves. He said that the country needed to focus on the youth, otherwise, a portion of them would become predators 15 years from now.

No matter the context, the wording could easily be construed as an attack on the Black youth. Joe Biden’s wording may come from a good place, but there is still that obvious divide due to him being an older white man, and not having to see the current struggles as the victim.

His Vice President, Ka-mala Harris, has had a past in politics as a junior US senator and an Attorney General from California. She had actually been one of the Democratic candidates for presidency, before it came to an end after her claims in the past of being a ‘progressive prosecutor.’ This would only come back to hurt her chances due to the needs of prison reform dramatically changing. Her progressive prosecuting was not all that people had hoped and seemed to work more so against the wrongfully convicted in not holding police accountable for false arrest. Many other things would lead Kamala to dropping out as a Democratic nominee, but she would come back as Joe Biden’s Vice-President, with a new goal to set her past right.

With so much campaigning in the wake of COVID, an abysmal debate against former ‘Home Alone’ actor, Donald Trump, and many other obstacles that could’ve slowed a lesser man down, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had beaten the impossible odds to reach Presidency and Vice-Presidency, respectively. So now, what comes next?

We can infer from Biden’s words that he wants to focus on the current pandemic as a top priority. He wants to pro-vide free testing in order to work towards a safe vaccine for all. From there, he wants to strike the COVID crisis on the economy to extend loans to small business and increase money payment to families that make below a certain amount of money. This also means taxing the 0.1 percent who benefit off of the lower class. In the space of climate change, he plants to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord that Trump withdrew from and cut greenhouse gasses by 2025.

Of the promises, the one that should be focused on in this case is his promise for race.

With protest becoming worse in the wake of police brutality against the deceased George Floyd, President Biden wants to “build back” the structure of racial equality. He wants to create businesses that support minorities and fight the criminal justice problem against people of color. He wants to fight to protect rehabilitated released prisoners to offer them jobs upon release. Grants have apparently been put into motion to incentivize states to invest in incarceration reduction efforts.

He also has been for the defunding of the police, and putting more into mental health, schools, and more integral areas that could strengthen the community, rather than make them fear the very people that are supposed to protect them.

Joe Biden has much to clean up from Donald Trump, and we can only hope that we see the fruits of his labor sooner than later.

 

About Carma Henry 24481 Articles
Carma Lynn Henry Westside Gazette Newspaper 545 N.W. 7th Terrace, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33311 Office: (954) 525-1489 Fax: (954) 525-1861

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