In front, and centred: Joe Biden

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. France's President Emmanuel Macron has booted out Edouard Philippe, the prime minister whose poll numbers were rising just as Mr. Macron's fell. The most notable thing about the new head of government is that no one seems to know who he is. And hi Tec is a blue haired rapper who rages against sexism and inequality in her native Morocco. Rap music is gaining ground across North Africa and the Middle east, enraging some rulers and making others consider outright bans on the genre. First up, though, Four months out from America's presidential election, incumbent Donald Trump is in a tight spot. His polling has plummeted as the country contends with the world's worst outbreak of COVID 19. And despite the fact that we I.

Have done a phenomenal job with it.

I saved hundreds of thousands of lives. We don't ever get even a mention. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. When the country was gripped by national protests, a reckoning on racial justice, his was not a unifying or a calming message. It's not the behavior of a peaceful political movement. It's the behavior of totalitarians and tyrants and people that don't love our country. They don't love our country. His challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, began his campaign with talk of restoration. Bringing back America, America's soul, a return to civility, even.

I think people are really realizing that.

This is a battle for the soul of America. Who are we? What do we want to be? How do we see ourselves? In a sense, Mr. Biden is a comforting figure for an uncomfortable time. Despite keeping a low profile for the past few months, support for him has surged. An election win would give him a chance not just to soothe the country. With a bit of legislative help, he could be a force for professional profoundly changing it.

Joe Biden has said that he is running to restore the soul of America.

John Fasman is our Washington correspondent.

And what that seems to mean to people is that he is running to stabilize the country. He represents experience, he represents stability. He represents a sort of known quantity in American politics. And in an ordinary election year, that may not have been a winning message, but I think there is a critical mass of people in America who have been so exhausted by the chaos and divisiveness of Donald Trump's presidency that it has found a lot of purchase.

And how's that reflected then, in the polls so far?

On average, he has a polling advantage of about 9%, which is comfortably above Hillary Clinton's lead at this time in 2016. Our election forecast gives him a 9 in 10 chance of winning the electoral college and a 98% chance of winning the popular vote. He holds solid leads in the blue wall states that Hillary Clinton lost in the upper Midwest. Those are Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. And he appears to be turning some solidly Republican states into battlegrounds. He's running well in Arizona, Georgia, Texas. Recently, people have started to think about South Carolina. And so it's a solid polling advantage all over the country.

And given his advantage is based on familiarity and stability and so on, do you see that poll lead as a statement on people's belief he'd be as well as a stable president, or is it just a repudiation of Mr. Trump, do you think?

Well, I think all presidential reelections are effectively referendums on the incumbent. This one definitely is. So the fact that he is not terribly inspiring is not as much of a detriment as it might be in another year. He looks plausible. He's not Donald Trump. He has party support. That may be all he needs. And what the polls show now is that he is in possible landslide territory without really having to do all that much to get there.

And that's a story that's shifted quite a lot since the very start of the campaign cycle. What do you think that says for how he would govern and how much help he would get in it?

Democrats look likely to hold the House. They may take the Senate as well. That was once unthinkable, but it's now eminently thinkable. And I think one lesson for Democrats is that if you want to make big, sweeping changes, it really helps to elect a candidate who is the most broadly acceptable. And when I put it like that, I know it sounds obvious because elections are about winning more votes than other people, but I think there's a strain of thought within the Democratic Party that says you need to nominate Someone who is as progressive as possible, because only that will provide the sort of huge turnout of young voters and non white voters that Democrats need to finally sweep away all Republicans. That looks unlikely to happen. The smarter strategy seems to be to have progressives pushing a centrist candidate from within the party, but to have the face of the party be a centrist who is broadly acceptable in a way that a progressive might not be.

But if he is, as he has always been, kind of anchored at the center, what kind of policies can we expect from a Biden presidency?

Well, first we need to think about what being at the center of the party means. Right. It's not that he was a centrist when he was elected and he has stood firm to those same principles and political views he held when he first came in. It means that he has moved as the party has. And over the past five years or so, ever since the Hillary Clinton Bernie Sanders primary, the party has moved steadily leftward in and he has moved with it. And so a lot of his platform is sort of routine stuff for Democrats, but routine stuff for Democrats in 2020 means a higher minimum wage. It means a pledge to make America carbon neutral. I think where he is broken with the far left is that he doesn't back Medicare for all. Instead he wants to build on the Affordable Care act, but to do so by introducing a public option, meaning a government run plan that people can buy into that may end up hastening the demise of private insurance. Even though it doesn't sound radical, you'll remember when Barack Obama passed the Affordable Care act, he didn't include a public option because it was seen as too radical. Joe Biden is pushing this and it seems now like the centrist option. So the lesson for Democrats is that a sort of cautious, incremental centrist can get really big radical things done.

But what does that fundamental tension about Mr. Biden's platform tell you about party unity within the Democrats themselves, which had swung so hard to the left early on in the campaign?

Well, one thing to bear in mind is that Joe Biden is really good at the sort of human transactional side of politics. And so you saw that after he won in South Carolina, before Super Tuesday, when he had Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto Rourke all appear with him. And you saw that also after Bernie Sanders dropped out, when Biden reached out to Sanders and to his people and they formed these six policy center task forces that he appears to be listening to. It's true that there are people in the party's progressive wing that still view him with suspicion and that give him very little credit. I think this is misgiven. I think we should remember that Democrats retook the house in 2018 because they had a critical mass of moderate candidates who talked about kitchen table issues and managed to flip Republican seats. They didn't win because Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez flipped safe Democratic seats. Democrats win national elections by being unthreatening and centrist.

And we've talked a lot during the Trump presidency about what the world would be like, what America would be like after it. I mean, do you see a Biden presidency as something like a return to the Obama era or something new entirely?

I think you probably have a lot of Americans who are somewhat nostalgic about where the country was five years ago. But it's important to note that the Biden presidency is not going to be term three of the Obama presidency. It could be even more ambitious. Barack Obama represented change by virtue of his race and background, and Joe Biden in that presidency was the familiar stabilizing figure. But Obama was by temperament quite cautious and quite centrist. Biden is generally cautious as well. But if Joe Biden wins and he brings with him a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, he may, even though he is a familiar, reassuring figure, not a radical, inspiring one, he may be in a position to govern much more ambitiously than his former boss did.

John, thanks very much for your time, Jason.

Always a pleasure.

John Fasman appears every week on our U.S. politics show, checks and Balance. It's out every Friday on Economist Radio. This week's show looks at the surprising effects of federal government measures to shore up America's economy. France's Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, was enjoying rising popularity, at least until Friday, when President Emmanuel Macron got rid of him. In his place, Mr. Macron appointed a new head of government, Jean Castex, to which many in France replied, jean who? The rise of this unknown mayor from a mountain village caught many by surprise. It didn't seem to fit with Mr. Macron's ambitious vision of reinvention and a new path for the last two years of his term. Mr. Kostex isn't the only card in what is proving a controversial reshuffle around Mr. Macron. But it seems the president does have his reasons.

Well, after weeks of speculation, the president, Emmanuel Macron, finally named Jean Castex.

Sophie Petter is the Economist's Paris bureau chief.

He's a mayor, a center right mayor of Prade, which is a little town or village almost in the Pyrenees. He's also a career civil servant who ran the strategy for exiting France from lockdown, but really largely unknown even despite that, to the general public.

So how did he get the job?

Well, it's the question that people are still trying to answer here. Under the French Fifth Republic, which has been in place since 1958, most French presidents do change prime minister during their term. I mean, there's only one example when that hasn't happened. So it's not surprising to the French that there's a change of prime minister. I think the difficulty that some people have in understanding this is that Edouard Philippe was actually very popular and his poll ratings had been rising as France emerged from lockdown, whereas Emmanuel Macron, his poll ratings had fallen. So in a way, if a president in France expects a Prime minister to act as a sort of shock absorber, Edouard Philippe wasn't doing that anymore. And I think that there was a sense in which the President was no longer sort of benefiting from having him in place.

Is there a grander strategy there, or a way in which the new PM could act, behave, help differently?

You have a figure now at the head of government who is not really a politician, he's more of a sort of an executor, he's a civil servant, which enables, I suppose, Macron to make even greater use of the very strong executive presidency that's at his disposal in France. But the other thing is that this new Prime Minister, Jean Cassette, is a very grassroots figure as well. You know, he's a mayor of this very small town. And therefore, perhaps it will enable Macron to sort of renew the link that's quite been quite broken between him and Paris and those on the ground and the rest of the country. If Emmanuel Macron had appointed someone from the left or a Green, possibly as a result of having done so badly at recent local elections, when Mr. Macron's party failed to capture any big city in France, then I think people would have understood that this was a shift in strategy or in course, for the President. But the difficulty with this appointment is that it's another centre right Prime Minister with largely the same team kept in place. Bruno Mare is still Finance Minister. Foreign Minister remains the same. The Defence Minister remains the same.

Well, largely the same team, except for the nominee for Interior Minister.

That's right. The new Interior Minister, Gerald d', Harmanin, is the outgoing budget Minister. He lobbied hard for this job. It's what he wanted. It is also a controversial appointment in some respects, because there is an outstanding rape case against him. He has denied all charges, but the appointment with this case hanging over him has upset a number of feminist campaigners who have been on the streets complaining about it.

And so what's the reaction to the broader reshuffle and Jean Castex in particular been among the political class?

Well, there's a lot of disappointment, I think, on the left in the Socialist Party and among the Greens. Disappointment in the sense, not that they were expecting anything from Macron, but that I think they felt that this is a right wing government and it's been. Or a centre right government and it's been replaced by another centre right government. So if this doesn't involve a sort of shift to the left that some people expected within the party, I think there is a, you know, people are generally satisfied, but they really, it really is a party that depends on Macron is built around him. So it's quite unusual to find a huge amount of dissent. I think that if there's any party that might feel disconcerted by it, it would be the centre right Republicans, because in a way they've lost their best talent to Macron and he is now, it seems, sort of preempting a centre right return or renewal of the centre right by in effect, putting in place a centre right government. And that will make it in a way very difficult for them to challenge him, at least on policy terms in the run up to 2022.

And all of that kind of puts Mr. Kostaks in a sticky position, joining as he is at a fairly tricky time for France, as elsewhere. I mean, how do you think he'll do in the new job?

Well, it's a very difficult time to take over for any leader in government in Europe at the moment or anywhere, really, for obvious reasons. The French economy is expected to contract by about 11% this this year. Job losses are bound to pile up, especially in the autumn after the summer break. And I think that this is going to be a very difficult time for France. There's a lot of tension with unions, with any attempt by Macron to bring back some of the reforms that he's suspended during the COVID crisis. And I'm thinking particularly of pension reform. So it could be a very difficult time, particularly for someone like Jean Castex, who is not a politician apart from being, you know, a local level, having experience in his small town of politics. He really is a career civil servant rather than a politician. And he certainly doesn't have a national base or a natural sort of link to the national assembly with which to work well.

And that leaves him with even less of a foothold then in international concerns. Right. This is a time where France is very much a part of working out how Europe will deal with the pandemic and its aftermath, right?

Yes, it is. It's a crucial time for Europe. But in that respect, I think this really won't change anything, the change of government, because Europe policy in France is essentially run by Emmanuel Macron. He campaigned for office on a very poor European platform. He has been in charge of all major initiatives in Europe, and particularly this most recent one to raise mutual debt for the recovery plan, which he has now agreed with Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel. So I think that the piloting of that, the build up to the next European summit, but also beyond that, will be entirely in Mr. Macron's hands and the change of government ultimately won't make any difference at all.

Sophie, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

Rap music came to North Africa and the Middle East a generation ago, when Moroccans studying in the west brought the rhymes back home with them. Since then, it's been embraced by both the powerful and the powerless. Across the Arab world today, rappers are challenging conservative cultures, prompting some despots to hit back, including in Morocco.

Dek is a Moroccan student. She raps about premarital sex. She raps about the need to include the discriminated, whether they're illegal migrants or gays. It's really kind of an inclusive message and a challenge to the kind of failures of the existing political and social system.

Nicholas Pelham is the Economist's Middle east correspondent.

She's really kind of part of a vanguard of rappers expressing the anger and alienation of a whole youth generation across the Middle East.

So among this burgeoning breed of new rappers, what do the lyrics tend to be about?

What you're hearing often in these rap songs is the raw reality of what it's like to be underprivileged and marginalised in North Africa and the Middle East. PEOPLE SING IN LOCAL DIALECTS Lyrics are often highly political. There's lots about the inequality of the Middle East. The lyrics are sort of challenging authority and conservative values, but that will run.

Counter to the narratives of a lot of the conservative leaders in the Middle East. I mean, how is this going down?

Many fear the disruptive power. This is a force that they can't really control. And there's some songs which are really kind of making huge waves and unnerving the authorities. Ashesha Long Live the People was released last November, and it sort of rages against Morocco's King. Genawi. The singer behind Asha Shaaba was arrested in Morocco. The Saudi authorities detained female rappers. There was one who sang about the girls of Mecca painting rather secular picture about how girls are living in Islam's most holy city. Syrian rappers have been chased abroad. Egypt's parliament is considering a ban on rap altogether. So, you know, it's that traditional way of suppression and repression.

By what rationale, what excuses are authorities using for the crackdown?

They're painting rap as a threat to the social order, not just to the political order. They kind of say that it encourages gangsterism and violence and is synonymous with the drug trade. And kakubi, which is North Africa's version of crack cocaine, Many of them are painting it in a pretty dark light.

And is there anything to those allegations?

Some of the rappers do seem to be encouraging use of drugs. And battle rap has become phenomenally popular in places like Beirut and Morocco's commercial hub, Casablanca. And the anger can also turn militant. There are instances where some rappers went off and joined Islamic State and lured others with songs like Dirty Kuffar. And you can even find it in Libya's civil war, where a Libyan rapper called Black Tiger, who's been encouraging young fighters to join forces with Khalifa Hafta, a rebel warlord, and he sings in military fatigues with a chorus of gunmen. I think probably what unnerves rulers the most is just the degree to which it's been used in demonstrations, which over the last year did topple three Arab leaders in Algeria, in Sudan and in Iraq.

And so do you think that's the fate of rap music in North Africa and the Middle east, then consistently oppositional and, well, essentially to be repressed?

Quite a few countries have been a little more creative in the way that they've responded. Morocco's King Mohammed VI actually kind of promoted hip hop youth culture at one point to kind of counter the growing appeal of Islamist parties. He saw it as its messaging as. And its beat as being something which was sort of secular and Western and would deter the rise of Islamist groups across his kingdom, particularly at a time where they were kind of doing very well at the ballot box and there was a spate of jihadist attacks. You've even seen it in some of the religious seminaries in Iraq, where Shia clerics have been working their sermons into rap songs using a traditional rhythmic chest beating as their backing track. In the United Arab Emirates, they're giving play to Trap, which is a kind of more throbbing, heavy bass form of rap, which focuses much more on the beat than on the lyrics, which, given how challenging the lyrics often are, is something which can appeal to watercracks. And perhaps the starkest example of repression is this song called Nother Word. Even the lead singer there puts his finger to his lips and essentially tells his audience and fellow rappers to shut up. Essentially, this is kind of politics transformed into rap, where you've got the state trying to promote its ideology through rap and rappers answering back with a strident challenge of their own.

Fire. Fire.

Fire.

Fire. Nicholas, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason. It was a pleasure to be with you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts, and you can subscribe to the economist@examiner.com intelligenceoffer. See you back here tomorrow.