Writer George Monbiot says he fears Joe Biden is 'not the man' to prevent the emergence of a future US president more dangerous than Donald Trump.
For many liberals, the victory of the Democratic candidate in the US election was a cause for celebration after four years of a Trump presidency.
However, others - particularly those on the left - do not believe the president elect will bring the sort of fundamental changes they feel the US needs.
Mr Monbiot has written about such concerns in his latest Guardian column, and he spoke to Moncrieff about why he's sceptical of Joe Biden's potential.
The writer and commentator explained that the ideology of neoliberalism is something that took hold in the 1970s and 80s under leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and is now dominant.
He said: "This is a system which tells us the right place to make decisions is not politics, not democracy... it's something they call the market. The market will sort everything out through the natural process of buying and selling... it will discover a kind of natural hierarchy of winners and losers.
"It really is a euphemism - it means the power of money. What it's really about is transferring power away from the democratic domain into the economic domain."
He argued that it was an ideology embraced by parties that were seen as left-leaning - and now in the US both the Democrats and Republicans 'subscribe to pretty well the same idea'.
'The exemplar of economic man'
Mr Monbiot said that the dominant ideology is something that benefits an elite and ultimately discourages people from voting - something which led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
He observed: "When people see that politics isn't serving them, a virulent, demagogic anti-politics starts to look quite attractive.
"The irony is... people [who] were trying to escape from the political closure that neoliberalism had caused elected as a result a product of extreme neoliberalism.
"He's not purely neoliberal - he was all over the place... chaotic and without a clear, coherent programme. But you end up with someone who is almost the exemplar of economic man.
"It's all about winning, making money, and enhancing his fame and status."
Generating change
For Mr Monbiot, there's now an urgent need to re-engage people with politics to ensure they don't elect a more 'cold, strategic, calculating and effective demagogue' if they come along.
He suggested the US already has plenty of people 'waiting in the wings' who could perhaps fit that model.
He argued: "My fear is that Biden is not the man to [stop that].
"There are some good things in Joe Biden's platform... he's going to run into massive opposition of course, especially if he doesn't get the Senate.
"The fundamental issue is you can't really generate proper political change in the US without taking on the power of money... without confronting the billionaires. Biden shows no inclination whatsoever to do that."
The author also put forward his solution, which is a "powerful left populism" willing to take on neoliberalism.
He said polling the public on issues such as a wealth tax and public services shows they are "generally in the Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders camp".
However, he said that doesn't bear out in election - and he believes it's the 'power of propaganda' that leads to that, with 'middle-of-the-road' social democrats in the US often described as communist or un-American.
