Are You Asking 'How Did We Get Here?'
The Factors That Brought Us To A Potential Biden Defeat And Trump Return
I will not write panic-driven nonsense about the debate on Thursday night because I didn’t watch it. You’ve probably read a hundred takes on it already. I knew it would be a train wreck, and debates have not mattered in decades. They’re not meant to engage in policy discussion anymore; they’re the political equivalent of a cock fight.
I will not scream for President Biden to drop out because it’s pointless. If I had the power to convince the Democratic Party to nominate someone else, I would convince them to nominate me, and America would have spent last night clutching its pearls over how mean and cruel I was to the guy who skimped my great uncles out of paychecks in 1982. There is zero chance I wouldn’t get on that stage and mock Trump for being “the felon with the small dick” and laugh my ass off at how he screwed a porn star and caught a charge and had to watch her testify against him in court like a schmuck. Jake Tapper would have fainted. CNN would have convened a panel to ask, “Where’s the civility?”
I will use this platform to outline how we got here because we repeat mistakes when we don’t learn from them, and if you think it’s a mistake to have Biden be the Democratic nominee this year, it's worth understanding why he is. We have to look at the circumstances that brought us to this place. Blame will be thrown around: Biden for being too arrogant to drop out, his staffers for not forcing him to, and the Democratic Party leadership for not foreseeing this. All that is true, but we must also look at ourselves – the voters.
Last September, I wrote a piece advising you to resign yourselves to a Biden v. Trump matchup. I said then, as I do now, that little of this is in our control. We are just one person in a country of 330 million, 150 million of whom vote.
Tens of millions of Democratic voters decided in 2020, perhaps correctly, that only one man could have beaten Donald Trump, and that one man did. Because he did, the 2024 nomination defaulted to him three and a half years ago. It is possible, perhaps likely, that Biden will not win this year, but if he doesn't, it will be because of several factors that were beyond any of our individual control:
The choice of the Democratic voting electorate in 2020
The only other somewhat influential factions in the Democratic Party were unable to come up with another candidate in 2020 who hadn’t lost the nomination once and wasn’t born before Pearl Harbor.
The political shifts since 2020 have also put several other Democrats in peril, notably those in New York State and liberal-leaning governments worldwide.
The 2020 Mistakes
Life’s not fair, and good doesn’t always triumph over evil. The cost of beating Donald Trump in 2020 may be that Democrats will lose to him in 2024.
Since last night’s debate, many folks in my sphere have been rehashing 2020, mainly to argue that if Democrats had chosen Bernie Sanders, he would have wiped the floor with Trump last night. That’s delusional thinking that is not worth engaging with, especially since I think he wouldn’t have beaten Trump in 2020, but I’ll do it anyway because it’s out there.
Bernie Sanders had a heart attack in the middle of the 2020 campaign. We have seen how the presidency even ages younger folks who held the job. Look at Bill Clinton in 1992 versus 2001 or Barack Obama in 2008 compared to 2016. We have no idea how Bernie would look or act after serving four years as president. Even though he appears more active and lively than Biden, he still looks old. My ex-partner, who liked Bernie and was much closer to him politically than Biden, once described his demeanor as “a cranky old man at the deli counter angry that his roast beef was sliced too thin.” My friends regularly shared memes on social media comparing him to Abraham Simpson yelling at a cloud. There is zero chance he wouldn’t be facing questions about his age and fitness today if he won the 2020 election.
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But that’s the problem. In 2020, no Democratic voter was thinking about 2024; they focused solely on winning the 2020 election and dealing with the rest later. Bernie supporters could have worked to cultivate a younger progressive who wouldn’t have the baggage of the nasty 2016 primary, as many moderates tried to do with Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and some progressives with Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke. However, most progressives rallied behind Bernie again, despite obvious signs he didn’t have a path to winning a majority of delegates (Biden let in every national poll leading up to the first primaries) and would have to face questions about his age and fitness if he were to serve eight years. Bernie, like Biden, never promised to serve one term. His supporters were just as willing to saddle us with an octogenarian candidate with serious health problems in 2024 as Biden supporters were. They have no credibility here. Biden didn’t clear the field of moderates; we had plenty of those, but Bernie supporters froze the field of any potential progressive candidates, minus Warren, whom they treated abominably. They could've gotten behind Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a champion of campaign finance reform, or Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Rust Belt populist. They could have gotten behind Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a former mayor and Obama-esque character, or Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State, an environmental champion who, in his first term in Congress, fell on his sword to support gun control and Bill Clinton’s budget which helped spur the 1990s economic boom.
But they didn’t.
In 2020, no Democratic voter was thinking about 2024; they focused solely on winning the 2020 election and dealing with it later.
Biden supporters in 2020 have some reflection to do, too. Biden won the 2020 primary on the backs of Black voters, who were not enamored with any of the other candidates. Liberals and progressives are not willing to criticize Black voters for their choices even though they are primarily the reason for the nominations of Hillary Clinton and Biden. The political decisions of the African-American voting bloc are sacrosanct because of how much they have riding on Democrats consistently winning. We often defer to their guidance. Still, Black voters in New York reelected Andrew Cuomo in 2018 and gave us Eric Adams as mayor. Black voters are giving Adam Schiff a Senate seat in California over progressive populist Katie Porter and progressive icon Barbara Lee. Sometimes, they get it right, as they did with Obama, and in races like the Alabama Senate in 2017 and Georgia in 2020, but sometimes, they get it wrong. We should entertain the possibility that Black voters made a colossal mistake when, after a half dozen Democratic hopefuls asked for their vote, they responded, “That’s nice, I’m going with Barack’s sidekick,” and openly say so if that’s what we believe.
Or maybe they have better political sixth senses than the rest of us. It’s possible, but we need to be willing to critique voters when we think they made bad decisions and not try to eliminate their agency and blame some establishment conspiracy that way progressives do about Biden’s 2020 win.
The 2020 Hangover
If Biden loses in November, his age will be a factor, but it will not be the only one. Biden struggled even before Thursday, and some Democrats I know wrote him off as far back as February, even weirdly enough, while voting for him in their states’ primaries.
Biden is struggling for the same reason many Democrats elected or who took office around the same time as him, like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, are struggling in polls; the political winds have shifted substantially to the right since 2020. This is true not just here but worldwide. As a result, many liberal-leaning leaders have found themselves adrift.
Leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have lower approval ratings than Biden. Australia's Anthony Albanese saw his polling numbers collapse this year as well. Right-wing governments have won elections recently in Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, and New Zealand. In the latter country, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, considered a rising star among progressives globally and praised for her strict COVID lockdown policy, left office abruptly in 2023, shortly before her party was soundly defeated. Even the globe’s most liked democratic leader, Narendra Modi of India, a right winger, saw his party dramatically underperform expectations in this month’s election. Conservatives are poised to win the next elections in Canada and France. Only the United Kingdom, which has been governed by the Conservative Party since 2010, is likely to turn to a left-wing government. However, the Labour Party, which will likely win next week’s election, is far to the right of what it was when it last faced voters in 2019. Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist who led the party in the late 2010s, is no longer a party member.
Massive global inflation, the issue of migration into Western countries, and the proliferation of online conspiracy theories thanks to extended pandemic shutdowns that forced people to socialize only online have fostered a dynamic where right-wing neo-fascist forces are thriving. People turned hard against the Left during and after COVID. Having grown cynical and self-destructive after the defeats of Sanders and Corbyn and the failure to launch a progressive revolution during the pandemic, a significant portion of the general public no longer sees progressives as fighters for liberty and justice but just as another head on the hydra looking to control our lives and how we live and interact with each other. Progressivism now comes across as Evangelicalism, except without a savior or promise of paradise after death. Left-wing political parties, like the Democratic Party, are being caught up in that undertow.
Biden has been performing better than most other world leaders to his credit. That's not only because his opponent is Trump. The United States has experienced less inflation and economic strife than other global powers, and our economy outshines the rest of the world. Biden and the Democratic Congress that took office in 2021 very quickly maneuvered to get us out of the COVID rut and back to “normal,” something that angered many progressives who hoped COVID would trigger an overthrow of the status quo. It did, however, put us on sound economic footing.
None of this matters to someone angry that rent, groceries, and gas are significantly more expensive than in 2019, even if they earn far more money. It doesn’t matter to people who have to deal with being accosted by migrants in the Home Depot parking lot regularly. It doesn’t matter to people who have to ask to have the locked cabinet doors opened at CVS to buy shampoo because criminals are ransacking stores. All these are byproducts of Biden's engaging in leftist politics around crime, immigration, and economics that seemed on the ascent in 2020 and are contributing to his potential defeat. They would also haunt anyone who replaces him on the ticket.
Progressivism now comes across as Evangelicalism but without a savior or promise of paradise after death. Left-wing political parties, like the Democrats, are being caught up in that undertow.
What Happens Now?
The 24 hours or so since the debate have been instructive. Democrats from the top down are still behind Biden, with even former President Obama sticking with him. However, calls to have him replaced at the convention are not going away, and the first national polls in the coming weeks will be a tell-tale sign of how serious that idea is taken.
There is little chance that if Biden steps aside, Democrats will not nominate Vice President Harris at the convention. Again, it is difficult to explain to black voters, the Democratic Party’s base, why they are passing up the first black woman on a national ticket for a white person, especially a white man. Is Kamala more electable than Biden? No one knows, but most have doubts. It is likely the only other realistic option.
Which leaves the “Hail Michelle Pass.” The former First Lady is probably the most popular Democrat in the country. While it’s undoubtedly possible Michelle Obama would beat Trump, throwing her into the ring makes the same mistake Democrats did in 2020, which is not thinking past this year’s election. When Michelle Obama defeats Trump, she won’t collect a trophy and return to Chicago to place it on her mantle; she has to do the job. She may be good at it, as Biden is, but she has to run again in 2028, probably against Trump, who will be the Republican nominee in every election until he dies or is term-limited. Do we have faith that Michelle, once famously portrayed on the cover of New York Magazine as Angela Davis, can remain popular for four weeks, let alone four years?
When Hillary Clinton was prepping for a run for president in late 2014, she was the most popular politician in the country. Within weeks of her announcement, her popularity plummeted. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was seen as the post-Trump great uniter that even some recalcitrant Democrats would love. He face-planted spectacularly. Robert Kennedy Jr. was widely seen as the best chance since Ross Perot that a third party had at winning some serious vote totals. Now Kennedy polls in the single digits and is almost as unpopular as Biden and Trump.
There is no guarantee replacing Biden will ensure a win. Trump is too popular and has too big a base for anything to secure a victory. Any chance of defeating him soundly disappeared long ago and was primarily undone by factors beyond our control.
Right now, we are going to have to do what other democracies have been doing against rising fascism, eat shit and work to live to fight another day. There will be better days, but they won’t come this year.
Be prepared for the Left to get loud and obnoxious again in the event of another Trump victory. With fascism and Christian Nationalism poised to rear their ugly heads, those of us on the Left are not going to accept it graciously. Expect mass civil disobedience and open, willful insubordination from liberal state governments at the very least.