Democrats, You Have An Opportunity. Don’t Fuck Up Again
After weeks of speculation, nerves, and debate among its ranks, the Democratic Party finally got an answer on their nominee’s status — Joe Biden has announced he is no longer running for re-election.
I’ve been critical of Biden here as a President, and I’ve talked about many valid reasons people wished they had another option. However, his stepping down was not because his policies shifted to the right, because he was complicit in genocide, or because voters felt hopeless about their tenuous finances. Instead, the push to remove him began when a debate performance showed he was not up to the task of campaigning. Biden had to go because he could no longer articulate the Democratic Party’s message and persuade America not to elect Donald Trump.
Today, I’ll share a few lessons that Democrats (and voters who prefer them to Republicans) should learn from this saga.
This Needed To Happen All Along
If you read my piece about the presidential primary system, you’ll know I didn’t see this year’s primaries as legitimate reflections of America’s will. Even though most Americans were not excited to choose between Trump and Biden again, the two parties pushed their established leaders down America’s collective throat anyway. Rather than reflecting voters’ genuine support for President Biden, the Democratic primary functioned as a re-coronation where Biden trounced two non-competitive candidates (Dean Philips and Marianne Williamson) in state after state.
Biden could have recognized from the start that he was not up to running and allowed voters to settle the nomination through a real primary with multiple credible candidates. Instead, the decision of who is running now will have to be made by delegates, party insiders, and donors instead of voters. The opportunity to choose our 2024 candidate was one Democratic voters will not get back. While we have to move forward now, we can still grieve the opportunities that we, the public, were denied in the nominating process.
Parties Need The Ability To Be Self-Critical
Throughout the past four years, Biden and his supporters have surely been frustrated by the fact that his approval ratings have hovered near or below the ones Trump had throughout his term. This is partly because, while Republicans are nearly unanimous in their support for Trump, Democrats haven’t been quite as fanatical about supporting Biden. Simply put, the Democratic coalition has more voters in it who realize we can (and must) do better than Biden or Trump.
As calls for Biden to drop out became louder, his rhetoric (as exemplified by the texts from his team I received below) became defiant, defensive, and dare I say, Trump-like:
Political parties cannot and should not function to stroke the ego or protect the ambitions of a single leader. They are there to serve the values and goals of their voters — not the other way around. While the Democratic Party, like many institutions, incentivizes people to follow their leaders’ wishes, it is telling that so many elected officials finally saw the writing on the wall, both for Biden and for down-ballot candidates across the country should they continue to ask Americans to vote for an incoherent candidate.
Had Biden and the Democrats listened to us pesky critical thinkers months ago, we would not be in the position of having to replace an unpopular nominee.
Circumstances Change
A lot of people rationalized Biden’s insistence on staying in the race by pointing out that he’s (so far) the only person who has beaten Trump. However, 2020 Biden and 2024 Biden are not the same candidate. Biden is now 81 years old — he’s aged by four years since then and he looks and sounds like he’s aged by ten. Running for President is an insanely demanding job that most people wouldn’t be up to, and there’s no shame for Biden in admitting that. Even more importantly, the circumstances that voters are reacting to have dramatically changed.
As my returning readers know, I used to be an organizer and a paid canvasser. When I made campaign calls to Democratic-leaning voters just before the 2020 election and asked them what issue was most important to them, one of the most popular responses was that “the country was too divided.” These voters were most worried not about healthcare, climate change, or gun violence, but about the abstract concept of “division”.
In 2020, Biden pitched himself as the candidate who would heal “the soul of America” and bring the country together. From a campaign standpoint, that was a perfectly okay message for Americans who, at that point, wouldn’t see through it. During a pandemic, it was understandable for the voters I talked to want a “normal” candidate with whom they felt they could turn their brains off and not constantly stress about politics as they did under Trump. I know how exhausting this shit feels for so many of us. I nodded along to what these voters told me (as I was being paid to) and thanked them for their support, but I knew they wouldn’t get what they were hoping for.
By 2024, Biden’s turn-off-your-brain appeal was gone and was never going to come back. Uncertainty is scary, but new circumstances demand a new approach. That’s what an overwhelming majority of voters asked for and what Biden has finally allowed.
A New Nominee Is A New Beginning
Shortly after announcing his departure from the race, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination and presidency. While we haven’t heard what (if anything) Harris plans to do differently from Biden, there are reasons for optimism.
First, Harris has the most important quality Biden lacks as a candidate — the ability to articulate the Democratic Party’s message and convince people to fight for it. As I typed this, I had a friend (who read my last piece about the need to organize) message me saying that they’ll eagerly volunteer to elect Harris, since they wouldn’t be doing so while suppressing a private belief that their candidate needs to drop out.
The case against Donald Trump should not be a difficult one to make, given his criminal history, his contempt for democracy, his hollow promises to everyday Americans, his incoherence and narcissism, his close ties to Project 2025, and the fact that he’s been defeated before. I am hopeful that voters who wanted something new will feel heard by Biden’s decision to step aside, and that they’ll inherently be encouraged by having a new candidate who can do the job.
Within Harris’ record itself, there are both green and red flags. During her 2020 campaign, Harris expressed a desire for some form of universal healthcare. As Vice President, she expressed a bit more willingness to hold Israel accountable for its genocide of Palestinians than Biden did. As a young progressive who didn’t want to vote for Biden, I’m more hopeful now that people like me can be won back. That said, Harris also unnecessarily defended “tough on crime” policies in California as a prosecutor and has largely been sidelined by Biden. Like most politicians, she has contradictions in her career and seems to respond to what she thinks she needs to do.
In addition, Harris’ choice of a running mate will be extremely telling about what direction the party will take under her leadership. Given that Harris herself is (comparatively) young and has threaded the line between moderate and progressive policies in the past, her choice of a Vice President will make a strong statement. This year has reminded America that VPs have an extremely important job, as they could have to step in at any time. Leeja Miller recently put out a timely video on the history of Veeps that you can watch below:
What remains to be seen is whether or not Democrats acknowledge that Biden’s age wasn’t his only problem. In the United States and around the world, voters (especially working-class ones) are dissatisfied with the neoliberal status quo and the politicians representing it. Recent election results in the UK and France showed a demand for change and a willingness to back left-of-center parties who offered it. Democrats who thought Americans wouldn’t want the same are naive at best.
In a statement about Biden’s chances to win a couple of weeks ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said it well:
“…Democrats can win this election if they address the needs of the working class.
They have to take on the greed of corporate America and massive income and wealth inequality, raise the minimum wage to a living wage…and build the low-income and affordable housing we need.
The American people want change. It will either be the change of Trump’s reactionary and xenophobic policies, or change that benefits working families.”
I can only hope it’s the latter.
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