As Joe Biden’s presidency continues to falter, a narrative is developing among progressives that suggests he’s more of a lover than a fighter.
In The New York Times, Michael Shear wrote, “While many Democrats are clamoring for a fighter who gives voice to their anger, Mr. Biden has chosen a more passive path…” Politico reported on Democrats growing “frustrated” by the “disillusionment” Biden’s lack of urgency’ and ‘apparent lack of fire’. And a member of the Democratic Party told CNN that what people “want to see is the president spinning.”
Survived #ButHeFights! wars that elevated Donald Trump to the top of the Republican Party, I am acutely aware of the power of bravado. It’s true that there’s often little connection between fighting and winning, but even performative fighting makes people feel like you care.
Dig deeper and you’ll find the key difference: not only is Biden not “fighting,” but he refuses to give up on existing norms and institutions. Increasingly, progressives blame “institutionalism,” “neocentrism,” and “populism” for Democratic failures — and suggest that to win, “Democrats will have to discard any concern about the emergence of moderation.”
The acceleration of this anti-Biden narrative suggests to me that progressives are beginning to move beyond the “let’s work with referents” stage (where they tried—often successfully—to push Biden to the left) and have now moved on to putting the predicate on explain (in some future point) why the Biden presidency failed.
Their motive? Some progressives are passionate about issues (like abortion rights, for example) and genuinely believe that Biden can make a difference by trying harder. For others, telling this story advances their ideological agenda and (in some cases) their own career ambitions. If the Biden administration becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of moderation, Democrats will be more likely to nominate someone with a more progressive agenda next time around.
With the stakes so high, it’s worth asking whether the narrative is actually true. I mean, progressives have an obvious incentive to tell a story that makes them both Cassandra and the solution to the problem.
So is it true? Not in my book.
“[Biden] cavalierly goes around calling things “Jim Crow 2.0.” This is a man who told African-Americans that Mitt Romney (!) wants to “put them back in chains.” He is no shrinking violet.
As The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank notes, “Biden is saying — heatedly and repeatedly — exactly what he’s accused of avoiding.”
Biden also wants to kill the filibuster (at least on voting rights) and codify abortion rights at the federal level. So he is ready to obey the norms and institutions.
You could argue that he’s not a good or convincing fighter, or that he doesn’t want to burn down as many norms or institutions as you’d prefer. However, this is a guy who cavalierly goes around calling things “Jim Crow 2.0.” This is a man who told African-Americans that Mitt Romney (!) wants to “put them back in chains.” He is no shrinking violet.
Rather, it’s more likely that Biden’s fundamental mistake is trying to be too progressive and transformative—trying to be FDR and LBJ—even though he’s running as a norm-restorer who will work across the aisle.
What went wrong with his presidency? Biden’s collapse in the polls began a year ago with his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. And his biggest political problem is inflation, which he has exacerbated with his spending and pretending to be transitory for months.
There are certainly valuable lessons to be learned from these mistakes. But the idea that Biden should have been busy destroying more norms is hardly the bottom line.
Getting the history right matters because otherwise Democrats will make assumptions and calculations based on the wrong premise.
In fact, it could be argued that at least some of Joe Biden’s problems were created because he embraced questionable narratives.
As liberal columnist Bill Scherr illustrated in Washington Monthly, Biden embraced narratives pushed by liberal opinion leaders such as Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, saying Barack Obama spent too little on stimulus and spent too much a lot of time trying to convince Republicans.
Krugman was not alone. “The [Obama] the stimulus bill was cut further and further,” Ezra Klein wrote immediately after Biden’s inauguration. “A simpler, faster, more generous account [than The Affordable Care Act] it would have been a better policy and a better policy.
At some point, this became conventional wisdom on the left, and it’s pretty clear that even Biden accepted it after he was sworn in as president in January 2021. Instead of trying to make a deal with Republicans, Biden kicked them right out of the gate. What’s more, he didn’t let concerns about an overheating economy get in his way. “We’ve learned from past crises that risk is not doing too much,” Biden said in January 2021. “Risk is not doing enough.”
Parties that learn the wrong lessons are doomed to repeat past mistakes, and it looks like the Democrats are in the process of doing just that. Reject Joe Biden if you want. But at least do it for the right reasons.
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